Broken packets: IP fragmentation is flawed
As opposed to the public telephone network, the internet has a Packet Switched design. But just how big can these packets be?
CC BY 2.0 image by ajmexico, inspired by
This is an old question and the IPv4 RFCs answer it pretty clearly. The idea was to split the problem into two separate concerns:
What is the maximum packet size that can be handled by operating systems on both ends?
What is the maximum permitted datagram size that can be safely pushed through the physical connections between the hosts?
When a packet is too big for a physical link, an intermediate router might chop it into multiple smaller datagrams in order to make it fit. This process is called "forward" IP fragmentation and the smaller datagrams are called IP fragments1.
Image by Geoff Huston, reproduced with permission
The IPv4 specification defines the minimal requirements. From the RFC791:
Every internet destination must be able to receive a datagram
of 576 octets either in one piece or in fragments to
be reassembled. [...]
Every internet module must be able to forward a datagram of 68
octets without further fragmentation. [...]
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