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Date:      Wed, 20 Mar 1996 12:14:40 -0800
From:      David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
To:        Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
Cc:        nate@sri.MT.net (Nate Williams), freebsd-isp@freefall.freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Microsoft "Get ISDN"? 
Message-ID:  <199603202014.MAA03338@Root.COM>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 20 Mar 1996 12:19:40 CST." <199603201819.MAA29896@brasil.moneng.mei.com> 

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>> > I am curious, why do you use SLIP for your dedicated connections?
>> 
>> I don't speak for Joe, but I use SLIP (w/VJ compression) whenever
>> possible since it uses less overhead and I seem to have lower latency
>> and higher throughput than using both user-mode and kernel-mode PPP on
>> FreeBSD boxes.
>
>I don't have anything to say about higher throughput since in my experience
>it's only a mild difference, but the latency issue is mainly due to ppp's
>default 1500 mtu.  Lowering that (I know one fella who uses 296) will help
>latency issues quite a bit.  With 1500, you only get two or three packets
>per second through the link if somebody is running a large transfer of some
>sort.
>
>Most sites which run dedicated connections will have multiple people using
>the link simultaneously, so the lower mtu gives the impression of faster
>response.  This hurts overall throughput mildly, buuuuut there's always a
>tradeoff to be made.
>
>fyi: SLIP uses a 552 mtu.

   While this is true when using traditional modems, it is far less true when
using modern modems with data compression. The modems themselves buffer a
potentially large amount of data (1Kb or more of compressed data), and this
will often make small MTUs perform worse in all respects because of the higher
packet overhead. I know this through direct experimentation with different MTU
values on several different 28.8K modems and the results of that are how I
came up with the 552 value that we are currently using in FreeBSD.

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project



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