Extended Packet Size for Future Video Dominated Network
Henry X. J. Wu, George Scheets · 2007
Current Ethernet networks were originally designed to carry data traffic. With the increasing demand for High Definition TV broadcasting, Video on Demand, and other video applications, the paradigm for network traffic might shift in the near future. The existing MTU of 1500 bytes for Ethernet might not be the most efficient for transporting video traffic that normally has big video frame sizes. An extended packet size will result in considerable savings on the packet overhead and has additional favorable efforts on network performance. In this paper, we probe the impact of adopting larger maximum packet sizes for video traffic. A mathematical model shows that at higher link utilization, larger packet sizes improve the queuing performance for MPEG2 video traffic after the link utilization reaches a certain level, and at lower utilization the queuing performance is actually very similar to that of smaller packets. OPNET simulations are used to validate the mathematical model.