Re: "Fragmentation considered harmful"

mogul (Jeffrey Mogul) Thu, 01 February 1990 00:03 UTC

Received: by acetes.pa.dec.com (5.54.5/4.7.34) id AA29947; Wed, 31 Jan 90 16:03:29 PST
From: mogul (Jeffrey Mogul)
Message-Id: <9002010003.AA29947@acetes.pa.dec.com>
Date: 31 Jan 1990 1603-PST (Wednesday)
To: James M Galvin <galvin@TIS.COM>
Cc: MTU Discovery <mtudwg>
Subject: Re: "Fragmentation considered harmful"
In-Reply-To: James M Galvin <galvin@TIS.COM> / Wed, 31 Jan 90 08:33:43 -0500. <25177.633792823@tis.com>

    That is one interpretation.  Another is to realize my network may be
    "private", and I do not wish to explicitly tell you anything about it,
    including its MTU size, regardless of level.
    
    Now I realize that given sufficient trials something like the MTU could
    probably be "learned", which is why I said "explicitly" above.  However, I
    could also make the learning process hard by going out of my way to confuse
    you.

I find it hard to believe ("incredible" in the dictionary sense) that
anyone would allow me to route packets through their network but not
let me know what their MTU is.  Even less likely is that they would
expend resources (their own, as well as mine) to make it hard for me
to find out.

-Jeff