Large Internet Packet, Packet Burst Protocol and Sliding Window

Alex Yu, Ph.D., CNE


In Novell Netware there are two features, namely Large Internet Packet (LIP) and Packet Burst Protocol (PBP), for improving network performanace. In the former data are packed into a larger packet size during transferring. In the latter multiple packets can be sent before the sender receives an acknowledgement from the receiver.

However, these two are not unique Novell features. Actually LIP and PBP have been in Microsoft products before Novell implement them into Netware. NetBEUI and TCP/IP automatically assign the best packet size by detecting the capabilities of both sender and receiver. This is similar to what LIP does.

In addition, Microsoft TCP/IP use Sliding Window, which is essentially the same thing as PBP. Each TCP/IP host has a send windows and a receive window that can carry a fixed amount of packet. These buffers are called sliding windows because packets can slide along to make room for more incoming packets. The default TCP sliding window size for Ethernet hosts is 8760 bytes and for Token Ring and FDDI, 16 kilobytes.

However, some NT experts warn that packet bursts is inefficient and may lead to congestion or bottlenecks at some routers.


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