meeting of IETF #41 by Amy Hughes <ahughes@isi.edu>, and in an upcoming
internet draft from Hughes, Touch, and Heidemann.
CWM eliminates line-rate bursts after idle periods by counting pending
(unacknowledged) packets and limiting the congestion window to the
initial congestion window plus the pending packet count. This has the
effect of allowing us to use the window as long as we continue to transmit,
but as soon as we stop transmitting, we go back to a slow-start (also known
as `use it or lose it').
This is not enabled by default. You can enable this behavior by patching
the "tcp_cwm" global (set it to non-zero) or by building a kernel with the
TCP_CWM option.
code, as clarified in the TCPIMPL WG meeting at IETF #41: If the SYN
(active open) or SYN,ACK (passive open) was retransmitted, the initial
congestion window for the first slow start of that connection must be
one segment.
RTO estimation changes. Under some circumstances it would return a value
of 0, while the old Van Jacobson RTO code would return a minimum of 3.
This would result in 12 retransmissions, each 1 second apart.
This takes care of those instances, and ensures that t_rttmin is
used everywhere as a lower bound.
in the packet. This fixes a bug that was resulting in extra packets
in retransmissions (the second packet would be 12 bytes long,
reflecting the RFC1323 timestamp option size).
- If we fail to allocate mbufs for the outgoing segment, free the header
and abort.
From Stevens:
- Ensure the persist timer is running if the send window reaches zero.
Part of the fix for kern/2335 (pete@daemon.net).
The sysctl'able variable "tcp_init_win", when set to 0, selects an
auto-tuning algorithm for selecting the initial window, based on transmit
segment size, per discussion in the IETF tcpimpl working group.
Default initial window is still 1 segment, but will soon become 2 segments,
per discussion in tcpimpl.
Basically, in silly window avoidance, don't use the raw MSS we advertised
to the peer. What we really want here is the _expected_ size of received
segments, so we need to account for the path MTU (eventually; right now,
the interface MTU for "local" addresses and loopback or tcp_mssdflt for
non-local addresses). Without this, silly window avoidance would never
kick in if we advertised a very large (e.g. ~64k) MSS to the peer.
- Don't overload t_maxseg. Previous behavior was to set it to the min
of the peer's advertised MSS, our advertised MSS, and tcp_mssdflt
(for non-local networks). This breaks PMTU discovery running on
either host. Instead, remember the MSS we advertise, and use it
as appropriate (in silly window avoidance).
- Per last bullet, split tcp_mss() into several functions for handling
MSS (ours and peer's), and performing various tasks when a connection
becomes ESTABLISHED.
- Introduce a new function, tcp_segsize(), which computes the max size
for every segment transmitted in tcp_output(). This will eventually
be used to hook in PMTU discovery.
thorpej