What is MTU?

What is MTU?

MTU is the abbreviation of Maximum Transmission Unit, and its unit is byte. It is used to inform the other party of the maximum size of the data service unit that can be accepted, indicating that the sender can accept the payload size, which is the maximum length of a packet or frame. In our commonly used Ethernet, the MTU is generally 1500, and the default wireless router is generally 1492.

When Should You Change the MTU?
The MTU size is considered to be one of the first steps in your troubleshooting you find that your Internet connection speed isn’t as fast as you would expect, or if you experience other performance-related issues.
Thankfully, this process is both quick and easy to perform; no additional hardware or software is needed. You can perform the testing and make the necessary changes with just a computer and your router.
The larger the MTU size is, the more data that can fit into fewer packets. This generally results in a faster and more efficient transmission of data across your network.
On the other hand, if an error occurs, the packet will take longer to re-transmit. Also, more data within fewer packets can result in the packets being bloated.
Larger packets are more likely to suffer from delays and even corruption. A greater MTU size can also increase latency, whereas setting it to a smaller number can help improve the overall latency.
Therefore, you should change the MTU size to be the maximum it can be without any detrimental effects. It may take a few tries to find the best size, but is worth the time investment to help optimize the performance of your network.

Why does the MTU size affect the network speed?

Why does the MTU size affect the network speed? Here is a brief explanation.
In Win system, the default MTU size is 1500. Assuming that we want to transmit 3000 bytes of data now, we only need to split it into 2 packets.
If it is a wireless access method and its MTU size is 1492, the 3000-byte data needs to be divided into 3 data packets for transmission. Since the number of data packets has increased, and the unpacking and grouping of packets requires additional time, it is not surprising that the network speed has slowed down.

How to Find the Best MTU Size？

First of all, we must understand what is the best MTU size
1) When the local MTU size> the network MTU size, the network will unpack. This will increase the number of data packets and also increase the time for unpacking and grouping;
2) When the local MTU size <the network MTU size, although it can be directly transmitted, it does not fully utilize the performance of the network and does not give full play to the maximum transmission capacity;
Therefore, to set the most appropriate local MTU size is to make the local MTU size = the network MTU size.

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