Most of the description that follows comes from my mail to
netdev (some editing done):

Main obstacle to FRTO use is its deployment as it has to be on
the sender side where as wireless link is often the receiver's
access link. Take initiative on behalf of unlucky receivers and
enable it by default in future Linux TCP senders. Also IETF
seems to interested in advancing FRTO from experimental [1].

How does FRTO help?
===================

FRTO detects spurious RTOs and avoids a number of unnecessary
retransmissions and a couple of other problems that can arise
due to incorrect guess made at RTO (i.e., that segments were
lost when they actually got delayed which is likely to occur
e.g. in wireless environments with link-layer retransmission).
Though FRTO cannot prevent the first (potentially unnecessary)
retransmission at RTO, I suspect that it won't cost that much
even if you have to pay for each bit (won't be that high
percentage out of all packets after all :-)). However, usually
when you have a spurious RTO, not only the first segment
unnecessarily retransmitted but the *whole window*. It goes like
this: all cumulative ACKs got delayed due to in-order delivery,
then TCP will actually send 1.5*original cwnd worth of data in
the RTO's slow-start when the delayed ACKs arrive (basically the
original cwnd worth of it unnecessarily). In case one is
interested in minimizing unnecessary retransmissions e.g. due to
cost, those rexmissions must never see daylight. Besides, in the
worst case the generated burst overloads the bottleneck buffers
which is likely to significantly delay the further progress of
the flow. In case of ll rexmissions, ACK compression often
occurs at the same time making the burst very "sharp edged" (in
that case TCP often loses most of the segments above high_seq
=> very bad performance too). When FRTO is enabled, those
unnecessary retransmissions are fully avoided except for the
first segment and the cwnd behavior after detected spurious RTO
is determined by the response (one can tune that by sysctl).

Basic version (non-SACK enhanced one), FRTO can fail to detect
spurious RTO as spurious and falls back to conservative
behavior. ACK lossage is much less significant than reordering,
usually the FRTO can detect spurious RTO if at least 2
cumulative ACKs from original window are preserved (excluding
the ACK that advances to high_seq). With SACK-enhanced version,
the detection is quite robust.

FRTO should remove the need to set a high lower bound for the
RTO estimator due to delay spikes that occur relatively common
in some environments (esp. in wireless/cellular ones).

[1] http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tcpm/current/msg02862.htmlSigned-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Basically this change enables it, previously other undo_marker
users were left with nothing. Reverse undo_marker logic
completely to get it set right in CA_Loss. On the other hand,
when spurious RTO is detected, clear it. Clearing might be too
heavy for some scenarios but seems safe enough starting point
for now and shouldn't have much effect except in majority of
cases (if in any).

By adding a new FLAG_ we avoid looping through write_queue when
RTO occurs.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Implements following cleanups:
- Comment re-placement (CodingStyle)
- tcp_tso_acked() local (wrapper-like) variable removal
  (readability)
- __-types removed (IMHO they make local variables jumpy looking
  and just was space)
- acked -> flag (naming conventions elsewhere in TCP code)
- linebreak adjustments (readability)
- nested if()s combined (reduced indentation)
- clarifying newlines added
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

The accounting code is pretty much the same, so it's a shame
we do it in two places.

I'm not too sure if added fully_acked check in MTU probing is
really what we want perhaps the added end_seq could be used in
the after() comparison.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

In addition, fix its function comment spacing.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>

Substraction for fackets_out is unconditional when snd_una
advances, thus there's no need to do it inside the loop. Just
make sure correct bounds are honored.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

In DSACK case, some events are not extraordinary, such as packet
duplication generated DSACK. They can arrive easily below
snd_una when undo_marker is not set (TCP being in CA_Open),
counting such DSACKs amoung SACK discards will likely just
mislead if they occur in some scenario when there are other
problems as well. Similarly, excessively delayed packets could
cause "normal" DSACKs. Therefore, separate counters are
allocated for DSACK events.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

SACK processing code has been a sort of russian roulette as no
validation of SACK blocks is previously attempted. Besides, it
is not very clear what all kinds of broken SACK blocks really
mean (e.g., one that has start and end sequence numbers
reversed). So now close the roulette once and for all.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Only thing that tiny function does is rearming the RTO (if
necessary), name it accordingly.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Makes caller side more obvious, there's no need to have
a wrapper for this oneliner!
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Previously code had IsReno/IsFack defined as macros that were
local to tcp_input.c though sack_ok field has user elsewhere too
for the same purpose. This changes them to static inlines as
preferred according the current coding style and unifies the
access to sack_ok across multiple files. Magic bitops of sack_ok
for FACK and DSACK are also abstracted to functions with
appropriate names.

