[c-nsp] TCP Throughput / MTU problem ? with Cisco 7304 and MPLS VPN's

Peter Rathlev peter at rathlev.dk
Fri Jan 11 19:15:23 EST 2008


On Fri, 2008-01-11 at 23:43 +0100, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Fri, 11 Jan 2008, Peter Rathlev wrote:
> > tried "mtu 1520" and "mpls mtu 1520" as stated in the document? OTOH it
> > should have complained if you configured an MPLS MTU larger that the
> > interface MTU.
> 
> It works just fine to have mpls mtu higher than interface MTU, in effect 
> these two do the same thing (with reservation that I might have forgotten 
> some protocol in example 1):
> 
> example 1:
> int gi0/0
> mtu 1546
> ip mtu 1500
> clns mtu 1500
> 
> example 2:
> int gi0/0
> mpls mtu 1546
> 
> All protocols inherit "mtu", if you do "mpls mtu" then only mpls will have 
> the higher mtu and all other protocols will inherit the default ethernet 
> 1500 mtu.

That's not how it works where I am. Adjusting "mpls mtu" does not change
interface or IP MTU. Adjusting interface MTU automatically changes the
IP MTU though (and MTU for other protocols). I could be wrong, but
that's what I've read, and that's the way our 7200s, 6500s and 7600s
work.

You can often use a higher "mpls mtu" with no problems, but that's not
always the case. It depends on the interface drivers. From 12.4(11)T and
on you cannot configure an MPLS MTU larger than the interface MTU,
except for Ethernet interfaces with a maximum MTU below 1580 bytes. (And
that's not guaranteed to work.)

Example of adjusting MTU with a 7206VXR NPE-G1 running 12.3(6), using
the on-board interfaces:

Router#show interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU 1500 bytes, BW 1000000 Kbit, DLY 10 usec, 
Router#show ip interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU is 1500 bytes
Router#configure terminal
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Router(config)#interface GigabitEthernet0/2
Router(config-if)#mpls mtu 1546
Router(config-if)#^Z
Router#show interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU 1500 bytes, BW 1000000 Kbit, DLY 10 usec, 
Router#show ip interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU is 1500 bytes
Router#configure terminal
Enter configuration commands, one per line.  End with CNTL/Z.
Router(config)#interface GigabitEthernet0/2
Router(config-if)#default mpls mtu
Router(config-if)#mtu 1546
Router(config-if)#^Z
Router#show interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU 1546 bytes, BW 1000000 Kbit, DLY 10 usec, 
Router#show ip interface GigabitEthernet0/2 | incl MTU
  MTU is 1546 bytes
Router#show version
Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software 
IOS (tm) 7200 Software (C7200-JS-M), Version 12.3(6), RELEASE SOFTWARE
(fc3)
Copyright (c) 1986-2004 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Wed 11-Feb-04 15:56 by kellythw
Image text-base: 0x60008AF4, data-base: 0x61FF4000

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 12.2(20030826:190624)
[BLD-npeg1_rommon_r11 102], DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE
BOOTLDR: 7200 Software (C7200-KBOOT-M), Version 12.2(15)B, EARLY
DEPLOYMENT RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

Router uptime is 1 year, 32 weeks, 13 hours, 1 minute
System returned to ROM by reload at 13:00:55 cet Thu Jun 1 2006
System restarted at 13:03:15 cet Thu Jun 1 2006
System image file is "disk2:c7200-js-mz.123-6.bin"
Last reload reason: Reload command


cisco 7206VXR (NPE-G1) processor (revision A) with 491520K/32768K bytes
of memory.
Processor board ID 31521866
SB-1 CPU at 700MHz, Implementation 1, Rev 0.2, 512KB L2 Cache
6 slot VXR midplane, Version 2.7

Last reset from power-on
Bridging software.
X.25 software, Version 3.0.0.
SuperLAT software (copyright 1990 by Meridian Technology Corp).
TN3270 Emulation software.

PCI bus mb1 has 0 bandwidth points
PCI bus mb2 has 0 bandwidth points

3 Gigabit Ethernet/IEEE 802.3 interface(s)
509K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.

62976K bytes of ATA PCMCIA card at slot 2 (Sector size 512 bytes).
16384K bytes of Flash internal SIMM (Sector size 256K).
Configuration register is 0x2102

Router#

Regards,
Peter




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