[nycbug-talk] Good article about gigabit performance issues

[Tillman Hodgson]

On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 10:35:58AM -0700, pete wright wrote:
> On 4/16/05, Mikel King <mikel.king at ocsny.com> wrote:
> > http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/features/article.php/3497796
> 
> Nice one, although I'm suprised that they downplay the benefits of
> "Jumbo Packets".  The benefits are pretty real, and there are plenty
> of switches available now that support large MTU's.

For smaller networks, jumbo packets often don't work.

Lots of small networks want one or two critical servers to be on gigabit
(filesharing, mostly) and the rest of the network on fast ethernet. Lots
of the low-end of "real" switches are built to accommodate this: 24
100Mbit ports and 2 gigabit ports.

Unfortunately, ethernet frames must be the same size within a network.
The 100Mbit ports will determine the maximum frame size. That's
unfortunate, because it means that even between the two gigabit ports
on a switch like that you can't use jumbo frames.

-T


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