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Should I enable a jumbo frame size of 9000 bytes for my NICs if I am running a gigabit network? Will it increase performance?

For this scenario: PC to router to PC, on a gigabit network.

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This is hard to say without knowing the details of your network. – Shinrai Oct 14 '11 at 20:43
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The deal is this: If everything on your network supports jumbo frames, than by all means, enable it and test. If your NICs are reasonable, and your cabling is without serious problems, you might see an increase in performance. How much? It depends on a lot of factors: how many computers, how good/fast is your switch, network traffic patters, etc. But generally not more than 10% percent in a typical home network or small office network environment.

Here are some testing results from boche.net:

Jumbo Frame Testing Results

Warning

If you have at least one device on your network that does not support jumbo frames (network printer, SIP phone, etc.) then you cannot use jumbo frames at all. Otherwise you won't be able to talk to that device.

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It can improve a good bit more depending on the nature of your traffic - a home network is unlikely to see better than 10% improvement due to usage pattern. – Ram Oct 15 '11 at 1:48
@Ram: True. I'll extend my answer a bit. – haimg Oct 15 '11 at 2:23
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I have a small ioMega NAS box that actually gets almost double the throughput using jumbo frames, but that's because the large frames allow more data transfer with lower CPU utilization (it has a low-end ARM-compatible cpu) – Chris Thompson Oct 15 '11 at 6:13
this mean enable it on the router too ? – Rushino Oct 17 '11 at 12:24
@Rushino: Yes of course. – haimg Oct 17 '11 at 12:55
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