tcp: early retransmit

tcp: early retransmit

This patch implements RFC 5827 early retransmit (ER) for TCP.
It reduces DUPACK threshold (dupthresh) if outstanding packets are
less than 4 to recover losses by fast recovery instead of timeout.

While the algorithm is simple, small but frequent network reordering
makes this feature dangerous: the connection repeatedly enter
false recovery and degrade performance. Therefore we implement
a mitigation suggested in the appendix of the RFC that delays
entering fast recovery by a small interval, i.e., RTT/4. Currently
ER is conservative and is disabled for the rest of the connection
after the first reordering event. A large scale web server
experiment on the performance impact of ER is summarized in
section 6 of the paper "Proportional Rate Reduction for TCP”,
IMC 2011. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2011/docs/p155.pdf

Note that Linux has a similar feature called THIN_DUPACK. The
differences are THIN_DUPACK do not mitigate reorderings and is only
used after slow start. Currently ER is disabled if THIN_DUPACK is
enabled. I would be happy to merge THIN_DUPACK feature with ER if
people think it's a good idea.

ER is enabled by sysctl_tcp_early_retrans:
  0: Disables ER

  1: Reduce dupthresh to packets_out - 1 when outstanding packets < 4.

  2: (Default) reduce dupthresh like mode 1. In addition, delay
     entering fast recovery by RTT/4.

Note: mode 2 is implemented in the third part of this patch series.

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