[TBD]Understanding segmentation offload in Linux

Introduction

Laymen explanation

If you have worked on docker container, you will be aware of network isolation between containers. It means that containers can have its own logical network. Docker in host machine handles routing among this. So, packet will travel from various interfaces within the same host machine.

In this case, do you want your packet should be smaller or bigger? Definitely, a bigger packet will help in networking speed. But packet size is dependent of interface Maximum transmit capacity. So, it can't be increased just like that. Consider the case where a packet needs to go out of machine and the next hop can't handle this big size packet.

This document helps in this regard.

Technical explanation