MTU Troubleshooting on Cisco IOS

Hello Maheshwaran

If you are seeing dropped frames as well as pause frames on an interface, the problem that you are facing is probably not an issue with MTU. It sounds more like congestion.

Specifically, the pause frames seem to indicate congestion. Pause frames are a type of Ethernet control frame used in full-duplex Ethernet networks. They are sent by a network device to temporarily stop the transmission of data from another device. The primary purpose of these frames is to manage network congestion and avoid packet loss.

If you are seeing many pause frames along with dropped frames in the show interface counters, then I would start troubleshooting congestion issues.

If you’re still concerned about the MTU, I suggest you try using the ping command with a sweep range of sizes to see if there is an MTU issue. You can find out more about how to do that at this NetworkLessons note on the topic.

If it’s not the MTU, start investigating your traffic patterns, especially at the interface in question. Is it consistently at utilization of close to 100%? Check that out and let us know your results so that we can help you further.

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz