sudhir.akondi

 Profile Answers by sudhir.akondi 

• Jun 10th, 2008

 

 I guess you are referring to IP Fragementation.

 Every interface has a Maximum transmit capacity based on it's buffer and internal device
structure. This is denoted by something known as 'Maximum Transfer Unit (MTU)'. This
is denoted in bytes, of the packet sent by network layer. Now, if the size of the packet
sent by the network layer happens to be more than the MTU, the device fragments the
packet into smaller sized packets, so as to fit within the MTU of the interface.

 Fragmentation is achieved using the Fragment Offset field and the Flag fields of the IP
header. You can refer to any book on IP for further read regarding this.