Re: Do we need Jumbo Frames?

The new iMacs support jumbo frames. There was only one generation that didn't.
From the exchanged emails, I think the apple guys thought that segmentation offload was equivalent to jumbos. The idea is the OS hands the card large chunks and the card handles chopping them up and putting headers on them. To the OS, this delivers similar benefits.
The problem is that there's nothing like this on the receive side. So your poor imac must deal with tons of 1500 byte frames to play your video.
10Gb does have offloads like this (Receive Side Coalescing). We fully support this. So moving into 10Gb, jumbo frames may not matter so much (the irony being that 10Gb cards support jumbo frames anyhow).

Steve Modica
CTO, Small Tree Communications