Note:
- One sack_ok = 1 remains but that's self explanary, i.e., it
  enables sack
- Couple of !IsReno cases are changed to tcp_is_sack
- There were no users for IsDSack => I dropped it
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Previously TCP had a transitional state during which reno
counted segments that are already below the current window into
sacked_out, which is now prevented. In addition, re-try now
the unconditional S+L skb catching.

This approach conservatively calls just remove_sack and leaves
reset_sack() calls alone. The best solution to the whole problem
would be to first calculate the new sacked_out fully (this patch
does not move reno_sack_reset calls from original sites and thus
does not implement this). However, that would require very
invasive change to fastretrans_alert (perhaps even slicing it to
two halves). Alternatively, all callers of tcp_packets_in_flight
(i.e., users that depend on sacked_out) should be postponed
until the new sacked_out has been calculated but it isn't any
simpler alternative.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

This happens rather infrequently and is only possible during
FRTO. We must not allow TCP to slip to Open state because
tcp_fastretrans_alert might then not be called on it's time
when FRTO has exited. This become a problem when left_out
got removed and was replaced by just sacked_out.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

tcp_verify_left_out is useful for verifying S+L condition, so
add it back to couple of places in where the code was not
calling to tcp_sync_left_out but used own ad-hoc solution
(before the tcp_sync_left_out got removed).
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Left_out was dropped a while ago, thus leaving verifying
consistency of the "left out" as only task for the function in
question. Thus make it's name more appropriate.

In addition, it is intentionally converted to #define instead
of static inline because the location of the invariant failure
is the most important thing to have if this ever triggers. I
think it would have been helpful e.g. in this case where the
location of the failure point had to be based on some quesswork:
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/2/464
...Luckily the guesswork seems to have proved to be correct.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

tp->left_out got removed but nothing came to replace it back
then (users just did addition by themselves), so add function
for users now.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

It is easily calculable when needed and user are not that many
after all.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

No other users exist for tcp_ecn.h. Very few things remain in
tcp.h, for most TCP ECN functions callers reside within a
single .c file and can be placed there.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

F-RTO does not touch SACKED_ACKED bits at all, so there is no
need to recount them in tcp_enter_frto_loss. After removal of
the else branch, nested ifs can be combined.

This must also reset sacked_out when SACK is not in use as TCP
could have received some duplicate ACKs prior RTO. To achieve
that in a sane manner, tcp_reset_reno_sack was re-placed by the
previous patch.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Stupid error from my side. Even though now that I noticed this,
I hoped it would have been an optimization but no, the counter
hint is then incorrect. Thus clearing is necessary for now (I
still suspect though that this path is never executed).
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

It is guaranteed to be valid only when !tp->sacked_out. In most
cases this seqno is available in the last ACK but there is no
guarantee for that. The new fast recovery loss marking algorithm
needs this as entry point.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

When only GSO skb was partially ACKed, no hints are reset,
therefore fastpath_cnt_hint must be tweaked too or else it can
corrupt fackets_out. The corruption to occur, one must have
non-trivial ACK/SACK sequence, so this bug is not very often
that harmful. There's a fackets_out state reset in TCP because
fackets_out is known to be inaccurate and that fixes the issue
eventually anyway.

In case there was also at least one skb that got fully ACKed,
the fastpath_skb_hint is set to NULL which causes a recount for
fastpath_cnt_hint (the old value won't be accessed anymore),
thus it can safely be decremented without additional checking.

