Network MTU Limitations

wouldn't the default mtu of 1500 bytes in most routers negate that? Maybe things have changes since hte last time i thought about mtu but at one time it was 1500 bytes.

Reduced MTU chopping off your maximum packet size from all the extra headers and other overhead you're adding?

That would suck for anything IPv6 (minimum MTU is 1280, as opposed to 576 or something around that).

Normally, an ethernet or wifi restricts an MTU of 1500. I use ping packets accordingly

That's true, it's a bad idea to assume an MTU of 1500. Although there is no minimum MTU in IPv4, IPv6 specifies a minimum of 1280 bytes. So if you send your UDP packets over IPv6, you are guaranteed room for 1232 bytes of payload.

In reality the MTU is 1500 because the odds of all devices on a given path supporting anything larger is almost zero. The only way IPv6 could have helped was mandating a larger fixed known MTU... say 4096 or 8192.

If you're not blocking ICMP, then PMTUD will take care of any issues where other hosts don't support jumbo frames

I have CenturyLink business internet with a static IP. It has 1492 MTU. So technically 1500 isn't always true, sometimes it's smaller :)

Did you try 9000? You are right around the nebulous jumbo frame mtu, and there are different implementations.

I assume it's not mentioned to keep the article brief, but most devices these days support MTU sizes greater than 1500 bytes. Jumbo Frames[1] allow for ethernet packets of up to 9216 bytes.Since they have to be fragmented back down to 1500 for devices that don't support them, however, it's typically only used in closed internal networks, like a SAN. People typically see about a 5% to 10% bump in performance.[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumb