[Bloat] benefits of ack filtering
Dave Taht
dave.taht at gmail.com
Tue Dec 12 15:04:45 EST 2017
What kicked off this thread was my urge to get a little code review of
https://github.com/dtaht/sch_cake/blob/cobalt/sch_cake.c#L904
because it seems to work well in a variety of tests, and ever better
as your D/U ratio cracks 10/1.
There are a few things I don't like about the implementation:
0) It's cpu intensive. Not as bad as hashing three times, as cake,
can, but intensive.
1) It reparses the whole queue looking for further acks to take out.
This makes sense were this to be applied to a single fifo, but in
cake's 1024 queue set associative case, leveraging something like
oldskb->isack && oldskb->hash == skb->hash on the five tuple would be
faster.
2) stopping entirely on a ack-filterable miss, and just working on
replacing the last packet on the tail of the queue, is far more O(1).
(I'd kind of like a "ackstate" machine, perhaps added to the cb)
3) I already made an attempt to deprioritize bulk ack flows slightly.
4) How much parsing of sack is really necessary?
5) I'm a little unsure as to the right things to do for ECN-echo. 1
ECN-echo packet should always be sent...
That all said, the results are fascinating, and I can live with all
these issues for a first release in sch_cake to more people in the
lede project... and plan on trying to pull this functionality out more
generally over the next month or three - primarily as impairments to
netem.
On Tue, Dec 12, 2017 at 11:27 AM, Benjamin Cronce <bcronce at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 10:50 AM, Sebastian Moeller <moeller0 at gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Mikael,
>>
>>
>> > On Nov 29, 2017, at 13:49, Mikael Abrahamsson <swmike at swm.pp.se> wrote:
>> >
>> > On Wed, 29 Nov 2017, Sebastian Moeller wrote:
>> >
>> >> Well, ACK filtering/thinning is a simple trade-off: redundancy versus
>> >> bandwidth. Since the RFCs say a receiver should acknoledge every second full
>> >> MSS I think the decision whether to filter or not should be kept to
>> >
>> > Why does it say to do this?
>>
>> According to RFC 2525:
>> "2.13.
>>
>> Name of Problem
>> Stretch ACK violation
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Paxson, et. al. Informational [Page 40]
>>
>> RFC 2525 TCP Implementation Problems March 1999
>>
>>
>>
>> Classification
>> Congestion Control/Performance
>>
>> Description
>> To improve efficiency (both computer and network) a data receiver
>> may refrain from sending an ACK for each incoming segment,
>> according to [
>> RFC1122
>> ]. However, an ACK should not be delayed an
>> inordinate amount of time. Specifically, ACKs SHOULD be sent for
>> every second full-sized segment that arrives. If a second full-
>> sized segment does not arrive within a given timeout (of no more
>> than 0.5 seconds), an ACK should be transmitted, according to
>> [
>> RFC1122
>> ]. A TCP receiver which does not generate an ACK for
>> every second full-sized segment exhibits a "Stretch ACK
>> Violation".
>>
>> Significance
>> TCP receivers exhibiting this behavior will cause TCP senders to
>> generate burstier traffic, which can degrade performance in
>> congested environments. In addition, generating fewer ACKs
>> increases the amount of time needed by the slow start algorithm to
>> open the congestion window to an appropriate point, which
>> diminishes performance in environments with large bandwidth-delay
>> products. Finally, generating fewer ACKs may cause needless
>> retransmission timeouts in lossy environments, as it increases the
>> possibility that an entire window of ACKs is lost, forcing a
>> retransmission timeout.
>
>
> It is interesting that enough of an issue occurred for them to explicitly
> state that at least 1 ACK per 2 segments as an RFC. That being said, all
> rules are meant to be broken, but not taken lightly when breaking. In highly
> asymmetric connections with large bufferbloat, the sender is either
> theoretically or practically of sending ACKs fast enough due to lack of
> bandwidth, results in ACKs becoming highly delayed, which, in my opinion, is
> worse. If the recover cannot ACK the receiver data within ~1.5 seconds, the
> sender will resend the missing segments. In my experience, I have seen
> upwards of 50% dup packet rates even though the actual loss rate was less
> than 1%.
