net: Consistent skb timestamping

With RPS inclusion, skb timestamping is not consistent in RX path.

If netif_receive_skb() is used, its deferred after RPS dispatch.

If netif_rx() is used, its done before RPS dispatch.

This can give strange tcpdump timestamps results.

I think timestamping should be done as soon as possible in the receive
path, to get meaningful values (ie timestamps taken at the time packet
was delivered by NIC driver to our stack), even if NAPI already can
defer timestamping a bit (RPS can help to reduce the gap)

Tom Herbert prefer to sample timestamps after RPS dispatch. In case
sampling is expensive (HPET/acpi_pm on x86), this makes sense.

Let admins switch from one mode to another, using a new
sysctl, /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_tstamp_prequeue

Its default value (1), means timestamps are taken as soon as possible,
before backlog queueing, giving accurate timestamps.

Setting a 0 value permits to sample timestamps when processing backlog,
after RPS dispatch, to lower the load of the pre-RPS cpu.

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/netdevice.h b/include/linux/netdevice.h
index 69022d47d6f2..c1b2341897c2 100644
--- a/include/linux/netdevice.h
+++ b/include/linux/netdevice.h
@@ -2100,6 +2100,7 @@ extern const struct net_device_stats *dev_get_stats(struct net_device *dev);
 extern void             dev_txq_stats_fold(const struct net_device *dev, struct net_device_stats *stats);
 
 extern int              netdev_max_backlog;
+extern int              netdev_tstamp_prequeue;
 extern int              weight_p;
 extern int              netdev_set_master(struct net_device *dev, struct net_device *master);
 extern int skb_checksum_help(struct sk_buff *skb);