Packet Fragmentation
In the network layer, there are often certain limits imposed on the maximum packet size. This limit is called the MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit). When you need to send packets larger than the MTU, these packets need to be split up into smaller ones. This is called fragmentation. There are two ways to fragment packets.
- Non-Transparent Fragmentation: Router splits up packages and the end-host reassembles
- Transparent Fragmentation: Router sends a message to the sending server to split packets up into smaller ones. The process of the router telling the server to split up packets is called MTU Discovery.