I too have seen some insane dup packet rates also, but that's a
failure on the input side mostly.
>
> I do not feel that thinning ACKs gains much for any healthy ratio of
> down:up.
Define "healthy".
> The overhead of those "wasteful" ACKs are on par with the overhead
> of IP+TCP headers. Anything that can disturb the health of the Internet
> should make strong measures to prevent the end user from configuring the
> shaper in a knowingly destructive way. Like possibly letting the end user
> configure the amount of bandwidth ACKs get. I see many saying 35k pps is
> ridiculous, but that's pittance.
I tend to agree that for longer RTTs (and in the context of a clean
sheet design for TCP!)
more than one ack per ms is excessive - more broadly, per TXOP, in the
case of wifi in its presently overly-reliable mac retransmission
layer.
I sometimes wish we had a substrate for "I'm going to send 17 packets
total on this flow, tell me if you got 'em", rather than the ack
clock.
> If someone's network can't handle that,
> maybe they need a special TCP proxy. Thinning ACKs to help with bufferbloat
> is one thing,
I wouldn't quite define it that way. Thinning acks to make room for
non-acks in an already debloated
environment or "applying a congestion control algorithm that applies
specifically to acks". The blog posting and graph here showed how slow
codel was at clearing room here:
http://blog.cerowrt.org/post/ack_filtering/
> thinning ACKs because we feel TCP is too aggressive, is a can
> of worms. Research on the topic is still appreciated, but we should be
> careful about how much functionality Cake will have.
good point. Despite deployment in a few places like riverbed and ubnt
and lede, sch_cake has not achieved
particularly high penetration elsewhere. It's still kind of a
convenient research vehicle, but I dearly wish the things I love about
it (the deficit scheduler, the per host fq stuff) had more users.
>>
>>
>> Implications
>> When not in loss recovery, every ACK received by a TCP sender
>> triggers the transmission of new data segments. The burst size is
>> determined by the number of previously unacknowledged segments
>> each ACK covers. Therefore, a TCP receiver ack'ing more than 2
>> segments at a time causes the sending TCP to generate a larger
>> burst of traffic upon receipt of the ACK. This large burst of
>> traffic can overwhelm an intervening gateway, leading to higher
>> drop rates for both the connection and other connections passing
>> through the congested gateway.
This is no longer true in the case of pacing.
>> In addition, the TCP slow start algorithm increases the congestion
>> window by 1 segment for each ACK received. Therefore, increasing
>> the ACK interval (thus decreasing the rate at which ACKs are
>> transmitted) increases the amount of time it takes slow start to
>> increase the congestion window to an appropriate operating point,
>> and the connection consequently suffers from reduced performance.
>> This is especially true for connections using large windows.
>>
>> Relevant RFCs
>>
>> RFC 1122
>> outlines delayed ACKs as a recommended mechanism.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Paxson, et. al. Informational [Page 41]
>>
>> RFC 2525 TCP Implementation Problems March 1999
>>
>>
>>
>> Trace file demonstrating it
>> Trace file taken using tcpdump at host B, the data receiver (and
>> ACK originator). The advertised window (which never changed) and
>> timestamp options have been omitted for clarity, except for the
>> first packet sent by A:
>>
>> 12:09:24.820187 A.1174 > B.3999: . 2049:3497(1448) ack 1
>> win 33580 <nop,nop,timestamp 2249877 2249914> [tos 0x8]
>> 12:09:24.824147 A.1174 > B.3999: . 3497:4945(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:24.832034 A.1174 > B.3999: . 4945:6393(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:24.832222 B.3999 > A.1174: . ack 6393
>> 12:09:24.934837 A.1174 > B.3999: . 6393:7841(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:24.942721 A.1174 > B.3999: . 7841:9289(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:24.950605 A.1174 > B.3999: . 9289:10737(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:24.950797 B.3999 > A.1174: . ack 10737
>> 12:09:24.958488 A.1174 > B.3999: . 10737:12185(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:25.052330 A.1174 > B.3999: . 12185:13633(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:25.060216 A.1174 > B.3999: . 13633:15081(1448) ack 1
>> 12:09:25.060405 B.3999 > A.1174: . ack 15081
>>
>> This portion of the trace clearly shows that the receiver (host B)
>> sends an ACK for every third full sized packet received. Further
>> investigation of this implementation found that the cause of the
>> increased ACK interval was the TCP options being used. The
>> implementation sent an ACK after it was holding 2*MSS worth of
>> unacknowledged data. In the above case, the MSS is 1460 bytes so
>> the receiver transmits an ACK after it is holding at least 2920
>> bytes of unacknowledged data. However, the length of the TCP
>> options being used [
>> RFC1323
>> ] took 12 bytes away from the data
>> portion of each packet. This produced packets containing 1448
>> bytes of data. But the additional bytes used by the options in
>> the header were not taken into account when determining when to
>> trigger an ACK. Therefore, it took 3 data segments before the
>> data receiver was holding enough unacknowledged data (>= 2*MSS, or
>> 2920 bytes in the above example) to transmit an ACK.
