tcp: TSO packets automatic sizing

After hearing many people over past years complaining against TSO being
bursty or even buggy, we are proud to present automatic sizing of TSO
packets.

One part of the problem is that tcp_tso_should_defer() uses an heuristic
relying on upcoming ACKS instead of a timer, but more generally, having
big TSO packets makes little sense for low rates, as it tends to create
micro bursts on the network, and general consensus is to reduce the
buffering amount.

This patch introduces a per socket sk_pacing_rate, that approximates
the current sending rate, and allows us to size the TSO packets so
that we try to send one packet every ms.

This field could be set by other transports.

Patch has no impact for high speed flows, where having large TSO packets
makes sense to reach line rate.

For other flows, this helps better packet scheduling and ACK clocking.

This patch increases performance of TCP flows in lossy environments.

A new sysctl (tcp_min_tso_segs) is added, to specify the
minimal size of a TSO packet (default being 2).

A follow-up patch will provide a new packet scheduler (FQ), using
sk_pacing_rate as an input to perform optional per flow pacing.

This explains why we chose to set sk_pacing_rate to twice the current
rate, allowing 'slow start' ramp up.

sk_pacing_rate = 2 * cwnd * mss / srtt

v2: Neal Cardwell reported a suspect deferring of last two segments on
initial write of 10 MSS, I had to change tcp_tso_should_defer() to take
into account tp->xmit_size_goal_segs

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Cc: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
Cc: Van Jacobson <vanj@google.com>
Cc: Tom Herbert <therbert@google.com>
Acked-by: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
Acked-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/net/tcp.h b/include/net/tcp.h
index dd5e16f66f84..6a6a88db462d 100644
--- a/include/net/tcp.h
+++ b/include/net/tcp.h
@@ -281,6 +281,7 @@ extern int sysctl_tcp_early_retrans;
 extern int sysctl_tcp_limit_output_bytes;
 extern int sysctl_tcp_challenge_ack_limit;
 extern unsigned int sysctl_tcp_notsent_lowat;
+extern int sysctl_tcp_min_tso_segs;
 
 extern atomic_long_t tcp_memory_allocated;
 extern struct percpu_counter tcp_sockets_allocated;