net: tcp: add DCTCP congestion control algorithm

Daniel Borkmann · davem330 · commit e3118e8359bb · 2014-09-29T00:13:10.000-04:00
This work adds the DataCenter TCP (DCTCP) congestion control algorithm [1], which has been first published at SIGCOMM 2010 [2], resp. follow-up analysis at SIGMETRICS 2011 [3] (and also, more recently as an informational IETF draft available at [4]). DCTCP is an enhancement to the TCP congestion control algorithm for data center networks. Typical data center workloads are i.e. i) partition/aggregate (queries; bursty, delay sensitive), ii) short messages e.g. 50KB-1MB (for coordination and control state; delay sensitive), and iii) large flows e.g. 1MB-100MB (data update; throughput sensitive). DCTCP has therefore been designed for such environments to provide/achieve the following three requirements: * High burst tolerance (incast due to partition/aggregate) * Low latency (short flows, queries) * High throughput (continuous data updates, large file transfers) with commodity, shallow buffered switches The basic idea of its design consists of two fundamentals: i) on the switch side, packets are being marked when its internal queue length > threshold K (K is chosen so that a large enough headroom for marked traffic is still available in the switch queue); ii) the sender/host side maintains a moving average of the fraction of marked packets, so each RTT, F is being updated as follows: F := X / Y, where X is # of marked ACKs, Y is total # of ACKs alpha := (1 - g) * alpha + g * F, where g is a smoothing constant The resulting alpha (iow: probability that switch queue is congested) is then being used in order to adaptively decrease the congestion window W: W := (1 - (alpha / 2)) * W The means for receiving marked packets resp. marking them on switch side in DCTCP is the use of ECN. RFC3168 describes a mechanism for using Explicit Congestion Notification from the switch for early detection of congestion, rather than waiting for segment loss to occur. However, this method only detects the presence of congestion, not the *extent*. In the presence of mild congestion, it reduces the TCP congestion window too aggressively and unnecessarily affects the throughput of long flows [4]. DCTCP, as mentioned, enhances Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) processing to estimate the fraction of bytes that encounter congestion, rather than simply detecting that some congestion has occurred. DCTCP then scales the TCP congestion window based on this estimate [4], thus it can derive multibit feedback from the information present in the single-bit sequence of marks in its control law. And thus act in *proportion* to the extent of congestion, not its *presence*. Switches therefore set the Congestion Experienced (CE) codepoint in packets when internal queue lengths exceed threshold K. Resulting, DCTCP delivers the same or better throughput than normal TCP, while using 90% less buffer space. It was found in [2] that DCTCP enables the applications to handle 10x the current background traffic, without impacting foreground traffic. Moreover, a 10x increase in foreground traffic did not cause any timeouts, and thus largely eliminates TCP incast collapse problems. The algorithm itself has already seen deployments in large production data centers since then. We did a long-term stress-test and analysis in a data center, short summary of our TCP incast tests with iperf compared to cubic: This test measured DCTCP throughput and latency and compared it with CUBIC throughput and latency for an incast scenario. In this test, 19 senders sent at maximum rate to a single receiver. The receiver simply ran iperf -s. The senders ran iperf -c <receiver> -t 30. All senders started simultaneously (using local clocks synchronized by ntp). This test was repeated multiple times. Below shows the results from a single test. Other tests are similar. (DCTCP results were extremely consistent, CUBIC results show some variance induced by the TCP timeouts that CUBIC encountered.) For this test, we report statistics on the number of TCP timeouts, flow throughput, and traffic latency. 1) Timeouts (total over all flows, and per flow summaries): CUBIC DCTCP Total 3227 25 Mean 169.842 1.316 Median 183 1 Max 207 5 Min 123 0 Stddev 28.991 1.600 Timeout data is taken by measuring the net change in netstat -s "other TCP timeouts" reported. As a result, the timeout measurements above are not restricted to the test traffic, and we believe that it is likely that all of the "DCTCP timeouts" are actually timeouts for non-test traffic. We report them nevertheless. CUBIC will also include some non-test timeouts, but they are drawfed by bona fide test traffic timeouts for CUBIC. Clearly DCTCP does an excellent job of preventing TCP timeouts. DCTCP reduces timeouts by at least two orders of magnitude and may well have eliminated them in this scenario. 