tcp: implement RFC5682 F-RTO

This patch implements F-RTO (foward RTO recovery):

When the first retransmission after timeout is acknowledged, F-RTO
sends new data instead of old data. If the next ACK acknowledges
some never-retransmitted data, then the timeout was spurious and the
congestion state is reverted.  Otherwise if the next ACK selectively
acknowledges the new data, then the timeout was genuine and the
loss recovery continues. This idea applies to recurring timeouts
as well. While F-RTO sends different data during timeout recovery,
it does not (and should not) change the congestion control.

The implementaion follows the three steps of SACK enhanced algorithm
(section 3) in RFC5682. Step 1 is in tcp_enter_loss(). Step 2 and
3 are in tcp_process_loss().  The basic version is not supported
because SACK enhanced version also works for non-SACK connections.

The new implementation is functionally in parity with the old F-RTO
implementation except the one case where it increases undo events:
In addition to the RFC algorithm, a spurious timeout may be detected
without sending data in step 2, as long as the SACK confirms not
all the original data are dropped. When this happens, the sender
will undo the cwnd and perhaps enter fast recovery instead. This
additional check increases the F-RTO undo events by 5x compared
to the prior implementation on Google Web servers, since the sender
often does not have new data to send for HTTP.

Note F-RTO may detect spurious timeout before Eifel with timestamps
does so.

Signed-off-by: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Acked-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/tcp.h b/include/linux/tcp.h
index f5f203b36379..5adbc33d1ab3 100644
--- a/include/linux/tcp.h
+++ b/include/linux/tcp.h
@@ -192,7 +192,8 @@ struct tcp_sock {
 	u8	nonagle     : 4,/* Disable Nagle algorithm?             */
 		thin_lto    : 1,/* Use linear timeouts for thin streams */
 		thin_dupack : 1,/* Fast retransmit on first dupack      */
-		repair      : 1;
+		repair      : 1,
+		frto        : 1;/* F-RTO (RFC5682) activated in CA_Loss */
 	u8	repair_queue;
 	u8	do_early_retrans:1,/* Enable RFC5827 early-retransmit  */
 		syn_data:1,	/* SYN includes data */