3/07/2020

Arista EOS MTU Behavior (2) - L2 Switched Ports

Below is a quick lab using 7280CR which is Jericho-based system, 
  • Use EOS tool - Ethxmit on the generator to send packets
    • --ip-dst pointing to the destination address on the receiver device
    • --size specifies the packet size. Please the real ethernet packet size is this number minus 4 (I believe it is ethernet trailer). So 1504 means 1500-byte packet is received on sender ingress port
  • Run tcpdump + mirror on R3/receiver to check MTU behavior




Conclusion:
  • For switched traffic, no MTU enforcement, ingress nor egress
Some other observations:
  • For using ethxmit:
    • --size parameter for ethxmit includes the 4-byte CRC/ethernet trailer
    • If egress is access port, the ethernet frame size = L3 MTU + 18-byte including 14-byte ethernet header and 4-byte CRC. 
    • If egress port is trunk, ethernet frame size = L3 MTU + 22-byte including 14-byte ethernet, 4-byte vlan and 4-byte CRC
  • No matter the mtu size under L2 interfaces, the forwarding MTU is set to maximum value 10178 (even show interface says Ethernet MTU, but it is not actual ethernet frame size, but forwarding MTU before ethernet header). Look at the ip header total length value in tcpdump output. 
    • Trident-based system would use 9214. 
R2#sh int e47/1 | grep -i mtu
  Ethernet MTU 10178 bytes , BW 10000000 kbit
R2#sh run int e47/1
interface Ethernet47/1
   mtu 100
   switchport access vlan 100

No comments:

Post a Comment