tcp: add rfc3168, section 6.1.1.1. fallback

This work as a follow-up of commit f7b3bec6f516 ("net: allow setting ecn
via routing table") and adds RFC3168 section 6.1.1.1. fallback for outgoing
ECN connections. In other words, this work adds a retry with a non-ECN
setup SYN packet, as suggested from the RFC on the first timeout:

  [...] A host that receives no reply to an ECN-setup SYN within the
  normal SYN retransmission timeout interval MAY resend the SYN and
  any subsequent SYN retransmissions with CWR and ECE cleared. [...]

Schematic client-side view when assuming the server is in tcp_ecn=2 mode,
that is, Linux default since 2009 via commit 255cac91c3c9 ("tcp: extend
ECN sysctl to allow server-side only ECN"):

 1) Normal ECN-capable path:

    SYN ECE CWR ----->
                <----- SYN ACK ECE
            ACK ----->

 2) Path with broken middlebox, when client has fallback:

    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
            SYN ----->
                <----- SYN ACK
            ACK ----->

In case we would not have the fallback implemented, the middlebox drop
point would basically end up as:

    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)

In any case, it's rather a smaller percentage of sites where there would
occur such additional setup latency: it was found in end of 2014 that ~56%
of IPv4 and 65% of IPv6 servers of Alexa 1 million list would negotiate
ECN (aka tcp_ecn=2 default), 0.42% of these webservers will fail to connect
when trying to negotiate with ECN (tcp_ecn=1) due to timeouts, which the
fallback would mitigate with a slight latency trade-off. Recent related
paper on this topic:

  Brian Trammell, Mirja Kühlewind, Damiano Boppart, Iain Learmonth,
  Gorry Fairhurst, and Richard Scheffenegger:
    "Enabling Internet-Wide Deployment of Explicit Congestion Notification."
    Proc. PAM 2015, New York.
  http://ecn.ethz.ch/ecn-pam15.pdf

Thus, when net.ipv4.tcp_ecn=1 is being set, the patch will perform RFC3168,
section 6.1.1.1. fallback on timeout. For users explicitly not wanting this
which can be in DC use case, we add a net.ipv4.tcp_ecn_fallback knob that
allows for disabling the fallback.

tp->ecn_flags are not being cleared in tcp_ecn_clear_syn() on output, but
rather we let tcp_ecn_rcv_synack() take that over on input path in case a
SYN ACK ECE was delayed. Thus a spurious SYN retransmission will not prevent
ECN being negotiated eventually in that case.

Reference: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/92/slides/slides-92-iccrg-1.pdf
Reference: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/89/slides/slides-89-tsvarea-1.pdf
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de>
Signed-off-by: Mirja Kühlewind <mirja.kuehlewind@tik.ee.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Brian Trammell <trammell@tik.ee.ethz.ch>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: Dave That <dave.taht@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
index c3852a7ff3c7..841de32f1fee 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
@@ -821,6 +821,13 @@ static struct ctl_table ipv4_net_table[] = {
 		.proc_handler	= proc_dointvec
 	},
 	{
+		.procname	= "tcp_ecn_fallback",
+		.data		= &init_net.ipv4.sysctl_tcp_ecn_fallback,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(int),
+		.mode		= 0644,
+		.proc_handler	= proc_dointvec
+	},
+	{
 		.procname	= "ip_local_port_range",
 		.maxlen		= sizeof(init_net.ipv4.ip_local_ports.range),
 		.data		= &init_net.ipv4.ip_local_ports.range,