There is a proposed standard for "jumbo frames" which many GigE products
support.  This allows frames of up to at least 9KB!!

On Wed, 8 Dec 1999, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 12:39:30PM -0400, David Maxwell wrote:
> > On Wed, Dec 08, 1999 at 10:52:54AM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> > > 
> > > Do we actually support GigE-sized frames yet?
> > 
> > Gig-E frames aren't bigger. They wouldn't be switchable to (fast)ethernet
> > if they were. They have a larger minimum size (to allow collision detection
> > at the higher speed), but some vendors skip that when used in full-duplex
> > configs. (Where there are no collisions to worry about)
> 
> I was somehow under the impression there was a larger maximum size, too.
> 
> At 1Gb/sec, switching or routing millions of 1.5K frames just to transfer
> one large file seems particularly idiotic.  Even most 100Mb/sec Ethernet
> cards can be configured to use FDDI-sized (4k) frames, though not all
> (few?) switches can cope with this...
> 
> 

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