tcp: add rfc3168, section 6.1.1.1. fallback

This work as a follow-up of commit f7b3bec6f516 ("net: allow setting ecn
via routing table") and adds RFC3168 section 6.1.1.1. fallback for outgoing
ECN connections. In other words, this work adds a retry with a non-ECN
setup SYN packet, as suggested from the RFC on the first timeout:

  [...] A host that receives no reply to an ECN-setup SYN within the
  normal SYN retransmission timeout interval MAY resend the SYN and
  any subsequent SYN retransmissions with CWR and ECE cleared. [...]

Schematic client-side view when assuming the server is in tcp_ecn=2 mode,
that is, Linux default since 2009 via commit 255cac91c3c9 ("tcp: extend
ECN sysctl to allow server-side only ECN"):

 1) Normal ECN-capable path:

    SYN ECE CWR ----->
                <----- SYN ACK ECE
            ACK ----->

 2) Path with broken middlebox, when client has fallback:

    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
            SYN ----->
                <----- SYN ACK
            ACK ----->

In case we would not have the fallback implemented, the middlebox drop
point would basically end up as:

    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)
    SYN ECE CWR ----X crappy middlebox drops packet
                      (timeout, rtx)

In any case, it's rather a smaller percentage of sites where there would
occur such additional setup latency: it was found in end of 2014 that ~56%
of IPv4 and 65% of IPv6 servers of Alexa 1 million list would negotiate
ECN (aka tcp_ecn=2 default), 0.42% of these webservers will fail to connect
when trying to negotiate with ECN (tcp_ecn=1) due to timeouts, which the
fallback would mitigate with a slight latency trade-off. Recent related
paper on this topic:

  Brian Trammell, Mirja Kühlewind, Damiano Boppart, Iain Learmonth,
  Gorry Fairhurst, and Richard Scheffenegger:
    "Enabling Internet-Wide Deployment of Explicit Congestion Notification."
    Proc. PAM 2015, New York.
  http://ecn.ethz.ch/ecn-pam15.pdf

Thus, when net.ipv4.tcp_ecn=1 is being set, the patch will perform RFC3168,
section 6.1.1.1. fallback on timeout. For users explicitly not wanting this
which can be in DC use case, we add a net.ipv4.tcp_ecn_fallback knob that
allows for disabling the fallback.

tp->ecn_flags are not being cleared in tcp_ecn_clear_syn() on output, but
rather we let tcp_ecn_rcv_synack() take that over on input path in case a
SYN ACK ECE was delayed. Thus a spurious SYN retransmission will not prevent
ECN being negotiated eventually in that case.

Reference: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/92/slides/slides-92-iccrg-1.pdf
Reference: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/89/slides/slides-89-tsvarea-1.pdf
Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <daniel@iogearbox.net>
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de>
Signed-off-by: Mirja Kühlewind <mirja.kuehlewind@tik.ee.ethz.ch>
Signed-off-by: Brian Trammell <trammell@tik.ee.ethz.ch>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: Dave That <dave.taht@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

2 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/net/netns/ipv4.h b/include/net/netns/ipv4.h
index 614a49be68a9..6848b8bb2e63 100644
--- a/include/net/netns/ipv4.h
+++ b/include/net/netns/ipv4.h
@@ -77,6 +77,8 @@ struct netns_ipv4 {
 	struct local_ports ip_local_ports;
 
 	int sysctl_tcp_ecn;
+	int sysctl_tcp_ecn_fallback;
+
 	int sysctl_ip_no_pmtu_disc;
 	int sysctl_ip_fwd_use_pmtu;
 	int sysctl_ip_nonlocal_bind;
diff --git a/include/net/tcp.h b/include/net/tcp.h
index 0d85223efa4c..2bb2bad21d5c 100644
--- a/include/net/tcp.h
+++ b/include/net/tcp.h
@@ -712,6 +712,8 @@ static inline u32 tcp_skb_timestamp(const struct sk_buff *skb)
 #define TCPHDR_ECE 0x40
 #define TCPHDR_CWR 0x80
 
+#define TCPHDR_SYN_ECN	(TCPHDR_SYN | TCPHDR_ECE | TCPHDR_CWR)
+
 /* This is what the send packet queuing engine uses to pass
  * TCP per-packet control information to the transmission code.
  * We also store the host-order sequence numbers in here too.