Effect of MRU setting on EX Switch

MRU (Maximum Receive Unit) has a close relation to MTU but as far as I can see it has
different effects in various active devices.
For example setting an MTU value of 1000 on an Ethernet interface of a Linux machine or an
SRX box doesnt prevent the larger packet from being accepted. However if the very same
interface tries to return a similar size packet then it has to be fragmented. However on EX switch
I saw something else. Let me explain;
root@ex2200-1>
show interfaces ge-0/0/8
Physical interface: ge-0/0/8, Ena
Interface index: 138, SNMP ifIn

root@ex2200-1> show interfaces ge-0/0/8

1
Physical interface: ge-0/0/8, Enabled, Physical link is Down
2
Interface index: 138, SNMP ifIndex: 520
3
Link-level type: Ethernet, MTU: <strong>900</strong>, Speed: Auto, Duplex: Auto, BPDU
4
Error: None, MAC-REWRITE Error: None, Loopback: Disabled, Source filtering: Disabled,
5
Flow control: Enabled, Auto-negotiation: Enabled, Remote fault: Online
6
Device flags : Present Running Down
7
Interface flags: Hardware-Down SNMP-Traps Internal: 0x4000
8
Link flags : None
9
CoS queues : 8 supported, 8 maximum usable queues
10
Current address: a8:d0:e5:b3:99:cb, Hardware address: a8:d0:e5:b3:99:cb
11
Last flapped : 2012-12-26 14:04:45 CET (00:03:06 ago)
12
Input rate : 0 bps (0 pps)
13
Output rate : 0 bps (0 pps)
14
Active alarms : LINK
15
Active defects : LINK
16
Interface transmit statistics: Disabled
17
18
Logical interface ge-0/0/8.0 (Index 87) (SNMP ifIndex 523)
19
Flags: Device-Down SNMP-Traps 0x4000 Encapsulation: ENET2
20
Input packets : 1
21
Output packets: 16
22
Protocol eth-switch
23
Flags: None
I connected two PCs to my ex2200 test switchs ge-0/0/8 and 9 port and assigned to the same
vlan. Then I pinged from the PC connected to the port 8 to PC on 9. port with size 1000bytes and
it worked. Then I set the interface MTU of port 8 to 900bytes and checked the MRU value.

% lcdd_cmd -f fpc0 -d chassism

chassism<0>#show mac ge-0/0
MAC Layer Information
devNum:0, portNum:9

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8
9
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26

% lcdd_cmd -f fpc0 -d chassism -c "show mac ge-0/0/8"

chassism<0>#show mac ge-0/0/8
MAC Layer Information
devNum:0, portNum:9
MAC Control Reg0: 0x00008719 Port Enable YES
Port Type SGMII
<strong>MRU
908</strong>
MAC Control Reg1: 0x00000481
MAC Control Reg2: 0x0000c009 InBand Autoneg Mode SGMII
MAC Control Reg3: 0x00000300 Combo Mode 0
Auto-Neg Config Reg:0x0000b1f4 Link Config DONT FORCE LINK UP
DONT FORCE LINK DOWN
Duplex
ENABLE AN
Speed
ENABLE AN
Flow Control DISABLE AN
ENABLE FC
Pause Adv DISABLE
Bypass
DISABLE
InBand AN ENABLE
MAC Status Reg0: 0x0000e802 InBand Autoneg Bypass NOT ACTIVATED
AnDone DONE
Duplex HALF
Speed 1000
Link DOWN
MAC Status Reg1: 0x00000000
As it can be seen MRU is 908 since Junos adds 8 bytes to calculate this value. After this setting I
again tried to send a ping with 1000 size but no success. Here is the point because it is a switch
and also it is MRU but not MTU your sender wont get notified by any ICMP message even if
you have PMTU discovery is turned on. You can literally beat the air if you have a small MRU
setting on the switch this is my humble opinion:)