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Average IP Packet Size | Slaptijack

18th March 2010 By 6 Comments

My rule of thumb for average size of packets on the Internet is 576 bytes. I can’t exactly remember where I got that number from and have always wanted some confirmation that it is a reasonable estimate for the average packet size. And Slaptijack has some good raw data:

Average IP Packet Size | Slaptijack:

In this case, gentlemen, size matters.

Yesterday, I calculated the average packet size for one of the networks I work on using data from 263986M (263,986,000,000+) packets.

Average packet size for that sample was 557 bytes.”

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About Greg Ferro

Greg Ferro is a Network Engineer/Architect, mostly focussed on Data Centre, Security Infrastructure, and recently Virtualization. He has over 20 years in IT, in wide range of employers working as a freelance consultant including Finance, Service Providers and Online Companies. He is CCIE#6920 and has a few ideas about the world, but not enough to really count.

He is a host on the Packet Pushers Podcast, blogger at EtherealMind.com and on Twitter @etherealmind and Google Plus

  • http://www.ipexpert.com/ Marko Milivojevic

    If I recall well, 576 bytes is the byte size that “any network media should be able to transmit”. I think that’s where you got your number :-)

    Btw. average packet size is meaningless. You have to look at the distribution of packet sizes. If you do that, you will notice that 2/3 are either just above 64 bytes (ACK) or very close to 1500 (payload). The rest will spread almost evenly between these two values, with majority being very close to 1000.

    On averages: Put your feet in the oven and your head in the freezer. Averagely speaking, you’re fine.

    • http://blog.olorin.co.uk Dan Hughes

      >Put your feet in the oven and your head in the freezer. Averagely speak ing, youíre fine.

      I love that!

  • http://packetlife.net/ stretch

    Looks like the “Internet MTU” of 576 dates back to RFC 879: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc879

    I understand the Internet MTU for IPv6 is 1280.

    • http://www.ipexpert.com/ Marko Milivojevic

      That’s the one I was trying to remember. Memory failed me. Thanks Stretch!

  • Dmitri Kalintsev

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