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, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/tcp.h b/include/linux/tcp.h
index 239946868142..4e37c71ecd74 100644
--- a/include/linux/tcp.h
+++ b/include/linux/tcp.h
@@ -230,6 +230,7 @@ struct tcp_sock {
 	u32	snd_cwnd_clamp; /* Do not allow snd_cwnd to grow above this */
 	u32	snd_cwnd_used;
 	u32	snd_cwnd_stamp;
+	u32	lsnd_pending;	/* packets inflight or unsent since last xmit */
 	u32	prior_cwnd;	/* Congestion window at start of Recovery. */
 	u32	prr_delivered;	/* Number of newly delivered packets to
 				 * receiver in Recovery. */