5.4. Packetization Layer Actions

A packetization layer (e.g., TCP) must use the PMTU for the path(s) in use by a connection; it should not send segments that would result in packets larger than the PMTU, except to probe during PMTU Discovery (this probe packet must not be fragmented to the PMTU). A simple implementation could ask the IP layer for this value each time it created a new segment, but this could be inefficient. An implementation typically caches other values derived from the PMTU. It may be simpler to receive asynchronous notification when the PMTU changes, so that these variables may be also updated.

A TCP implementation must also store the Maximum Segment Size (MSS) value received from its peer, which represents the EMTU_R, the largest packet that can be reassembled by the receiver, and must not send any segment larger than this MSS, regardless of the PMTU.

The value sent in the TCP MSS option is independent of the PMTU; it is determined by the receiver reassembly limit EMTU_R. This MSS option value is used by the other end of the connection, which may be using an unrelated PMTU value. See Section 5, "Packet Size Issues", and Section 8.3, "Maximum Upper-Layer Payload Size", of [RFC8200] for information on selecting a value for the TCP MSS option.

Reception of a Packet Too Big message implies that a packet was dropped by the node that sent the ICMPv6 message. A reliable upper-layer protocol will detect this loss by its own means, and recover it by its normal retransmission methods. The retransmission could result in delay, depending on the loss detection method used by the upper-layer protocol. If the Path MTU Discovery process requires several steps to find the PMTU of the full path, this could finally delay the retransmission by many round-trip times.

Alternatively, the retransmission could be done in immediate response to a notification that the Path MTU was decreased, but only for the specific connection specified by the Packet Too Big message. The packet size used in the retransmission should be no larger than the new PMTU.

Note: A packetization layer that determines a probe packet is lost needs to adapt the segment size of the retransmission. Using the reported size in the last Packet Too Big message, however, can lead to further losses as there might be smaller PMTU limits at the routers further along the path. This would lead to loss of all retransmitted segments and therefore cause unnecessary congestion as well as additional packets to be sent each time a new router announces a smaller MTU. Any packetization layer that uses retransmission is therefore also responsible for congestion control of its retransmissions [RFC8085].

A loss caused by a PMTU probe indicated by the reception of a Packet Too Big message must not be considered as a congestion notification, and hence the congestion window may not change.