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| | Re: MTU of the Internet? |
 | | With a tail-drop queueing "discipline", a TCP flow may have a sizeable amount of buffering available to it before a tail drop occurs; unless this is moderated by something like RED, several seconds of queueing delay should be expected. |
 | | Moreover, unless, as you note, there is some sort of priority queueing, this means that a new burst of traffic will be delayed by the length of the queue, i.e., several seconds. |
 | | Note that using small MTUs does not alter this; once TCP has discovered the amount of buffer space in front of the choke point, as long as it keeps transmitting constantly, modulo drops elsewhere, no matter what the MTU size is, the same amount of buffer space will be occupied. |
| www.merit.edu /mail.archives/nanog/1998-02/msg00238.html (395 words) |
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