An educational organization recently deployed an anchored WLAN and has a high number of client...

In an anchored WLAN deployment, client traffic is encapsulated within CAPWAP mobility tunnels between the foreign WLC (where the AP joins) and the anchor WLC (in the DMZ or designated network segment). This tunneling adds encapsulation overhead — CAPWAP/mobility tunnel headers consume a portion of the available MTU on the transport path. When video streaming clients generate large TCP segments, these segments may exceed the effective MTU of the mobility tunnel path, causing IP fragmentation at the WLC or along the path to the anchor. Fragmentation significantly degrades throughput and increases CPU overhead for high-volume video traffic. The correct solution is TCP MSS Clamping — reducing the Maximum Segment Size value advertised in TCP SYN packets so that TCP endpoints negotiate a segment size remaining below the fragmentation threshold. The Cisco 9800 WLC supports TCP MSS adjustment, which intercepts TCP handshake packets and rewrites the MSS option to a value accounting for CAPWAP tunnel overhead. Setting matching MTUs (Option A) does not prevent fragmentation if the effective tunnel MTU is lower than the client segment size. Increasing the MTU (Option B) is often constrained by physical infrastructure. Setting the DF bit (Option D) would cause packets to be dropped rather than fragmented. Reference: WLSD Study Guide — Anchored WLAN Design, CAPWAP Mobility Tunnel MTU, TCP MSS Clamping.