baby giant

jargon

networking

A frame just slightly over the classic 1518-byte Ethernet maximum - grown by tags and labels, not by payload.

One 802.1Q VLAN tag makes 1522, QinQ makes 1526, a couple of MPLS labels push further. The payload is still a normal 1500 bytes; only the header grew. Switch platforms accept them by carrying frame headroom, which is why system MTUs read 9216 while the IP MTU stays put.

Also known as: baby giants, baby giant frames

All glossary entries