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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/networking/scaling.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/networking/scaling.txt | 58 |
1 files changed, 58 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt b/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt index 579994afbe06..ca6977f5b2ed 100644 --- a/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt +++ b/Documentation/networking/scaling.txt @@ -163,6 +163,64 @@ and unnecessary. If there are fewer hardware queues than CPUs, then RPS might be beneficial if the rps_cpus for each queue are the ones that share the same memory domain as the interrupting CPU for that queue. +==== RPS Flow Limit + +RPS scales kernel receive processing across CPUs without introducing +reordering. The trade-off to sending all packets from the same flow +to the same CPU is CPU load imbalance if flows vary in packet rate. +In the extreme case a single flow dominates traffic. Especially on +common server workloads with many concurrent connections, such +behavior indicates a problem such as a misconfiguration or spoofed +source Denial of Service attack. + +Flow Limit is an optional RPS feature that prioritizes small flows +during CPU contention by dropping packets from large flows slightly +ahead of those from small flows. It is active only when an RPS or RFS +destination CPU approaches saturation. Once a CPU's input packet +queue exceeds half the maximum queue length (as set by sysctl +net.core.netdev_max_backlog), the kernel starts a per-flow packet +count over the last 256 packets. If a flow exceeds a set ratio (by +default, half) of these packets when a new packet arrives, then the +new packet is dropped. Packets from other flows are still only +dropped once the input packet queue reaches netdev_max_backlog. +No packets are dropped when the input packet queue length is below +the threshold, so flow limit does not sever connections outright: +even large flows maintain connectivity. + +== Interface + +Flow limit is compiled in by default (CONFIG_NET_FLOW_LIMIT), but not +turned on. It is implemented for each CPU independently (to avoid lock +and cache contention) and toggled per CPU by setting the relevant bit +in sysctl net.core.flow_limit_cpu_bitmap. It exposes the same CPU +bitmap interface as rps_cpus (see above) when called from procfs: + + /proc/sys/net/core/flow_limit_cpu_bitmap + +Per-flow rate is calculated by hashing each packet into a hashtable +bucket and incrementing a per-bucket counter. The hash function is +the same that selects a CPU in RPS, but as the number of buckets can +be much larger than the number of CPUs, flow limit has finer-grained +identification of large flows and fewer false positives. The default +table has 4096 buckets. This value can be modified through sysctl + + net.core.flow_limit_table_len + +The value is only consulted when a new table is allocated. Modifying +it does not update active tables. + +== Suggested Configuration + +Flow limit is useful on systems with many concurrent connections, +where a single connection taking up 50% of a CPU indicates a problem. +In such environments, enable the feature on all CPUs that handle +network rx interrupts (as set in /proc/irq/N/smp_affinity). + +The feature depends on the input packet queue length to exceed +the flow limit threshold (50%) + the flow history length (256). +Setting net.core.netdev_max_backlog to either 1000 or 10000 +performed well in experiments. + RFS: Receive Flow Steering ========================== |