tcp: fix cwnd limited checking to improve congestion control

Yuchung discovered tcp_is_cwnd_limited() was returning false in
slow start phase even if the application filled the socket write queue.

All congestion modules take into account tcp_is_cwnd_limited()
before increasing cwnd, so this behavior limits slow start from
probing the bandwidth at full speed.

The problem is that even if write queue is full (aka we are _not_
application limited), cwnd can be under utilized if TSO should auto
defer or TCP Small queues decided to hold packets.

So the in_flight can be kept to smaller value, and we can get to the
point tcp_is_cwnd_limited() returns false.

With TCP Small Queues and FQ/pacing, this issue is more visible.

We fix this by having tcp_cwnd_validate(), which is supposed to track
such things, take into account unsent_segs, the number of segs that we
are not sending at the moment due to TSO or TSQ, but intend to send
real soon. Then when we are cwnd-limited, remember this fact while we
are processing the window of ACKs that comes back.

For example, suppose we have a brand new connection with cwnd=10; we
are in slow start, and we send a flight of 9 packets. By the time we
have received ACKs for all 9 packets we want our cwnd to be 18.
We implement this by setting tp->lsnd_pending to 9, and
considering ourselves to be cwnd-limited while cwnd is less than
twice tp->lsnd_pending (2*9 -> 18).

This makes tcp_is_cwnd_limited() more understandable, by removing
the GSO/TSO kludge, that tried to work around the issue.

Note the in_flight parameter can be removed in a followup cleanup
patch.

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 20 deletions

diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_cong.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_cong.c
index 2b9464c93b88..a93b41ba05ff 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/tcp_cong.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/tcp_cong.c
@@ -276,26 +276,6 @@ int tcp_set_congestion_control(struct sock *sk, const char *name)
         return err;
 }
 
-/* RFC2861 Check whether we are limited by application or congestion window
- * This is the inverse of cwnd check in tcp_tso_should_defer
- */
-bool tcp_is_cwnd_limited(const struct sock *sk, u32 in_flight)
-{
-        const struct tcp_sock *tp = tcp_sk(sk);
-        u32 left;
-
-        if (in_flight >= tp->snd_cwnd)
-                return true;
-
-        left = tp->snd_cwnd - in_flight;
-        if (sk_can_gso(sk) &&
-            left * sysctl_tcp_tso_win_divisor < tp->snd_cwnd &&
-            left < tp->xmit_size_goal_segs)
-                return true;
-        return left <= tcp_max_tso_deferred_mss(tp);
-}
-EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(tcp_is_cwnd_limited);
-
 /* Slow start is used when congestion window is no greater than the slow start
  * threshold. We base on RFC2581 and also handle stretch ACKs properly.
  * We do not implement RFC3465 Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) per se but