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Date:      Sat, 11 May 2013 22:09:49 -0700
From:      Kevin Oberman <rkoberman@gmail.com>
To:        sthaug@nethelp.no
Cc:        jason@b0rken.org, freebsd-net@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: IPv6 tunnel MTU of 1480 not effective
Message-ID:  <CAN6yY1seGF8AP0%2BstgUaMUFBxvM9eAx5s1WgBLcpxE21pTFtTg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130509.110631.74720486.sthaug@nethelp.no>
References:  <518B5F51.8020804@b0rken.org> <20130509.110631.74720486.sthaug@nethelp.no>

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On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:06 AM, <sthaug@nethelp.no> wrote:

> > However I'm only able to send IPv6 packets from my host that fit an MTU
> > of 1280 even though I've set the tunnel interface and per-route MTU to
> > 1480, based on the "outer" ethernet connection having an MTU of 1500.
> > Hurricane Electric supports this and I've set the MTU to 1480 on their
> > side as well.
> >
> > This issue is evident when I try to send IPv6 pings larger than 1280
> > bytes to the remote tunnel peer.  The outgoing echo request is chopped
> > into two fragments, while the response comes back in one fragment, as
> > follows:
> >
> > % ping6 -c 1 -s 1432 2001:470:1f08:84f::1
> > PING6(1480=40+8+1432 bytes) 2001:470:1f09:84f::2 --> 2001:470:1f08:84f::1
> > 1440 bytes from 2001:470:1f08:84f::1, icmp_seq=0 hlim=64 time=1.514 ms
>
> This is a "feature" (i.e. it's documented). See the ping6 -m option:
>
> -m      By default, ping6 asks the kernel to fragment packets to fit into
>         the minimum IPv6 MTU.  The -m option will suppress the behavior
>         in the following two levels: when the option is specified once,
>         the behavior will be disabled for unicast packets.  When the
>         option is more than once, it will be disabled for both unicast
>         and multicast packets.
>
> In my opinion this behavior badly breaks POLA, and should be removed
> (i.e. the current -m behavior should be the default).
>
> I have no great hope in getting this changed, though...
>
> Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug@nethelp.no
> _
>
Thanks, Steiner.

I complained about this at least a couple of years ago and was told by the
developer (I don't recall exactly who any more) that it was right and would
not be changed. I really would love to see this reconsidered before IPv6
becomes much more popular as it will simply cause confusion, but I, too,
fear that it is a lost cause.

Please prove me wrong!
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
E-mail: rkoberman@gmail.com



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