set maximum ip-packet-size ?

My provider currently has big router-problems. Today again all packages
>1480bytes are not routed. (I found out with ping -s xxx host and it
was the same problem last week. I'm sure they blame cisco again

So I really cant work, cause it seems that most of my ip-packages are
bigger than that. I can ssh-connect a remote host, I can echo the
hostname, but a 'ls -l' is too much already and the connection freezes.

Is there any way to tell my host that it should somehow only creater
small packages and tell its ip-partners to do the same? Would be useful
in my situation.

thnx,
peter


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Hi Peter,

> My provider currently has big router-problems. Today again all packages
> >1480bytes are not routed. (I found out with ping -s xxx host and it
> was the same problem last week. I'm sure they blame cisco again
>
> So I really cant work, cause it seems that most of my ip-packages are
> bigger than that. I can ssh-connect a remote host, I can echo the
> hostname, but a 'ls -l' is too much already and the connection freezes.
>
> Is there any way to tell my host that it should somehow only creater
> small packages and tell its ip-partners to do the same? Would be useful
> in my situation.

Assuming you are using some *nix OS......
when you type 'ifconfig' you get a list of all network devices
set up on your box. One of them is used to speek to the internet.

If it is an ethernet interface (like eth0, connected to a router or gateway),
the default MTU (maximum transfer unit) will most likely have the default
setting of 1500. You can use the ifconfig command to alter this setting
(for any network interface).

Make sure to have root privileges and then type

ifconfig eth0 mtu 1472 up

Replace eth0 with the appropriate device.
The number 1472 is the new desired MTU. You can play with it......

Ok, this will be lost, when you reboot. But it greatly depends on your
distro how to make these settinge permanent. You might want to look
at the network configuration files or the startup scripts themselves
to do this.....

HTH

Ralf