When we talk about networking, sometimes we’ll talk about Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) packet sizing. I briefly referred to MTUs in the SSL errors, and how to diagnose them post.
Why should you care? Well if you want a fast internet connection, you should.
Think of the MTU as a 4 pint jug. Your 4 pint jug can ever only hold 4 pints. But say you are trying to fill it from an 8 pint (gallon) bucket. You need two jugs. This, in networking, we call packet fragmentation. Packet fragmentation was the root cause of the issue in the SSL errors post.
Packet fragmentation is bad. To stretch the bucket example, you’d need to make two trips as your 4 pint is too small. It’s faster to make one trip.
So how do you set the maximum MTU for your network connection?
(Note: if you are running Windows Vista or Windows 7, you should not need to. But if you want/need to, there is a handy guide here.)
Well there are two ways to adjust your MTU.
The hard way – MTU Ping Test
We do a series of ping tests using the ping command like this:
ping www.google.com -f -l xxxx,
where Continue reading
