Jumbo Frame Clean Networking Gear

This page lists gigabit networking gear that is jumbo frame (MTU>=9000 bytes) clean, and gigabit networking gear that has been investigated and found NOT to be jumbo frame clean.

Corrections or additions may be sent to joe@oregon.uoregon.edu

16110 MTU Ethernet

• Intel Pro 1000 Ethernet Adapters

  See, for example: Linux

"16KB" MTU

• Syba Gigabit PCI Adapter
  "Jumbo frame support up to 16KB"

14336 MTU Ethernet

• Greg Maxwell mentioned that "JetCore based chassis systems (the current BigIron/NetIron/FastIron 400/800/etc products) support 14,336 byte jumbos: and "The BigIron MG8 (the dense 10gigabit chassis) supports 14,336 byte jumbos.

10240 MTU Ethernet

• Cisco 7600 Layer 3 Ethernet Interfaces (gigabit and 10 gigabit ports only as of release 12.1(8a)EX, all LAN ports as of 12.1(8b)EX2)

• Select Netgear switches running suitable firmware, including:
  • Netgear GS748T Smart Switch (Firmware 1.3x or later)
  • Netgear GS116 Unmanaged Switch (Serial number prefix 140)

10194 MTU Ethernet

• Jesse Becker notes that "The Dell 5324 switches support jumbo frames. The documentation claims 9,000 bytes; using ping and other programs (netpipe), I was able to send 10194 byte packets through. Packets of larger size, however, appear to be silently dropped. So even though the e1000 driver can handle packets larger than 10194, there's no point, since the switch can't handle them."

9600 MTU Ethernet

• D-Link DGS-108
  http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=449&rid=1721&sec=1

• D-Link DGS-105
  http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=448&rid=1717&sec=1

• S2IO Neterion

9500 MTU Ethernet

• Selected Netgear Switches running suitable firmware, including:
  • Netgear GS716T (Firmware 1.1.0_0330 or later)
  • Netgear GS724Tv2 (Firmware 1.0.0 or later)
  • Netgear GS748T beta firmware

9252 MTU Ethernet

• Force10 (per private communication from the Force10 Technical Marketing folks)

9234 MTU (9216+18 bytes of ethernet header/trailer) Ethernet

• Cisco Catalyst 6000s See also: Cisco Catalyst 6000 Series Switches Configuring Jumbo/Giant Frame Support on Catalyst Switches which specifically states:

  "The Catalyst 6000 series and 7600 Optical Services Router (OSR) platform can support jumbo frame sizes as of release 6.1(1) of CatOS, and 12.1(1)E for Native IOS. However, this is dependent on the type of line cards that are used. There are generally no restrictions in enabling the jumbo frame size feature. [* * *] The default MTU size is 9216 bytes once jumbo frame support has been enabled on the individual port. However, on the following 10/100-based line cards, an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) limitation requires that the MTU size be limited to 8092 bytes. Specifically, the line cards that are affected are as follows:

  WS-X6248-RJ-45
  WS-X6248A-RJ-45
  WS-X6248-TEL
  WS-X6248A-TEL
  WS-X6348-RJ-45
  WS-X6348-RJ-45V
  WS-X6348-RJ-21

  The WS-X6516-GE-TX is also affected at 100 Mbps. At 10/1000 Mbps, up to 9216 bytes can be supported. Note, however, that the WS-X6548-RJ-45 line card is not affected, as it uses newer ASICs.

  Note: Jumbo Frame support is available on WS-X6101 ATM modules.

9220 MTU (including 4 bytes for a VLAN tag)

• HP Procure Series 6400cl and Series 5300xl Switches and Series 3400cl Switches (see Manual pp. 13-15, pdf page 287)

9216 MTU (9198+18 bytes of ethernet header/trailer) Ethernet

• Antares Ethernet Adapters for Solaris 7/8/9 on supported hardware, and for Linux (Kernal 2.2 or higher; see also Installation Guide (with info on recompiling the Linux driver and/or tweaking the Solaris /etc/system file))

• Cisco Catalyst 8500 Series (running software revision 12.1(7)EY and hardware revision 6.0, using two port enhanced gigabit ethernet modules C85EGE-2X-16K, C85EGE-2X-64K, or C85EGE-2X-256K [or ATM Router Module 2 (C8540-ARM2) -- it supports MTUs through 17976 bytes)

• Cisco Catalyst 5000 Series Switches with the following exceptions:
  "On 10/100 UTP-based line cards, the maximum frame size supported is only 8092 bytes due to an ASIC limitation."

  "The nine-port Gigabit Ethernet line card (WS-X5410) does not support the jumbo frame feature due to an ASIC limitation."

  "Jumbo frame support is currently not available on ATM modules for the Catalyst 5500 series switches."

• Cisco Catalyst 4000/4500 Switches with Supervisor III or Supervisor IV running IOS 12.1(13)EW or later
  Note that document specifically mentions: "Jumbo frames are supported only on non-blocking Gigabit ports. The following is a list of Gigabit modules and their specific ports supporting jumbo frames:

  both Supervisor uplink ports on Supervisor III (WS-X4013) and Supervisor IV (WS-X4014)
  WS-X4306-GB
  WS-X4232-GB-RJ (ports 1-2 only)
  WS-X4418-GB (ports 1-2 only)
  WS-X4412-2GB-TX (ports 13-14 only)"

