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Fragmentation by the IP layer is very unreliable in today's internet. I've seen plenty of consumer routers that throw away the whole datagram if a fragment arri
by r1ch 8y ago
Fragmentation by the IP layer is very unreliable in today's internet. I've seen plenty of consumer routers that throw away the whole datagram if a fragment arrives out-of-order, and who knows what kind of hell corporate middleboxes and other similar systems do to them. Pretty much every protocol these days goes to great lengths to avoid upper level fragmentation.
- jchb 8y agoIPv6 helps in that it mandates a MTU of at least 1280 bytes. In addition, in IPv6 only source nodes can break a packet into fragments - intermediary nodes such as firewalls and routers cannot. Sending back a ICMPv6 Packet Too Big for packets larger than the MTU is a must, which helps with path MTU discovery.