Comments on: Linux Configure Jumbo Frames to Boost Network Performance / Throughput

By: pazdzioch

pazdzioch — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:03:50 +0000

FYI, some of the interfaces/chipsets do not support jumbo frames such as Intel’s 82573V.
ref:
http://ark.intel.com/products/26551/Intel-82573V-Gigabit-Ethernet-Controller

By: Justin Buser

Justin Buser — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:35:08 +0000

Actually that only works if your statically setting the IP/etc… for that interface. If you’re using dhcp you have to set the MTU after the card is configured otherwise it will be overwritten by whatever the dhcp server passes it. To get around this I setup mine up like this:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
post-up /sbin/ifconfig eth0 mtu 7000

By: insight

insight — Fri, 27 May 2011 09:07:08 +0000

THANK YOU!! You saved the whole point of this article, I was looking specifically for jumbo frames for ubuntu

By: Ender

Ender — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:07:53 +0000

Rafael, virgoptrex, maybe your driver is not supporting yet big MTUs. You can learn the driver you’re using with:
ethtool -i XXX

Example:

root@random# ethtool -i eth1
driver: igb
version: 2.1.1
firmware-version: 1.7-2
bus-info: 0000:05:00.1

By: Rafael

Rafael — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:32:56 +0000

Help me!!! :)
I try change my MTU to 9000, but a receive this error (SIOCSIFMTU: Argumento inválido) . however i can change to 7004.

My configuration:

[root@xrafa rafael]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet Endereço de HW 00:26:9E:21:F2:D3
inet end.: 10.10.10.106 Bcast:10.10.10.255 Masc:255.255.255.0
endereço inet6: fe80::226:9eff:fe21:f2d3/64 Escopo:Link
UP BROADCASTRUNNING MULTICAST MTU:7004 Métrica:1
RX packets:21212 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:15319 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
colisões:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:24128672 (23.0 MiB) TX bytes:2527859 (2.4 MiB)
IRQ:31 Endereço de E/S:0xa000

[root@xrafa rafael]# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 0
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: pumbg
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0×00000033 (51)
Link detected: yes
[root@xrafa rafael]# ifconfig eth0 mtu 9000
SIOCSIFMTU: Argumento inválido

Thanks.
Rafael

By: Erasmus Dam

Erasmus Dam — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:39:56 +0000

Sometimes it happens to be only a matter of mms, but it all depands on the module/driver rivision of your NIC. What version of the NDIS driver you said you are using? eradM@Pircher-spa.com

By: JeremyinNC

JeremyinNC — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 13:32:03 +0000

For the Fedora/RH/CentOS folks make sure there is an = in the line
MTU=9000

By: virgoptrex

virgoptrex — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 21:24:26 +0000

Can’t set mtu > 1500 on Ubuntu 9.10. This sucks! I am trying to find tweaks to fool OS but no luck yet. It works in windows very well > 9000kb jumbo size frames!

sudo ethtool eth0
gives

Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
1000baseT/Half 1000baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 1000Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: Twisted Pair
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x000000ff (255)
Link detected: no

By: Jay A

Jay A — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:32:19 +0000

Hi Vivek,

What is the downside for setting higher MTU?
How would I know the proper value for MTU for my server?
I am using rhel 4 AS (2.6.9-42) , BroadCom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet network Card and switch is 3Com® Baseline Switch 2948-SFP Plus.

Jay

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:21:39 +0000

Jeff,

Thanks for your reply. It’s strange how you have a gigabit card, yet your limit was only 100Mb/s. Perhaps you had another one, eth1? I know mine correctly has a max limit of 1000Mb/s, but somehow I couldn’t get it to work initially. I found out my card (Netgear GA311) had a max MTU of 7500, but setting that didn’t work. When I did a little bit more googling, I found out that someone who had the same card set the MTU to 7200. Once I did that, it worked for me. So I guess your initial theory was right in that the number was out of range of the max MTU.

By: jeffc

jeffc — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:23:18 +0000

Follow-on to my last but just got new information. Chris, open a term and do a ‘sudo ethtool eth0′ or whatever your actual device is. Amongst other useful information there was this (and yes I do have a gigabit ethernet card):
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s

Sorry if that came out dodgy but the thing to note is my driver only thinks I can do 100M and as such, I would assume it would be hard for the above command to work. Well, there is a new kernel out too so I might as well grab the drivers and make a party of it…

By: jeffc

jeffc — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:13:09 +0000

Chris; I just had the same thing happen on Hardy and a quick Google shows that we are not alone. It must be outside the range that our drivers/hw allow for this chipset, just taking a huge swag. I really need this to work too. FWIW:
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 104
model name : AMD Turion(tm) 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-60
nVidia MCP67 Ethernet
Linux jeff-laptop 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Jun 18 14:43:41 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Will get to the bottom of this since I just spent the previous weekend rewiring the house with cat6, upgraded all routers, etc….

Jeff

By: chris

chris — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:52:26 +0000

Thanks for the article. I have a second ethernet card that’s a gigabit card and I tried running ifconfig eth1 mtu 9000 and it gives me an error “SIOCSIFMTU: Invalid argument”. Any idea why this is happening? Also, modifying /etc/network/interfaces didn’t seem to help either.

By: patrick

patrick — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 19:06:12 +0000

Hi, nice article
just one (1) error; for debian/ubuntu in /etc/network/interfaces, it’s mtu 9000 (mtu(space)9000) *NOT* mtu=9000 (this is only for redhat linuxes)!