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From: tcp-ip@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.tcp-ip
Subject: Fragmentation
Message-ID: <7810@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 01:33:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.7810
Posted: Wed Jun  5 01:33:13 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 08:02:43 EDT
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: "Benson I. Margulies" <Margulies@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA>

What will it take to define some protocol for establishing reasonable
segment lengths?  Comments that appear every month or so seem to cry out
for some IP/ICMP do-dah by which two hosts can get a good guess of the
fragmentation situation in between each other.

For a start, any TCP/IP where TCP can't ask for the hardware MTU of the
most likely routing to a given address should be taken out and shot.

After that, perhaps some sort of IP option could be added to which any
gateway involved would add its hardware MTU.  An exchange of these at
the beginning of a connection would improve the picture no end.