Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next

Pull networking updates from David Miller:

 1) Allow setting bluetooth L2CAP modes via socket option, from Luiz
    Augusto von Dentz.

 2) Add GSO partial support to igc, from Sasha Neftin.

 3) Several cleanups and improvements to r8169 from Heiner Kallweit.

 4) Add IF_OPER_TESTING link state and use it when ethtool triggers a
    device self-test. From Andrew Lunn.

 5) Start moving away from custom driver versions, use the globally
    defined kernel version instead, from Leon Romanovsky.

 6) Support GRO vis gro_cells in DSA layer, from Alexander Lobakin.

 7) Allow hard IRQ deferral during NAPI, from Eric Dumazet.

 8) Add sriov and vf support to hinic, from Luo bin.

 9) Support Media Redundancy Protocol (MRP) in the bridging code, from
    Horatiu Vultur.

10) Support netmap in the nft_nat code, from Pablo Neira Ayuso.

11) Allow UDPv6 encapsulation of ESP in the ipsec code, from Sabrina
    Dubroca. Also add ipv6 support for espintcp.

12) Lots of ReST conversions of the networking documentation, from Mauro
    Carvalho Chehab.

13) Support configuration of ethtool rxnfc flows in bcmgenet driver,
    from Doug Berger.

14) Allow to dump cgroup id and filter by it in inet_diag code, from
    Dmitry Yakunin.

15) Add infrastructure to export netlink attribute policies to
    userspace, from Johannes Berg.

16) Several optimizations to sch_fq scheduler, from Eric Dumazet.

17) Fallback to the default qdisc if qdisc init fails because otherwise
    a packet scheduler init failure will make a device inoperative. From
    Jesper Dangaard Brouer.

18) Several RISCV bpf jit optimizations, from Luke Nelson.

19) Correct the return type of the ->ndo_start_xmit() method in several
    drivers, it's netdev_tx_t but many drivers were using
    'int'. From Yunjian Wang.

20) Add an ethtool interface for PHY master/slave config, from Oleksij
    Rempel.

21) Add BPF iterators, from Yonghang Song.

22) Add cable test infrastructure, including ethool interfaces, from
    Andrew Lunn. Marvell PHY driver is the first to support this
    facility.

23) Remove zero-length arrays all over, from Gustavo A. R. Silva.

24) Calculate and maintain an explicit frame size in XDP, from Jesper
    Dangaard Brouer.

25) Add CAP_BPF, from Alexei Starovoitov.

26) Support terse dumps in the packet scheduler, from Vlad Buslov.

27) Support XDP_TX bulking in dpaa2 driver, from Ioana Ciornei.

28) Add devm_register_netdev(), from Bartosz Golaszewski.

29) Minimize qdisc resets, from Cong Wang.

30) Get rid of kernel_getsockopt and kernel_setsockopt in order to
    eliminate set_fs/get_fs calls. From Christoph Hellwig.

* git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next: (2517 commits)
  selftests: net: ip_defrag: ignore EPERM
  net_failover: fixed rollback in net_failover_open()
  Revert "tipc: Fix potential tipc_aead refcnt leak in tipc_crypto_rcv"
  Revert "tipc: Fix potential tipc_node refcnt leak in tipc_rcv"
  vmxnet3: allow rx flow hash ops only when rss is enabled
  hinic: add set_channels ethtool_ops support
  selftests/bpf: Add a default $(CXX) value
  tools/bpf: Don't use $(COMPILE.c)
  bpf, selftests: Use bpf_probe_read_kernel
  s390/bpf: Use bcr 0,%0 as tail call nop filler
  s390/bpf: Maintain 8-byte stack alignment
  selftests/bpf: Fix verifier test
  selftests/bpf: Fix sample_cnt shared between two threads
  bpf, selftests: Adapt cls_redirect to call csum_level helper
  bpf: Add csum_level helper for fixing up csum levels
  bpf: Fix up bpf_skb_adjust_room helper's skb csum setting
  sfc: add missing annotation for efx_ef10_try_update_nic_stats_vf()
  crypto/chtls: IPv6 support for inline TLS
  Crypto/chcr: Fixes a coccinile check error
  Crypto/chcr: Fixes compilations warnings
  ...

1 files changed, 52 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.rst b/Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..b06765c96ea1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+====================
+Thin-streams and TCP
+====================
+
+A wide range of Internet-based services that use reliable transport
+protocols display what we call thin-stream properties. This means
+that the application sends data with such a low rate that the
+retransmission mechanisms of the transport protocol are not fully
+effective. In time-dependent scenarios (like online games, control
+systems, stock trading etc.) where the user experience depends
+on the data delivery latency, packet loss can be devastating for
+the service quality. Extreme latencies are caused by TCP's
+dependency on the arrival of new data from the application to trigger
+retransmissions effectively through fast retransmit instead of
+waiting for long timeouts.
+
+After analysing a large number of time-dependent interactive
+applications, we have seen that they often produce thin streams
+and also stay with this traffic pattern throughout its entire
+lifespan. The combination of time-dependency and the fact that the
+streams provoke high latencies when using TCP is unfortunate.
+
+In order to reduce application-layer latency when packets are lost,
+a set of mechanisms has been made, which address these latency issues
+for thin streams. In short, if the kernel detects a thin stream,
+the retransmission mechanisms are modified in the following manner:
+
+1) If the stream is thin, fast retransmit on the first dupACK.
+2) If the stream is thin, do not apply exponential backoff.
+
+These enhancements are applied only if the stream is detected as
+thin. This is accomplished by defining a threshold for the number
+of packets in flight. If there are less than 4 packets in flight,
+fast retransmissions can not be triggered, and the stream is prone
+to experience high retransmission latencies.
+
+Since these mechanisms are targeted at time-dependent applications,
+they must be specifically activated by the application using the
+TCP_THIN_LINEAR_TIMEOUTS and TCP_THIN_DUPACK IOCTLS or the
+tcp_thin_linear_timeouts and tcp_thin_dupack sysctls. Both
+modifications are turned off by default.
+
+References
+==========
+More information on the modifications, as well as a wide range of
+experimental data can be found here:
+
+"Improving latency for interactive, thin-stream applications over
+reliable transport"
+http://simula.no/research/nd/publications/Simula.nd.477/simula_pdf_file