Network Performance Evaluation of Jumbo Frames on a Network

Abstract

Enhancing network performance has been studied by a number of researchers. The need to provide greater throughput on network infrastructure has been the key driver for these studies. The use of jumbo frames is considered one of the methodologies that can be employed to increase data throughput on networks. It can carry data payloads ranging from 1500Bytes to 9000Bytes which can be supported by Gigabit network hardware. In this research undertaking, a test-bed network is implemented on which jumbo frames are configured on two commonly used operating systems. Performance related metrics like throughput, jitter, delay and drop rates are empirically measured for both IPv4 and IPv6 implementations. The results obtained in this empirical study show that performance metrics values are different in various scenarios.