Maximum Transmission Unit

networking (MTU) The largest number of bytes of "payload"

data a frame can carry, not counting the frame's header

and trailer.

A frame is a single unit of transportation on the data linklayer. It consists of header data plus data which was passed

down from the network layer (e.g. an IP datagram) plus

sometimes trailer data.

An Ethernet (V2) frame has a MTU of 1500 bytes but the size of

the frame can be up to 1526 bytes (22 byte header, 4 byte CRC

trailer).

See also fragmentation.

(2000-10-07)