• Select Netgear Switches running suitable firmware, including:
  • Netgear GSM7212 Managed Switch (Firmware 3.x or later)
  • Netgear GSM7224 Managed Switch (Firmware 3.x or later)
  • Netgear GSM7248 Managed Switch (Firmware 4.x or later)
  • Netgear GSM7312 Managed Switch (Firmware 3.x or later)
  • Netgear GSM7324 Managed Switch (Firmware 3.x or later)
  • Netgear FSM7326P Managed Switch (Firmware 3.x or later)
  • Netgear GS105 Unmanaged Switch (Serial Number prefix 126)
  • Netgear GS108 Unmanaged Switch (Serial Number prefix 127)

• Sun Gigabit Ethernet cards (with suitable drives and ndd setttings)
  111883-23 - Solaris 8
  112817-16 - Solaris 9
  112327-17 - Solaris 6 and 7 X-option

9192 MTU Ethernet

• Juniper M5-M10 Gigabit PICs (one port only)

• Juniper M20 Gigabit PICs (one port only)

• Juniper M40e Gigabit PICs (one or two port only)

• Juniper M160 10-Gigabit PIC

• Juniper M160 Gigabit PICs (one or two port only)

• Juniper T320 10-Gigabit PIC

• Juniper T320 Gigabit PICs

• Juniper T640 10-Gigabit PIC

• Juniper T640 Gigabit PICs

• Procket
  While Procket's web site doesn't specifically mention supporting jumbo frames, information received from Procket's development engineering folks via Scott Hardin, Sr. Systems Engineer at Procket, indicates that:
  "Max MTU for POS is 9188 and for Gige it is 9178. This is L2 payload so it does not include L2 Header and Trailer.

  POS does have a 4 byte header so 9192 should be OK if that includes the header. Gige has a 14 byte header so 9178 + 14 = 9192.

  We have not heard of any interop issues with Juniper on Max MTU, so when Juniper states that 9192 is their max MTU, they are referring to payload + header whereas we only specify the payload."

9180 MTU Ethernet

• Extreme Summit 5i Switches
  Note: be sure to consider annual service/support costs in evaluating this (or other Extreme Network jumbo capable switches.

• Nortel Alteon 180 Switches

• Syskonnect D0102 Ethernet Adapter

• Syskonnect SK-98XX Ethernet Adapters [See also: Syskonnect driver information and Test Results]

9166+18=9194

Sten Spans reports that the Powerconnect 5224 will use MTUs as high as 9166+18=9194 bytes, although this is not documented in the manual.

9014 MTU Ethernet

Nicholas Prefontaine reports that the "3Com 3C940 adaptor (onboard the Asus P4P800 Deluxe) supports jumbo frames 9014 bytes in size, but it defaults to 1514. It must be set in the driver."

9004

• Greg Maxwell mentioned that the Foundry FES-12GCF (a stackable 12 port gige switch) supports jumbos up to 9004 bytes.

9000 MTU Ethernet

• D-Link DGS-1008D
  http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=230&rid=741&sec=1

• D-Link DGS-1005D
  http://www.dlink.com/products/resource.asp?pid=229&rid=738&sec=1

• Martin Kuhne mentioned "Broadcom BCM5703 (64-bit) (3Com 3C996B-T ($65), Dell PowerEdge integrated BCM570x NIC, Compaq NC7770) 9k, verified working"

• Cisco Catalyst 3750 Series Switches
  Simon Leinen of Switch notes that the Cisco datasheet says, "Configurable maximum transmission unit (MTU) of up to 9000 bytes, with a maximum Ethernet frame size of 9018 Bytes (Jumbo frames) for bridging on Gigabit Ethernet ports, and up to 1546 bytes for bridging and routing on Fast Ethernet ports."

• Dell PowerConnect 2716 and 2724
  "Jumbo frame support up to 9000 Bytes (2716 & 2724 only)."
• Dell PowerConnect 5212
  "Supports jumbo frames up to 9000 bytes"

• D-Link DGE-550T 1000BaseT Adapter
  Caution: if you contact support@dlink.com, you may get added to sales related mailing lists without your permission.

• DEC/Compaq/HP Alphaservers and OpenVMS

• Juniper M5-M10 Fast Ethernet PICs (4 port only)

• Juniper M20 Fast Ethernet PICs (4 port only)

• SMC 8505T/8508T (excllent inexpensive (<$200, yes, sub two HUNDRED dollars) 1000baseT switch if you don't need SNMP management and can live with an external "wall wart" power block)
  "Jumbo packet of up to 9K supported"

  John Matthews reports that "I tested the SMC 8505T and 8508T switches and in my opinion they are not jumbo frame clean. If more than one 9000 byte jumbo frame is passing through the switch fabric at the same time, the packet is lost. [...] The lower the frame sizes get, the less packet loss. I believe I had to drop the packet size to between 5000 and 7000 bytes before I stopped seeing packet loss."

I went through all the ethernet driver code in the Linux 2.4 kernel.

The following drivers support 9000 MTU packets:
    tg3       Broadcom gigabit
    e1000     Intel gigabit
    acenic    Alteon AceNIC, 3Com 3c985, 3Com 3c985B, Netgear GA620,
              HP, SGI, DEC.

    amd8111e  Claims support, but only 8K
    d12k      (DLink) Claims support, but only 8000

Everything else in the stock kernel is 1500.  The tc902x
driver used by the Antares cards isn't in the stock kernel.
The drivers which work can also do VLANs at 9000 MTU for
the encapsulated packets.

For people looking for a GbE card for Linux the "Intel Pro/1000
Server MT" is currently the best choice of the popular cards.
The e1000 driver fully supports the hardware features, including
interrupt combining and large send offload.

People using Broadcom cards have a hard time of it.  The
manufacturer's bcm5700 driver doesn't work well with the
kernel.  The tg3 driver doesn't work well with the card.
Things are improving, but large send offload, etc are
still some time away.