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, 23 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp.c b/net/ipv4/tcp.c
index 4e42c03859f4..fdf74090a001 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/tcp.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/tcp.c
@@ -283,6 +283,8 @@
 
 int sysctl_tcp_fin_timeout __read_mostly = TCP_FIN_TIMEOUT;
 
+int sysctl_tcp_min_tso_segs __read_mostly = 2;
+
 struct percpu_counter tcp_orphan_count;
 EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(tcp_orphan_count);
 
@@ -785,12 +787,28 @@ static unsigned int tcp_xmit_size_goal(struct sock *sk, u32 mss_now,
 	xmit_size_goal = mss_now;
 
 	if (large_allowed && sk_can_gso(sk)) {
-		xmit_size_goal = ((sk->sk_gso_max_size - 1) -
-				  inet_csk(sk)->icsk_af_ops->net_header_len -
-				  inet_csk(sk)->icsk_ext_hdr_len -
-				  tp->tcp_header_len);
+		u32 gso_size, hlen;
+
+		/* Maybe we should/could use sk->sk_prot->max_header here ? */
+		hlen = inet_csk(sk)->icsk_af_ops->net_header_len +
+		       inet_csk(sk)->icsk_ext_hdr_len +
+		       tp->tcp_header_len;
+
+		/* Goal is to send at least one packet per ms,
+		 * not one big TSO packet every 100 ms.
+		 * This preserves ACK clocking and is consistent
+		 * with tcp_tso_should_defer() heuristic.
+		 */
+		gso_size = sk->sk_pacing_rate / (2 * MSEC_PER_SEC);
+		gso_size = max_t(u32, gso_size,
+				 sysctl_tcp_min_tso_segs * mss_now);
+
+		xmit_size_goal = min_t(u32, gso_size,
+				       sk->sk_gso_max_size - 1 - hlen);
 
-		/* TSQ : try to have two TSO segments in flight */
+		/* TSQ : try to have at least two segments in flight
+		 * (one in NIC TX ring, another in Qdisc)
+		 */
 		xmit_size_goal = min_t(u32, xmit_size_goal,
 				       sysctl_tcp_limit_output_bytes >> 1);