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Glossary

Technology evolves at a rapid-fire pace. That’s why we’ve built an easy-to-use glossary to help you better understand the terms, technologies and trends that impact your business.

Giants

Giants are frames that are longer than the maximum Ethernet size (giant frames > 1518/1522 bytes with bad FCS, whereas oversize frames > 1518/1522 bytes with good FCS). Giant packets usually occur when you have a jabbering node on your network; i.e., a node that is continuously transmitting, or transmitting improperly for short bursts—probably due to a bad transmitter on the NIC. Giants can also be caused by packets being corrupted as they are transmitted, either by the addition of garbage signals, or by the corruption of the bits that indicate frame size.