tcp: early retransmit

This patch implements RFC 5827 early retransmit (ER) for TCP.
It reduces DUPACK threshold (dupthresh) if outstanding packets are
less than 4 to recover losses by fast recovery instead of timeout.

While the algorithm is simple, small but frequent network reordering
makes this feature dangerous: the connection repeatedly enter
false recovery and degrade performance. Therefore we implement
a mitigation suggested in the appendix of the RFC that delays
entering fast recovery by a small interval, i.e., RTT/4. Currently
ER is conservative and is disabled for the rest of the connection
after the first reordering event. A large scale web server
experiment on the performance impact of ER is summarized in
section 6 of the paper "Proportional Rate Reduction for TCP”,
IMC 2011. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2011/docs/p155.pdf

Note that Linux has a similar feature called THIN_DUPACK. The
differences are THIN_DUPACK do not mitigate reorderings and is only
used after slow start. Currently ER is disabled if THIN_DUPACK is
enabled. I would be happy to merge THIN_DUPACK feature with ER if
people think it's a good idea.

ER is enabled by sysctl_tcp_early_retrans:
  0: Disables ER

  1: Reduce dupthresh to packets_out - 1 when outstanding packets < 4.

  2: (Default) reduce dupthresh like mode 1. In addition, delay
     entering fast recovery by RTT/4.

Note: mode 2 is implemented in the third part of this patch series.

Signed-off-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, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
index 33417f84e07f..ef32956ed655 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
@@ -27,6 +27,7 @@
 #include <net/tcp_memcontrol.h>
 
 static int zero;
+static int two = 2;
 static int tcp_retr1_max = 255;
 static int ip_local_port_range_min[] = { 1, 1 };
 static int ip_local_port_range_max[] = { 65535, 65535 };
@@ -677,6 +678,15 @@ static struct ctl_table ipv4_table[] = {
                 .proc_handler   = proc_dointvec
         },
         {
+                .procname       = "tcp_early_retrans",
+                .data           = &sysctl_tcp_early_retrans,
+                .maxlen         = sizeof(int),
+                .mode           = 0644,
+                .proc_handler   = proc_dointvec_minmax,
+                .extra1         = &zero,
+                .extra2         = &two,
+        },
+        {
                 .procname       = "udp_mem",
                 .data           = &sysctl_udp_mem,
                 .maxlen         = sizeof(sysctl_udp_mem),