Re: How many bytes should a CRC-32 protect?

Matt Mathis <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.ietf.pilc
Message-ID <[email protected]>
The standard answer is 12KB, but I believe that this statement is based on an
engineering requirement that the maximum allowed probability that the CRC fails
to detect a corrupted packet is below some threshold.  (I would greatly
appreciate it if somebody can provide a specific reference for this
calculation.)

The logic behind the calculation seems to be flawed in the following way: If
you have a large quantity of data to move (say a Peta Byte, 1e+15 Bytes) then
the total undetected error rate is independent of the packet size across a huge
range of sizes.   This is because changes in per-packet exposure to undetected
errors are exactly offset by the change in the number of packets.

For example if I send 1e+15 bytes over a link that has a raw error rate of 
1E-12 then I compute:

Using 1000 byte packets:
 Raw bit error rate: 1.0e-12
 Per packet error rate: 1.0e-09
 Undetected packet errors: 2.5e-19
 Packets per data set: 1.0e+12
 Total undetected errors per data set: 2.5e-07

Using 10000000 byte packets:
 Raw bit error rate: 1.0e-12
 Per packet error rate: 1.0e-05
 Undetected packet errors: 2.5e-15
 Packets per data set: 1.0e+08
 Total undetected errors per data set: 2.5e-07


You can find some of my musing about the Internet cell size at
 http://www.psc.edu/~mathis/MTU/

Comments and feedback appreciated,
--MM--

On Mon, 6 May 2002, Dr G Fairhurst wrote:

> 
> I was asked by someone how big a frame size can a CRC-32 reasonably protect?
> 
> One of my students came across:
> 
> http://sd.wareonearth.com/~phil/jumbo.html
> 
> which seems to suggest that the CRC-32 is good for 10-12KB or so of
> data, and that
> this could be one reason why we don't see many subnetworks supporting
> MTUs > 12KB.
> 
> Is there more wisdom out there on the use of CRCs over large subnetwork PDUs?
> - perhaps the ATM or gigEthernet people have thought this one through?
> 
> 
> Gorry Fairhurst.
> 

-- 
--MM--
----------------------------------------------
Matt Mathis <[email protected]>    W:412.268.3319
http://www.psc.edu/~mathis      H:412.654.7529
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