WISP cheat sheet for MPLS/VPLS MTU

A guide for working with MTU and MPLS in a Wireless ISP

MPLS/VPLS MTU math can be complicated and is always a struggle to unravel.

To make it a little easier and put it into a WISP context, I designed this cheat sheet on 8.5 x 11 (to print for those that actually trust printers) and used common WISP equipment like MikroTik routers, Ubnt and Cambium radios with real world MTU values.

The MTU values are displayed in layers to make it easier to see where each value fits.

PDF is here

A starting point

These values are meant to be a starting point by representing the minimum values required for MPLS/VPLS with a single 802.1q VLAN tag.

In general, after going through hundreds of WISP migrations, I’ve found it to be easier to implement the minimum values required when working on a production WISP to identify the effective lowest MTU in the network.

Once the network equipment has been modified and has been running in a stable way on the minimum values, then higher values can be considered and implemented (now that the effective lowest MTU on the network is documented)

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