Reported by Cedric Le Goater <clg@fr.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Reported by Rick Jones.
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Cell phone networks do link layer retransmissions and other
things that cause unnecessary timeout retransmits.  So allow
the minimum RTO to be inflated per-route to deal with this.
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

People often get tripped up by this function and think that
it does not implemented the prescribed algorithms from
RFC2414 and RFC3390, even though it does.

So add a comment to head off such misunderstandings in the
future.
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

In case a DSACK is received, it's better to lower cwnd as it's
a sign of data receival.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

tcp_cwnd_down must check for it too as it should be conservative
in case of collapse stuff and also when receiver is trying to
lie (though that wouldn't be very successful/useful anyway).

Note:
- Separated also is_dupack and do_lost in fast_retransalert
	* Much cleaner look-and-feel now
	* This time it really fixes cumulative ACK with many new
	  SACK blocks recovery entry (I claimed this fixes with
	  last patch but it wasn't). TCP will now call
	  tcp_update_scoreboard regardless of is_dupack when
	  in recovery as long as there is enough fackets_out.
- Introduce FLAG_SND_UNA_ADVANCED
	* Some prior_snd_una arguments are unnecessary after it
- Added helper FLAG_ANY_PROGRESS to avoid long FLAG...|FLAG...
  constructs
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

It's possible that new SACK blocks that should trigger new LOST
markings arrive with new data (which previously made is_dupack
false). In addition, I think this fixes a case where we get
a cumulative ACK with enough SACK blocks to trigger the fast
recovery (is_dupack would be false there too).

I'm not completely pleased with this solution because readability
of the code is somewhat questionable as 'is_dupack' in SACK case
is no longer about dupacks only but would mean something like
'lost_marker_work_todo' too... But because of Eifel stuff done
in CA_Recovery, the FLAG_DATA_SACKED check cannot be placed to
the if statement which seems attractive solution. Nevertheless,
I didn't like adding another variable just for that either... :-)
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Actually, the ratehalving seems to work too well, as cwnd is
reduced on every second ACK even though the packets in flight
remains unchanged. Recoveries in a bidirectional flows suffer
quite badly because of this, both NewReno and SACK are affected.

After this patch, rate halving is performed for ACK only if
packets in flight was supposedly changed too.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

This patch changes the API for the callback that is done after an ACK is
received. It solves a couple of issues:

  * Some congestion controls want higher resolution value of RTT
    (controlled by TCP_CONG_RTT_SAMPLE flag). These don't really want a ktime, but
    all compute a RTT in microseconds.

  * Other congestion control could use RTT at jiffies resolution.

To keep API consistent the units should be the same for both cases, just the
resolution should change.
Signed-off-by: NStephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

None of the existing TCP congestion controls use the rtt value pased
in the ca_ops->cong_avoid interface.  Which is lucky because seq_rtt
could have been -1 when handling a duplicate ack.
Signed-off-by: NStephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

For yet unknown reason, something cleared SACKED_RETRANS bit
underneath FRTO.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Commit 6f74651a is found guilty
of breaking DSACK counting, which should be done only for the
SACK block reported by the DSACK instead of every SACK block
that is received along with DSACK information.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Commit 164891aa broke RTT
sampling of congestion control modules. Inaccurate timestamps
could be fed to them without providing any way for them to
identify such cases. Previously RTT sampler was called only if
FLAG_RETRANS_DATA_ACKED was not set filtering inaccurate
timestamps nicely. In addition, the new behavior could give an
invalid timestamp (zero) to RTT sampler if only skbs with
TCPCB_RETRANS were ACKed. This solves both problems.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

This flaw does not affect any behavior (currently).
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

Without FRTO, the tcp_try_to_open is never called with
lost_out > 0 (see tcp_time_to_recover). However, when FRTO is
enabled, the !tp->lost condition is not used until end of FRTO
because that way TCP avoids premature entry to fast recovery
during FRTO.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

The code used to ignore GSO completely, passing either way too
small or zero pkts_acked when GSO skb or part of it got ACKed.
In addition, there is no need to calculate the value in the loop
but simple arithmetics after the loop is sufficient. There is
no need to handle SYN case specially because congestion control
modules are not yet initialized when FLAG_SYN_ACKED is set.
Signed-off-by: NIlpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>