2) Throughput (per flow in Mbps): CUBIC DCTCP Mean 521.684 521.895 Median 464 523 Max 776 527 Min 403 519 Stddev 105.891 2.601 Fairness 0.962 0.999 Throughput data was simply the average throughput for each flow reported by iperf. By avoiding TCP timeouts, DCTCP is able to achieve much better per-flow results. In CUBIC, many flows experience TCP timeouts which makes flow throughput unpredictable and unfair. DCTCP, on the other hand, provides very clean predictable throughput without incurring TCP timeouts. Thus, the standard deviation of CUBIC throughput is dramatically higher than the standard deviation of DCTCP throughput. Mean throughput is nearly identical because even though cubic flows suffer TCP timeouts, other flows will step in and fill the unused bandwidth. Note that this test is something of a best case scenario for incast under CUBIC: it allows other flows to fill in for flows experiencing a timeout. Under situations where the receiver is issuing requests and then waiting for all flows to complete, flows cannot fill in for timed out flows and throughput will drop dramatically. 3) Latency (in ms): CUBIC DCTCP Mean 4.0088 0.04219 Median 4.055 0.0395 Max 4.2 0.085 Min 3.32 0.028 Stddev 0.1666 0.01064 Latency for each protocol was computed by running "ping -i 0.2 <receiver>" from a single sender to the receiver during the incast test. For DCTCP, "ping -Q 0x6 -i 0.2 <receiver>" was used to ensure that traffic traversed the DCTCP queue and was not dropped when the queue size was greater than the marking threshold. The summary statistics above are over all ping metrics measured between the single sender, receiver pair. The latency results for this test show a dramatic difference between CUBIC and DCTCP. CUBIC intentionally overflows the switch buffer which incurs the maximum queue latency (more buffer memory will lead to high latency.) DCTCP, on the other hand, deliberately attempts to keep queue occupancy low. The result is a two orders of magnitude reduction of latency with DCTCP - even with a switch with relatively little RAM. Switches with larger amounts of RAM will incur increasing amounts of latency for CUBIC, but not for DCTCP. 4) Convergence and stability test: This test measured the time that DCTCP took to fairly redistribute bandwidth when a new flow commences. It also measured DCTCP's ability to remain stable at a fair bandwidth distribution. DCTCP is compared with CUBIC for this test. At the commencement of this test, a single flow is sending at maximum rate (near 10 Gbps) to a single receiver. One second after that first flow commences, a new flow from a distinct server begins sending to the same receiver as the first flow. After the second flow has sent data for 10 seconds, the second flow is terminated. The first flow sends for an additional second. Ideally, the bandwidth would be evenly shared as soon as the second flow starts, and recover as soon as it stops. The results of this test are shown below. Note that the flow bandwidth for the two flows was measured near the same time, but not simultaneously. DCTCP performs nearly perfectly within the measurement limitations of this test: bandwidth is quickly distributed fairly between the two flows, remains stable throughout the duration of the test, and recovers quickly. CUBIC, in contrast, is slow to divide the bandwidth fairly, and has trouble remaining stable. CUBIC DCTCP Seconds Flow 1 Flow 2 Seconds Flow 1 Flow 2 0 9.93 0 0 9.92 0 0.5 9.87 0 0.5 9.86 0 1 8.73 2.25 1 6.46 4.88 1.5 7.29 2.8 1.5 4.9 4.99 2 6.96 3.1 2 4.92 4.94 2.5 6.67 3.34 2.5 4.93 5 3 6.39 3.57 3 4.92 4.99 3.5 6.24 3.75 3.5 4.94 4.74 4 6 3.94 4 5.34 4.71 4.5 5.88 4.09 4.5 4.99 4.97 5 5.27 4.98 5 4.83 5.01 5.5 4.93 5.04 5.5 4.89 4.99 6 4.9 4.99 6 4.92 5.04 6.5 4.93 5.1 6.5 4.91 4.97 7 4.28 5.8 7 4.97 4.97 7.5 4.62 4.91 7.5 4.99 4.82 8 5.05 4.45 8 5.16 4.76 8.5 5.93 4.09 8.5 4.94 4.98 9 5.73 4.2 9 4.92 5.02 9.5 5.62 4.32 9.5 4.87 5.03 10 6.12 3.2 10 4.91 5.01 10.5 6.91 3.11 10.5 4.87 5.04 11 8.48 0 11 8.49 4.94 11.5 9.87 0 11.5 9.9 0 SYN/ACK ECT test: This test demonstrates the importance of ECT on SYN and SYN-ACK packets by measuring the connection probability in the presence of competing flows for a DCTCP connection attempt *without* ECT in the SYN packet. The test was repeated five times for each number of competing flows. Competing Flows 1 | 2 | 4 | 8 | 16 ------------------------------ Mean Connection Probability 1 | 0.67 | 0.45 | 0.28 | 0 Median Connection Probability 1 | 0.65 | 0.45 | 0.25 | 0 As the number of competing flows moves beyond 1, the connection probability drops rapidly. Enabling DCTCP with this patch requires the following steps: DCTCP must be running both on