What is this?

Xtreme Gamer · May 22, 2015

In my ethernet connection settings, I see an option to enable ECMA and jumbo frame. What is it? What does it do?

gergarious · May 22, 2015

Jumbo frames are for sending larger packets of data over your network, but you do not want to enable this unless you're playing around with 10Gbps networking.

schizznick · May 22, 2015

Jumbo frames are for sending larger packets of data over your network, but you do not want to enable this unless you're playing around with 10Gbps networking.

You are partially correct, Jumbo frames allows you to put more data in packets. Most networks use an MTU of around 1500 bytes. So the Max Transmission Unit or largest packet you can send is 1500 bytes. Jumbo frames let's you go up to 9198 bytes. This means more data in less packets. This is more efficient and will get you faster speeds especially when transferring large amounts of data. Where gergarious was wrong is that it needs to be 10gbps to be an advantage. Even on gigabit it's worthwhile. However all of your equipment needs to support it. That means your switches, routers, etc, must support the size you choose. Most of the time for a home network the cost to enable it far outweighs the benefit.

Neil · May 23, 2015

You are partially correct, Jumbo frames allows you to put more data in packets. Most networks use an MTU of around 1500 bytes. So the Max Transmission Unit or largest packet you can send is 1500 bytes. Jumbo frames let's you go up to 9198 bytes. This means more data in less packets. This is more efficient and will get you faster speeds especially when transferring large amounts of data. Where gergarious was wrong is that it needs to be 10gbps to be an advantage. Even on gigabit it's worthwhile. However all of your equipment needs to support it. That means your switches, routers, etc, must support the size you choose. Most of the time for a home network the cost to enable it far outweighs the benefit.

Couldn't have said it better myself.