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Re: Linux 2.4 network performance oddities

To: BERND.STURM@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Linux 2.4 network performance oddities
From: Andi Kleen <ak@xxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 17:59:56 +0200
Cc: ak@xxxxxx, netdev@xxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <CF62A5793E91D411BA7A0002A5131736745627@satcomnt11.ndsatcom.com>; from BERND.STURM@NDSatcom.com on Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 12:52:15PM +0200
References: <CF62A5793E91D411BA7A0002A5131736745627@satcomnt11.ndsatcom.com>
Sender: owner-netdev@xxxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, Aug 02, 2001 at 12:52:15PM +0200, BERND.STURM@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> We did packet captures with tcpdump and saw that the sender wouldn´t open up
> its tcp send window wide enough and every once in a while stall with its
> sending.
> This effect didn´t occur with 2.2.16 but all the kernel settings in
> /proc/sys/net were the same !

2.4 has an additional global TCP memory limit; see the tcp_mem entry in
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt for details.
It also has more sysctls to tune the TCP buffer management, like 
tcp_app_win or tcp_adv_win_scale. 

> It seems, as strange as this may sound, that the 2.4.x-kernel-series has
> some kind of congestion window memory, that still remembers the congestion
> window of a former tcp-transfer, at least it acts this way. But this would
> in no way be conforming to the current tcp-standards !

2.4 saves cwnds and some other information in the destination cache, similar
to many other stacks (e.g. Solaris). You can get rid of this information
by flushing the routing cache (echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/route/flush) 

> By the way, what´s this no_cong, lo_cong, mod_cong-stuff in
> /proc/sys/net/core ??

They define how the stack drops packets on overload.

-Andi

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