The clock precision (100s of ppm) of the NIC oscillators on either side of a network connection gives a physical upper limit on the Ethernet packet size. The space between the packets lets the slower side "catch up". See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpacket_gap for more info.
We could use more precise oscillators to have longer packets but at a more expensive cost.
The previously mentioned issue is that to never buffer packets in a reclocking repeater on a link, you _need_ the incoming packet rate to never be higher than the rate at which you can send them back out, or else you'd fill up/buffer.
If your repeaters are actually switches, this manifests as whether you occasionally drop packets on a full link with uncongested switching fabric. Think two switches with a 10G port and 8 1G ports each used to compress 8 long cables into one (say, via vlan-tagging based on which of the 8 ports).
Ethernet specs the IPG as a fixed number of bits, but it could easily be proportional to the size of the previous packet.