Initial snd_cwnd in pre-patch-2.2.7-3 (net/ipv4/tcp_ipv4.c)

Cacophonix Gaul (cacophonix@yahoo.com)
Sun, 25 Apr 1999 12:12:00 -0700 (PDT)


I'm really glad that snd_cwnd is being initialized to greater than
1 (even though the perf problems with certain clients are not the
fault of linux) :-)

However, why not go all the way up to the limits permitted by rfc 2414
(ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2414.txt)? Specifically, the rfc suggests
that the upper bound on initial window should be:

min (4*MSS, max (2*MSS, 4380 bytes))

Of course, this violates rfc 2581, which requires cwnd <= 2*MSS, but
notes that rfc2414 permits this as an experimental extension.

Thus, if initial MSS=1460, then we are allowed an initial cwnd of 3.

Why do I think this is a big deal? Because, consider the case of
large web servers (or certain web benchmarks ;-) that get a large number
of requests for small files - _most_ of these are under 4380 bytes.
In cases such as these, it seems to make sense to be able to transmit
the entire file in 1 rtt.

In any case, I'm pretty happy with an initial snd_cwnd of 2, and will
play around with 3 to see if the difference is significant.

cheers,
karthik

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