The Ethernet Frame Payload Size and Its Effect on IPv4 and IPv6 Traffic

The IPv4 traffic characteristics are deeply related to the 1500 byte limit, a consequence of the payload capacity of the Ethernet frame. This paper describes how this limit may impact future IPv6 traffic and tests some aspects of traffic behavior for new values. To assess this, real IPv4 traffic was transformed to IPv6 traffic, with several simple assumptions. It is showed that in some circumstances, the change from IPv4 to IPv6 causes an overhead in terms of number of transmitted bytes that is irrelevant when compared to the overhead of the number of transmitted packets. Conclusions point to the possible existence of increased routing and switching effort resulting from the shift to the IPv6 protocol. The paper also suggests that a wider limit could decrease significantly the number of generated packets.