 | Copyright © 2008, Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademark Notice. | |
As a datagram is routed through different networks, it may be necessary for the IP module in a gateway to divide the datagram into smaller pieces. A datagram received from one network may be too large to be transmitted in a single packet on a different network. This condition occurs only when a gateway interconnects dissimilar physical networks.
Each type of network has a maximum transmission unit (MTU) that determines the largest packet it can transfer. If the datagram received from one network is longer than the other network’s MTU, it is necessary to divide the datagram into smaller fragments for transmission in a process called fragmentation. See Fragmentation.
| Copyright © 2008, Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. Trademark Notice. | |