Verizon DSL question

John Jannotti jj at lcs.mit.edu
Wed May 1 00:24:49 EDT 2002


"Derek D. Martin" <ddm at pizzashack.org> writes:
> Sure, but this only is useful for unreliable connections (i.e.
> connections with considerable packet loss).  Most traffic on most LANs
> stays on the LAN.  It's not terribly practical to degrade local
> network performance to counteract the effects of packet loss unless
> most of your traffic is out to the Internet.

That's why you only set your mtu low on the routes through your gateway.

>  The practical usefulness of this seems rather limited to me...  I
>  suppose technically, you're solving a problem; but you're only trading
>  it for a different one.  Which in most cases will be more detrimental
>  than the problem you solved.

But even if you couldn't, I'd *gladly* give up 2% of my local bandwidth for
an extra 10% bandwidth from my cable modem / dsl. In the home environment,
I think that just makes sense.

remember, I'm not saying that a path with a low MTU is good.  I'm saying
that if you've got one, you *should* ensure that your transmissions respect
it, and that doing so will be a benefit.

  jj



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