diff --git a/sys/dev/re/if_re.c b/sys/dev/re/if_re.c
index a4527a623f92..d81e4d664437 100644
--- a/sys/dev/re/if_re.c
+++ b/sys/dev/re/if_re.c
@@ -2171,7 +2171,7 @@ re_encap(sc, m_head)
 	 * offload is enabled, we always manually pad short frames out
 	 * to the minimum ethernet frame size.
 	 */
-	if ((*m_head)->m_pkthdr.len < RL_MIN_FRAMELEN &&
+	if ((*m_head)->m_pkthdr.len < RL_IP4CSUMTX_PADLEN &&
 	    ((*m_head)->m_pkthdr.csum_flags & CSUM_IP) != 0) {
 		padlen = RL_MIN_FRAMELEN - (*m_head)->m_pkthdr.len;
 		if (M_WRITABLE(*m_head) == 0) {
diff --git a/sys/pci/if_rlreg.h b/sys/pci/if_rlreg.h
index 7e866891d14a..5038666551c0 100644
--- a/sys/pci/if_rlreg.h
+++ b/sys/pci/if_rlreg.h
@@ -497,6 +497,12 @@
 
 #define RL_ETHER_ALIGN	2
 
+/*
+ * re(4) hardware ip4csum-tx could be mangled with 28 bytes or less IP packets.
+ */
+#define	RL_IP4CSUMTX_MINLEN	28
+#define	RL_IP4CSUMTX_PADLEN	(ETHER_HDR_LEN + RL_IP4CSUMTX_MINLEN)
+
 struct rl_chain_data {
 	uint16_t		cur_rx;
 	uint8_t			*rl_rx_buf;