>>
>> Trace file demonstrating correct behavior
>> Trace file taken using tcpdump at host B, the data receiver (and
>> ACK originator), again with window and timestamp information
>> omitted except for the first packet:
>>
>> 12:06:53.627320 A.1172 > B.3999: . 1449:2897(1448) ack 1
>> win 33580 <nop,nop,timestamp 2249575 2249612> [tos 0x8]
>> 12:06:53.634773 A.1172 > B.3999: . 2897:4345(1448) ack 1
>> 12:06:53.634961 B.3999 > A.1172: . ack 4345
>> 12:06:53.737326 A.1172 > B.3999: . 4345:5793(1448) ack 1
>> 12:06:53.744401 A.1172 > B.3999: . 5793:7241(1448) ack 1
>> 12:06:53.744592 B.3999 > A.1172: . ack 7241
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Paxson, et. al. Informational [Page 42]
>>
>> RFC 2525 TCP Implementation Problems March 1999
>>
>>
>>
>> 12:06:53.752287 A.1172 > B.3999: . 7241:8689(1448) ack 1
>> 12:06:53.847332 A.1172 > B.3999: . 8689:10137(1448) ack 1
>> 12:06:53.847525 B.3999 > A.1172: . ack 10137
>>
>> This trace shows the TCP receiver (host B) ack'ing every second
>> full-sized packet, according to [
>> RFC1122
>> ]. This is the same
>> implementation shown above, with slight modifications that allow
>> the receiver to take the length of the options into account when
>> deciding when to transmit an ACK."
>>
>> So I guess the point is that at the rates we are discussing (the the
>> according short periods between non-filtered ACKs the time-out issue will be
>> moot). The Slow start issue might also be moot if the sender does more than
>> simple ACK counting. This leaves redundancy... The fact that GRO/GSO
>> effectively lead to ack stretching already the disadvantages might not be as
>> bad today (for high bandwidth flows) than they were in the past...
>>
>>
>> > What benefit is there to either end system to send 35kPPS of ACKs in
>> > order to facilitate a 100 megabyte/s of TCP transfer?
>>
>> >
>> > Sounds like a lot of useless interrupts and handling by the stack, apart
>> > from offloading it to the NIC to do a lot of handling of these mostly
>> > useless packets so the CPU doesn't have to do it.
>> >
>> > Why isn't 1kPPS of ACKs sufficient for most usecases?
>>
>> This is not going to fly, as far as I can tell the ACK rate needs
>> to be high enough so that its inverse does not exceed the period that is
>> equivalent to the calculated RTO, so the ACK rate needs to scale with the
>> RTT of a connection.
>>
>> But I do not claim to be an expert here, I just had a look at some RFCs
>> that might or might not be outdated already...
>>
>> Best Regards
>> Sebastian
>>
>>
>> >
>> > --
>> > Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike at swm.pp.se
>>
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>
>
>
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--
Dave Täht
CEO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-669-226-2619
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