Maximum transmission unit and it’s role in a network
The term MTU refers to the Maximum Transmission Unit. It is the biggest size frame or packet which is indicated in octets or eight-bit bytes that can be sent or transmitted in a frame-based or packet-based network like the internet. The TCP or the Transmission Control Protocol of the internet uses the MTU to verify the maximum size of every packet in any transmission or broadcast.
If the MTU size is too large, this could mean retransmissions in case the packet runs into a router that can’t handle that size of a packet. On the other hand, if the size of the MTU is very small, this means more acknowledgments and more header overhead have to be handled and transmitted.
Majority of the operating systems provide a default value for the MTU that is appropriate for most users. In Microsoft Windows 95, the default MTU value was 1500 octets. This is because 1500 is the standard Ethernet MTU. The internet de facto standard MTU is set to 576. But Internet Service Providers frequently suggest using 1500.
The minimum value that can be set to an MTU is 68.