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RE: The IPv4 Internet MTU



Arnaud,

Thanks for the interesting note, but I am still holding
out optimism for a (64KB-ENCAPS) IPv6 MTU for the teredo
interface. I'd ask for bigger if I could, but we have
the 16bit IPv4 length field as a limiting factor. (Next
question is how we get it to do jumbograms...)

Thanks - Fred
fred.l.templin@boeing.com  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Arnaud Ebalard [mailto:arno@natisbad.org] 
> Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 12:07 AM
> To: Templin, Fred L
> Cc: Christian Huitema; Rémi Denis-Courmont; v6ops@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: Re: The IPv4 Internet MTU
> 
> Hi Fred, Hi *,
> 
> "Templin, Fred L" <Fred.L.Templin@boeing.com> writes:
> 
> >> > Why not just set the Teredo interface MTU to (64KB-ENCAPS)?
> >> > Then, take special care to make sure the small packets get
> >> > through but let the big packets take care of themselves.
> >> 
> >> The problem is UDP fragmentation.
> >
> > I guess you mean IPv4 fragmentation? Even so, there is
> > a lot we can do within the no-man's-land of the Teredo
> > interface after we get a packet from IPv6 and before we
> > give it over to IPv4. So, why not just give IPv6 an
> > optimistic MTU estimate then deal with reality from
> > within?
> 
> IMHO, the optimistic Teredo interface MTU is what I provided in my
> previous post (sth in [1380, 1384]): 
> 
> 1) it should prevent obvious fragmentation in all cases by taking into
>    account reasonable encapsulation that can happen on the path
> 2) it also leave on the side the wrong assumption that you'll 
> either get
>    a message from the network or have your packets fragmented by it if
>    it happens to be too big. There are people that simply prevent that
>    to happen in their networks and there are vendors that are 
> unable to
>    implement those kind of things properly (don't ask for 
> name, i would
>    reply ;-) ). 
> 
> Reality is that just like you perform MSS clamping when you are aware
> that the return path to clients in your site is less than what they
> advertise, setting the interface MTU from the value one would consider
> a common PMTU (the one clamped value is computed from) will 
> simply have
> the advantage of ensuring that all L4 protocols work with it, not only
> TCP.
> 
> Using (64KB-ENCAPS) is _interesting_ but IMHO unfeasible directly. You
> have the insurance that almost all your packets will be 
> IPv4-fragmented
> to more or less 1500 bytes. Full packets will become more than 40
> fragments. I consider that packets don't get lost or killed 
> that much in
> the core _when_ they fit the PMTU: packet loss occurs at both ends 
> because of some bad connectivity (unreliable medium). If the path is
> reliable _and_ the communication takes place between teredo clients
> directly, you have the benefit of IPv4 fragmentation (no header
> cost).
> 
> Now, in all those cases, this will not work (or not work well):
> 
> 1) bad medium (unreliable path): fragmentation will amplify 
> the problem
>    and there is pretty much nothing to do to prevent that except lower
>    the MTU.
> 2) IPv4 MTU is higher than PMTU: using the reasonable value i proposed
>    for IPv4 packets generated by the teredo interface coudl solve that
>    point. 
> 3) Packets are for a native IPv6 client: if the proposed 
> reasonable MTU
>    value allow packets to hit the relay in all cases (expected), this
>    creates an interesting situation because it would be able 
> to warn the
>    Teredo interface of the emitter that its packets are too 
> big for the
>    output path (ICMPv6 Packet Too Big). The positive aspect is that
>    with the insurance that the mechanism is implemented by all Teredo
>    relays (1 or 2 implementations at the moment ?), this removes IPv4
>    internet issues from the table. Only drawback is the 
> required work by
>    the relay (regarding packet reconstruction, i.e. first 1280 bytes
>    for the citation) which imply higher memory consumption. Rémi, what
>    do you think?
> 4) Packets are for Teredo client: chances are high that the 
> client's NAT
>    will try to reassemble the packet instead of letting fragments go
>    through. Well educated NAT GW will send an IPv4 ICMP to the client,
>    that could be used to change the size of IPv6 packets for that
>    peer. Rémi, is it feasible?
> 
> To sum up, a default MTU of (64Kb-ENCAPS) for the Teredo 
> interface, even
> with the use of IPv4 packets to carry everything with a 
> reasonable MTU 
> ([1408,1412]) still requires many assumptions. I don't think it would
> fly ;-)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> a+
>