What Is The Minimum Ethernet Frame Size That Will Not Be Discarded By The Receiver As A Runt Frame?

What Is The Minimum Ethernet Frame Size That Will Not Be Discarded By The Receiver As A Runt Frame?

The Minimum Ethernet Frame size that will not be discarded by the receiver as a runt frame is 64 bytes. Today, let us discuss the ethernet frame format and its use. The Ethernet frames are decided in terms of their length. But how can we measure this length?. These are measured in the terms of bytes.

Now, let us discuss the size of the ethernet frame. The below figure represents the ethernet frame. It consists of premeable, destination mac address, source mac address, its type, frame check sequence, and the data. The premeable has 8 bytes, the destination address has 6 bytes, the source address has 6 bytes, the type has 2 bytes, the data has 46-1500 bytes and at last the frame check sequence has 4 bytes. This represents that it has 64 bytes to 1518 bytes for the entire frame.

The header and the trailer that will be used for the encapsulation are included in it. Let us take an example to understand this ethernet format in detail. Let us consider two computers PC1 and PC2. The PC1 wishes to send a frame with a size that is much less than the minimum size of 64 bytes. The PC2 which is at a far distance has a possibility that PC1 will send the last bit of this frame.

If the PC2 employs CSMA and listens to the traffic, during this time it will grant that the link is available for use. If it doesn’t receive any part of the frame sent by the PC1 and hence it will not detect an ongoing transmission. If it proceeds to transmit its own frame, this may cause a collision. Any frame with a length that is much less than the 64 bytes, we call it a runt frame.

Now, let us know what is actually a late collision. If PC1 and PC2 transmit the data at the same time with the entire frame that is placed on the link, and if no collision occurs then we can call it a successful transmission. Even if the collisions have occurred, they do not retransmit the data since it cannot detect the collision that occurred during the transmission. It only assumes that the destination device has received the correct information.

Now, let us discuss each part of the ethernet frame in detail. As we discussed earlier, an ethernet frame has seven parts

• The first part is premeable, it is a piece of 64-bit header information, it tells the receiving node that where the frame is going to start.
• The second part is the destination mac address, it is followed by the sender’s mac address
• Another part is the type that tells the basic type of the data either it is IPv4 or it is IPv6.
• Another part is the data field, it is the payload that is carried by the frame, the payload of the Ethernet frame refers to the IP packet.

The last one is the frame check sequence, it is mainly used for error checking and for the verification of the frame.