How to configure a large mtu (linux)
- by Somejan
I have a gigabit ethernet connection from my laptop to my router, and a working ipv6 connection to the internet. I can receive very large packets from sites on the internet, with sizes up to at least 10000 bytes (according to wireshark). (edit: turns out to be linux's 'generic receive offload') However, when trying to send anything, my local computer fragments at just below 1500 bytes for ipv6. (On ipv4, I can send tcp packets to the internet of at least 1514 bytes, I can ping with packets up to the configured mtu of 6128 but they are blackholed.)
I'm on ubuntu 12.04. I have configured an mtu for my eth0 of 6128 (the maximum it accepts), both using ip link set dev eth0 mtu 6128 and in the NetworkManager applet gui, and restarted the connection. ip link show eth0 shows the 6128 mtu is indeed set. ip -6 route shows that none of the paths the kernel knows about have an mtu set. I can ping over ipv4 with packets up to 6128 bytes (though I don't get responses), but when I do ping6 myrouter -c3 -s1500 -Mdo I get error replies from my own computer saying that the packets are too large and the mtu is 1480. I have confirmed with Wireshark that nothing is put on the wire, and the replies are indeed generated by my own computer.
So, how do I get my computer to use the larger mtu?
