[Codel] OpenWRT wrong adjustment of fq_codel defaults (Was: fq_codel_drop vs a udp flood)

[Jesper Dangaard Brouer]

I've created a OpenWRT ticket[1] on this issue, as it seems that someone[2]
closed Felix'es OpenWRT email account (bad choice! emails bouncing).
Sounds like OpenWRT and the LEDE https://www.lede-project.org/ project
is in some kind of conflict.

OpenWRT ticket [1] https://dev.openwrt.org/ticket/22349

[2] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.embedded.openwrt.devel/40298/focus=40335


On Fri, 6 May 2016 11:42:43 +0200
Jesper Dangaard Brouer <brouer at redhat.com> wrote:

> Hi Felix,
> 
> This is an important fix for OpenWRT, please read!
> 
> OpenWRT changed the default fq_codel sch->limit from 10240 to 1024,
> without also adjusting q->flows_cnt.  Eric explains below that you must
> also adjust the buckets (q->flows_cnt) for this not to break. (Just
> adjust it to 128)
> 
> Problematic OpenWRT commit in question:
>  http://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt.git;a=patch;h=12cd6578084e
>  12cd6578084e ("kernel: revert fq_codel quantum override to prevent it from causing too much cpu load with higher speed (#21326)")
> 
> 
> I also highly recommend you cherry-pick this very recent commit:
>  net-next: 9d18562a2278 ("fq_codel: add batch ability to fq_codel_drop()")
>  https://git.kernel.org/davem/net-next/c/9d18562a227
> 
> This should fix very high CPU usage in-case fq_codel goes into drop mode.
> The problem is that drop mode was considered rare, and implementation
> wise it was chosen to be more expensive (to save cycles on normal mode).
> Unfortunately is it easy to trigger with an UDP flood. Drop mode is
> especially expensive for smaller devices, as it scans a 4K big array,
> thus 64 cache misses for small devices!
> 
> The fix is to allow drop-mode to bulk-drop more packets when entering
> drop-mode (default 64 bulk drop).  That way we don't suddenly
> experience a significantly higher processing cost per packet, but
> instead can amortize this.
> 
> To Eric, should we recommend OpenWRT to adjust default (max) 64 bulk
> drop, given we also recommend bucket size to be 128 ? (thus the amount
> of memory to scan is less, but their CPU is also much smaller).
> 
> --Jesper
> 
> 
> On Thu, 05 May 2016 12:23:27 -0700 Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2016-05-05 at 19:25 +0300, Roman Yeryomin wrote:  
> > > On 5 May 2016 at 19:12, Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet at gmail.com> wrote:    
> > > > On Thu, 2016-05-05 at 17:53 +0300, Roman Yeryomin wrote:
> > > >    
> > > >>
> > > >> qdisc fq_codel 0: dev eth0 root refcnt 2 limit 1024p flows 1024
> > > >> quantum 1514 target 5.0ms interval 100.0ms ecn
> > > >>  Sent 12306 bytes 128 pkt (dropped 0, overlimits 0 requeues 0)
> > > >>  backlog 0b 0p requeues 0
> > > >>   maxpacket 0 drop_overlimit 0 new_flow_count 0 ecn_mark 0
> > > >>   new_flows_len 0 old_flows_len 0    
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Limit of 1024 packets and 1024 flows is not wise I think.
> > > >
> > > > (If all buckets are in use, each bucket has a virtual queue of 1 packet,
> > > > which is almost the same than having no queue at all)
> > > >
> > > > I suggest to have at least 8 packets per bucket, to let Codel have a
> > > > chance to trigger.
> > > >
> > > > So you could either reduce number of buckets to 128 (if memory is
> > > > tight), or increase limit to 8192.    
> > > 
> > > Will try, but what I've posted is default, I didn't change/configure that.    
> > 
> > fq_codel has a default of 10240 packets and 1024 buckets.
> > 
> > http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/net/sched/sch_fq_codel.c#L413
> > 
> > If someone changed that in the linux variant you use, he probably should
> > explain the rationale.  

-- 
Best regards,
  Jesper Dangaard Brouer
  MSc.CS, Principal Kernel Engineer at Red Hat
  Author of http://www.iptv-analyzer.org
  LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brouer