the sender and receiver side in your data center, i.e.: sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=dctcp Also, ECN functionality must be enabled on all switches in your data center for DCTCP to work. The default ECN marking threshold (K) heuristic on the switch for DCTCP is e.g., 20 packets (30KB) at 1Gbps, and 65 packets (~100KB) at 10Gbps (K > 1/7 * C * RTT, [4]). In above tests, for each switch port, traffic was segregated into two queues. For any packet with a DSCP of 0x01 - or equivalently a TOS of 0x04 - the packet was placed into the DCTCP queue. All other packets were placed into the default drop-tail queue. For the DCTCP queue, RED/ECN marking was enabled, here, with a marking threshold of 75 KB. More details however, we refer you to the paper [2] under section 3). There are no code changes required to applications running in user space. DCTCP has been implemented in full *isolation* of the rest of the TCP code as its own congestion control module, so that it can run without a need to expose code to the core of the TCP stack, and thus nothing changes for non-DCTCP users. Changes in the CA framework code are minimal, and DCTCP algorithm operates on mechanisms that are already available in most Silicon. The gain (dctcp_shift_g) is currently a fixed constant (1/16) from the paper, but we leave the option that it can be chosen carefully to a different value by the user. In case DCTCP is being used and ECN support on peer site is off, DCTCP falls back after 3WHS to operate in normal TCP Reno mode. ss {-4,-6} -t -i diag interface: ... dctcp wscale:7,7 rto:203 rtt:2.349/0.026 mss:1448 cwnd:2054 ssthresh:1102 ce_state 0 alpha 15 ab_ecn 0 ab_tot 735584 send 10129.2Mbps pacing_rate 20254.1Mbps unacked:1822 retrans:0/15 reordering:101 rcv_space:29200 ... dctcp-reno wscale:7,7 rto:201 rtt:0.711/1.327 ato:40 mss:1448 cwnd:10 ssthresh:1102 fallback_mode send 162.9Mbps pacing_rate 325.5Mbps rcv_rtt:1.5 rcv_space:29200 More information about DCTCP can be found in [1-4]. [1] http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP.html [2] http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP_files/dctcp-final.pdf [3] http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP_files/dctcp_analysis-full.pdf [4] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bensley-tcpm-dctcp-00 Joint work with Florian Westphal and Glenn Judd. Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <dborkman@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de> Signed-off-by: Glenn Judd <glenn.judd@morganstanley.com> Acked-by: Stephen Hemminger <stephen@networkplumber.org> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
diff --git a/Documentation/networking/dctcp.txt b/Documentation/networking/dctcp.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+DCTCP (DataCenter TCP)
+----------------------
+
+DCTCP is an enhancement to the TCP congestion control algorithm for data
+center networks and leverages Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in
+the data center network to provide multi-bit feedback to the end hosts.
+
+To enable it on end hosts:
+
+  sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=dctcp
+
+All switches in the data center network running DCTCP must support ECN
+marking and be configured for marking when reaching defined switch buffer
+thresholds. The default ECN marking threshold heuristic for DCTCP on
+switches is 20 packets (30KB) at 1Gbps, and 65 packets (~100KB) at 10Gbps,
+but might need further careful tweaking.
+
+For more details, see below documents:
+
+Paper:
+
+The algorithm is further described in detail in the following two
+SIGCOMM/SIGMETRICS papers:
+
+ i) Mohammad Alizadeh, Albert Greenberg, David A. Maltz, Jitendra Padhye,
+    Parveen Patel, Balaji Prabhakar, Sudipta Sengupta, and Murari Sridharan:
+      "Data Center TCP (DCTCP)", Data Center Networks session
+      Proc. ACM SIGCOMM, New Delhi, 2010.
+    http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP_files/dctcp-final.pdf
+    http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/papers/2010/October/1851275.1851192
+
+ii) Mohammad Alizadeh, Adel Javanmard, and Balaji Prabhakar:
+      "Analysis of DCTCP: Stability, Convergence, and Fairness"
+      Proc. ACM SIGMETRICS, San Jose, 2011.
+    http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP_files/dctcp_analysis-full.pdf
+
+IETF informational draft:
+
+  http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bensley-tcpm-dctcp-00
+
+DCTCP site:
+
+  http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP.html
diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/inet_diag.h b/include/uapi/linux/inet_diag.h
@@ -110,10 +110,10 @@ enum {
 	INET_DIAG_TCLASS,
 	INET_DIAG_SKMEMINFO,
 	INET_DIAG_SHUTDOWN,
+	INET_DIAG_DCTCPINFO,
 };
 
