xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/h_ertt.4 (revision 814bd1ed438f7dfc5bedcb1f3e772a46fe7026bb)
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29.\" $FreeBSD$
30.\"
31.Dd January 18, 2012
32.Dt H_ERTT 4
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm h_ertt
36.Nd Enhanced Round Trip Time Khelp module
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38.In netinet/khelp/h_ertt.h
39.Sh DESCRIPTION
40The
41.Nm
42Khelp module works within the
43.Xr khelp 9
44framework to provide TCP with a per-connection, low noise estimate of the
45instantaneous RTT.
46The implementation attempts to be robust in the face of delayed
47acknowledgements, TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO), receivers who manipulate TCP
48timestamps and lack of the TCP timestamp option altogether.
49.Pp
50TCP receivers using delayed acknowledgements either acknowledge every second packet
51(reflecting the time stamp of the first) or use a timeout to trigger the
52acknowledgement if no second packet arrives.
53If the heuristic used by
54.Nm
55determines that the receiver is using delayed acknowledgements, it measures the
56RTT using the second packet (the one that triggers the acknowledgement).
57It does not measure the RTT if the acknowledgement is for the
58first packet, since it cannot be accurately determined.
59.Pp
60When TSO is in use,
61.Nm
62will momentarily disable TSO whilst marking a packet to use for a new
63measurement.
64The process has negligible impact on the connection.
65.Pp
66.Nm
67associates the following struct with each connection's TCP control block:
68.Bd -literal
69struct ertt {
70	TAILQ_HEAD(txseginfo_head, txseginfo) txsegi_q;	/* Private. */
71	long		bytes_tx_in_rtt;		/* Private. */
72	long		bytes_tx_in_marked_rtt;
73	unsigned long	marked_snd_cwnd;
74	int		rtt;
75	int		maxrtt;
76	int		minrtt;
77	int		dlyack_rx;			/* Private. */
78	int		timestamp_errors;		/* Private. */
79	int		markedpkt_rtt;			/* Private. */
80	uint32_t	flags;
81};
82.Ed
83.Pp
84The fields marked as private should not be manipulated by any code outside of
85the
86.Nm
87implementation.
88The non-private fields provide the following data:
89.Bl -tag -width ".Va bytes_tx_in_marked_rtt"  -offset indent
90.It Va bytes_tx_in_marked_rtt
91The number of bytes transmitted in the
92.Va markedpkt_rtt .
93.It Va marked_snd_cwnd
94The value of cwnd for the marked rtt measurement.
95.It Va rtt
96The most recent RTT measurement.
97.It Va maxrtt
98The longest RTT measurement that has been taken.
99.It Va minrtt
100The shortest RTT measurement that has been taken.
101.It Va flags
102The ERTT_NEW_MEASUREMENT flag will be set by the implementation when a new
103measurement is available.
104It is the responsibility of
105.Nm
106consumers to unset the flag if they wish to use it as a notification method for
107new measurements.
108.El
109.Sh SEE ALSO
110.Xr cc_chd 4 ,
111.Xr cc_hd 4 ,
112.Xr cc_vegas 4 ,
113.Xr mod_cc 4 ,
114.Xr hhook 9 ,
115.Xr khelp 9
116.Sh ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
117Development and testing of this software were made possible in part by grants
118from the FreeBSD Foundation and Cisco University Research Program Fund at
119Community Foundation Silicon Valley.
120.Sh HISTORY
121The
122.Nm
123module first appeared in
124.Fx 9.0 .
125.Pp
126The module was first released in 2010 by David Hayes whilst working on the
127NewTCP research project at Swinburne University of Technology's Centre for
128Advanced Internet Architectures, Melbourne, Australia.
129More details are available at:
130.Pp
131http://caia.swin.edu.au/urp/newtcp/
132.Sh AUTHORS
133.An -nosplit
134The
135.Nm
136Khelp module and this manual page were written by
137.An David Hayes Aq Mt david.hayes@ieee.org .
138.Sh BUGS
139The module maintains enhanced RTT estimates for all new TCP connections created
140after the time at which the module was loaded.
141It might be beneficial to see if it is possible to have the module only affect
142connections which actually care about ERTT estimates.
143