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    Jumbo frame problem with ESXi 5.5 and vmxnet3 driver

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Virtualization
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    • I
      ivanhoek
      last edited by

      Well, new quirk.. If I try to set lower values on the GUI, the actually take properly.

      So if I set the MTU to be 2000, it works.
      If I set it to be 8000, it works.
      If I set it to be 8999, it works.

      However, if I set it to be 9000, it won't take and the previous value is preserved.

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      • I
        ivanhoek
        last edited by

        Well, nevermind that.. if I reboot then the MTU for the route goes back to 1500, yet the interface is set to 8000 (for example).

        I give up. There's clearly something wrong, but I can't figure out what or how to fix it permanently.

        I'll try again on a future release.

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        • johnpozJ
          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
          last edited by

          before you were not even using vmx interface you were on em

          interface: em1

          So that would explain why no jumbo_mtu listed for the interface.

          I have not had to reboot anything to get this working.  You running 32 or 64 bit pfsense?

          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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          • I
            ivanhoek
            last edited by

            It's 64 bit Pfsense. What could explain the behavior I saw where only the 9000 value for MTU won't take? Any other value works.. at least until I reboot, and then it doesn't.

            In all cases the MTU is set on the interface, but the routes are not flagged with the appropriate MTU when it's set to 9000 or after rebooting if set to another value.

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            • C
              cmb
              last edited by

              I think there are multiple issues at play here. FreeBSD 8.3 has issues in not updating the MTU on routes in jumbo frame scenarios at times, potentially both for the link routes and any associated static routes. Scripting a "route change x.x.x.x/x -mtu 9000" at boot time for all required routes is a suitable workaround where you encounter that and the NIC driver properly handles jumbo frames. vmxnet on 8.3 just doesn't work with jumbo frames from what I've seen. Similar for Broadcom NICs, though those are very reliable and well-performing NICs, in 8.3 they don't work with jumbo frames (an oddity of the hardware that wasn't properly accommodated in the driver at that time, it's since been fixed). These issues have all already been confirmed fixed in FreeBSD 10 and hence 2.2.

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              • johnpozJ
                johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                last edited by

                "vmxnet on 8.3 just doesn't work with jumbo frames"

                Looks to be working to me - what driver did you test with?  I don't really see a need for jumbo in my home network.  It would just complicate the connections and not all devices support them.  I could always segment out even more and put my non jumbo on their own segment, etc.  Seems kind of pointless for what I am doing.

                As you can see from thread I was able to ping at the full mtu - but be happy to do some other testing to validate its working.

                An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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