-#define INET_DIAG_MAX INET_DIAG_SHUTDOWN
-
+#define INET_DIAG_MAX INET_DIAG_DCTCPINFO
 
 /* INET_DIAG_MEM */
 
@@ -133,5 +133,14 @@ struct tcpvegas_info {
 	__u32	tcpv_minrtt;
 };
 
+/* INET_DIAG_DCTCPINFO */
+
+struct tcp_dctcp_info {
+	__u16	dctcp_enabled;
+	__u16	dctcp_ce_state;
+	__u32	dctcp_alpha;
+	__u32	dctcp_ab_ecn;
+	__u32	dctcp_ab_tot;
+};
 
 #endif /* _UAPI_INET_DIAG_H_ */
diff --git a/net/ipv4/Kconfig b/net/ipv4/Kconfig
@@ -570,6 +570,27 @@ config TCP_CONG_ILLINOIS
 	For further details see:
 	  http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~shaoliu/tcpillinois/index.html
 
+config TCP_CONG_DCTCP
+	tristate "DataCenter TCP (DCTCP)"
+	default n
+	---help---
+	DCTCP leverages Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in the network to
+	provide multi-bit feedback to the end hosts. It is designed to provide:
+
+	- High burst tolerance (incast due to partition/aggregate),
+	- Low latency (short flows, queries),
+	- High throughput (continuous data updates, large file transfers) with
+	  commodity, shallow-buffered switches.
+
+	All switches in the data center network running DCTCP must support
+	ECN marking and be configured for marking when reaching defined switch
+	buffer thresholds. The default ECN marking threshold heuristic for
+	DCTCP on switches is 20 packets (30KB) at 1Gbps, and 65 packets
+	(~100KB) at 10Gbps, but might need further careful tweaking.
+
+	For further details see:
+	  http://simula.stanford.edu/~alizade/Site/DCTCP_files/dctcp-final.pdf
+
 choice
 	prompt "Default TCP congestion control"
 	default DEFAULT_CUBIC
@@ -598,9 +619,11 @@ choice
 	config DEFAULT_WESTWOOD
 		bool "Westwood" if TCP_CONG_WESTWOOD=y
 
+	config DEFAULT_DCTCP
+		bool "DCTCP" if TCP_CONG_DCTCP=y
+
 	config DEFAULT_RENO
 		bool "Reno"
-
 endchoice
 
 endif
@@ -620,6 +643,7 @@ config DEFAULT_TCP_CONG
 	default "westwood" if DEFAULT_WESTWOOD
 	default "veno" if DEFAULT_VENO
 	default "reno" if DEFAULT_RENO
+	default "dctcp" if DEFAULT_DCTCP
 	default "cubic"
 
 config TCP_MD5SIG
diff --git a/net/ipv4/Makefile b/net/ipv4/Makefile
@@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_INET_UDP_DIAG) += udp_diag.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_NET_TCPPROBE) += tcp_probe.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_BIC) += tcp_bic.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_CUBIC) += tcp_cubic.o
+obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_DCTCP) += tcp_dctcp.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_WESTWOOD) += tcp_westwood.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_HSTCP) += tcp_highspeed.o
 obj-$(CONFIG_TCP_CONG_HYBLA) += tcp_hybla.o
diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_dctcp.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_dctcp.c
diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_output.c
