5.3. Purging Stale PMTU Information

Internetwork topology is dynamic; routes change over time. While the local representation of a path may remain constant, the actual path(s) in use may change. Thus, PMTU information cached by a node can become stale.

If the stale PMTU value is too large, this will be discovered almost immediately once a large enough packet is sent on the path. No such mechanism exists for realizing that a stale PMTU value is too small, so an implementation should "age" cached values. When a PMTU value has not been decreased for a while (on the order of 10 minutes), it should probe to find if a larger PMTU is supported.

Note: an implementation should provide a means for changing the timeout duration, including setting it to "infinity". For example, nodes attached to a link with a large MTU that is then attached to the rest of the Internet via a link with a small MTU are never going to discover a new non-local PMTU, so they should not have to put up with dropped packets every 10 minutes.