So basically do the modern routers in the internet still use 1500 as the MTU of Ethernet? or the 1500 Byte was for the old days?
What I'm asking here is what is the MTU of Ethernet in modern Networks?
and if it is 1500 bytes, what will happen if we for example use 15000 bytes instead and what will happen to the Internet if we force all the routers to use 15000 bytes instead?
Best Answer
Standard maximum payload size for Ethernet is still 1500 bytes.
While the maximum frame size has grown slightly, from 1518 to 1522 byte with 802.1Q and further with 802.1AD, the payload, "MAC client data" size, or Maximum Service Data Unit (MSDU) hasn't been changed as per IEEE standards for compatibility reasons - maintaining the payload size enables transparent switching within the whole range from 10 Mbit/s up to 400 Gbit/s.
In Ethernet, there is no concept for negotiating a frame size nor for fragmenting a frame oversized for forwarding nor for providing an error message to the sender, so the frame can only be dropped. Each node in a segment needs to use the same MTU.
However, "jumbo" frames exceeding this maximum have been popular for a while in closed, controlled networks. The network administrator has to make sure that all nodes on a network can handle the non-standard size before actually using that frame size. Very common is a payload size of 9000 bytes, six times the official size.
There are also "baby giant" implementations where a tunnel's outside MTU is increased somewhat to enable encapsulation of full-sized packets without eating into the inside MTU (or for similar reasons).
On the Internet the requirement is just a minimum link MTU of 68 bytes for IPv4 and 1280 bytes for IPv6. Note that while large parts of the Internet use Ethernet nowadays, not all do.
If you pass an IPv4 packet larger than 1500 bytes to your Internet router it should fragment it according to its uplink MTU. Without fragmentation, the next hop router will likely just drop the packet. For IPv6, there's no router fragmentation and path MTU discovery is mandatory, so your client should never send a packet exceeding the destination path's MTU.