Implications of IPv6's Source-Only Fragmentation Rule
I find the changes in the fragmentation and reassembly process interesting. While many other changes in IPv6 represent a shift in responsibility for functions from host devices to routers, this one is the opposite. In IPv4, a source node can send a datagram of any size that its local link can handle, and let the routers take care of fragmenting it as needed. This seems like a sensible model; nodes communicate on a large, virtual network, and the details of splitting messages as needed for physical links are handled invisibly.
The problem with this is that it represents a performance drag on routing. It is much faster for a router to forward a datagram intact than to spend time fragmenting it. ...
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