/proc/sys/net/ipv4/* Variables: ip_forward - BOOLEAN 0 - disabled (default) not 0 - enabled Forward Packets between interfaces. This variable is special, its change resets all configuration parameters to their default state (RFC1122 for hosts, RFC1812 for routers) ip_default_ttl - INTEGER Default value of TTL field (Time To Live) for outgoing (but not forwarded) IP packets. Should be between 1 and 255 inclusive. Default: 64 (as recommended by RFC1700) ip_no_pmtu_disc - BOOLEAN Disable Path MTU Discovery. default FALSE min_pmtu - INTEGER default 552 - minimum discovered Path MTU route/max_size - INTEGER Maximum number of routes allowed in the kernel. Increase this when using large numbers of interfaces and/or routes. neigh/default/gc_thresh3 - INTEGER Maximum number of neighbor entries allowed. Increase this when using large numbers of interfaces and when communicating with large numbers of directly-connected peers. neigh/default/unres_qlen_bytes - INTEGER The maximum number of bytes which may be used by packets queued for each unresolved address by other network layers. (added in linux 3.3) neigh/default/unres_qlen - INTEGER The maximum number of packets which may be queued for each unresolved address by other network layers. (deprecated in linux 3.3) : use unres_qlen_bytes instead. mtu_expires - INTEGER Time, in seconds, that cached PMTU information is kept. min_adv_mss - INTEGER The advertised MSS depends on the first hop route MTU, but will never be lower than this setting. rt_cache_rebuild_count - INTEGER The per net-namespace route cache emergency rebuild threshold. Any net-namespace having its route cache rebuilt due to a hash bucket chain being too long more than this many times will have its route caching disabled IP Fragmentation: ipfrag_high_thresh - INTEGER Maximum memory used to reassemble IP fragments. When ipfrag_high_thresh bytes of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss packets until ipfrag_low_thresh is reached. ipfrag_low_thresh - INTEGER See ipfrag_high_thresh ipfrag_time - INTEGER Time in seconds to keep an IP fragment in memory. ipfrag_secret_interval - INTEGER Regeneration interval (in seconds) of the hash secret (or lifetime for the hash secret) for IP fragments. Default: 600 ipfrag_max_dist - INTEGER ipfrag_max_dist is a non-negative integer value which defines the maximum "disorder" which is allowed among fragments which share a common IP source address. Note that reordering of packets is not unusual, but if a large number of fragments arrive from a source IP address while a particular fragment queue remains incomplete, it probably indicates that one or more fragments belonging to that queue have been lost. When ipfrag_max_dist is positive, an additional check is done on fragments before they are added to a reassembly queue - if ipfrag_max_dist (or more) fragments have arrived from a particular IP address between additions to any IP fragment queue using that source address, it's presumed that one or more fragments in the queue are lost. The existing fragment queue will be dropped, and a new one started. An ipfrag_max_dist value of zero disables this check. Using a very small value, e.g. 1 or 2, for ipfrag_max_dist can result in unnecessarily dropping fragment queues when normal reordering of packets occurs, which could lead to poor application performance. Using a very large value, e.g. 50000, increases the likelihood of incorrectly reassembling IP fragments that originate from different IP datagrams, which could result in data corruption. Default: 64 INET peer storage: inet_peer_threshold - INTEGER The approximate size of the storage. Starting from this threshold entries will be thrown aggressively. This threshold also determines entries' time-to-live and time intervals between garbage collection passes. More entries, less time-to-live, less GC interval. inet_peer_minttl - INTEGER Minimum time-to-live of entries. Should be enough to cover fragment time-to-live on the reassembling side. This minimum time-to-live is guaranteed if the pool size is less than inet_peer_threshold. Measured in seconds. inet_peer_maxttl - INTEGER Maximum time-to-live of entries. Unused entries will expire after this period of time if there is no memory pressure on the pool (i.e. when the number of entries in the pool is very small). Measured in seconds. TCP variables: somaxconn - INTEGER Limit of socket listen() backlog, known in userspace as SOMAXCONN. Defaults to 128. See also tcp_max_syn_backlog for additional tuning for TCP sockets. tcp_abc - INTEGER Controls Appropriate Byte Count (ABC) defined in RFC3465. ABC is a way of increasing congestion window (cwnd) more slowly in response to partial acknowledgments. Possible values are: 0 increase cwnd once per acknowledgment (no ABC) 1 increase cwnd once per acknowledgment of full sized segment 2 allow increase cwnd by two if acknowledgment is of two segments to compensate for delayed acknowledgments. Default: 0 (off) tcp_abort_on_overflow - BOOLEAN If listening service is too slow to accept new connections, reset them. Default state is FALSE. It means that if overflow occurred due to a burst, connection will recover. Enable this option _only_ if you are really sure that listening daemon cannot be tuned to accept connections faster. Enabling this option can harm clients of your server. tcp_adv_win_scale - INTEGER Count buffering overhead as bytes/2^tcp_adv_win_scale (if tcp_adv_win_scale > 0) or bytes-bytes/2^(-tcp_adv_win_scale), if it is <= 0. Possible values are [-31, 31], inclusive. Default: 1 tcp_allowed_congestion_control - STRING Show/set the congestion control choices available to non-privileged processes. The list is a subset of those listed in tcp_available_congestion_control. Default is "reno" and the default setting (tcp_congestion_control). tcp_app_win - INTEGER Reserve max(window/2^tcp_app_win, mss) of window for application buffer. Value 0 is special, it means that nothing is reserved. Default: 31 tcp_available_congestion_control - STRING Shows the available congestion control choices that are registered. More congestion control algorithms may be available as modules, but not loaded. tcp_base_mss - INTEGER The initial value of search_low to be used by the packetization layer Path MTU discovery (MTU probing). If MTU probing is enabled, this is the initial MSS used by the connection. tcp_congestion_control - STRING Set the congestion control algorithm to be used for new connections. The algorithm "reno" is always available, but additional choices may be available based on kernel configuration. Default is set as part of kernel configuration. For passive connections, the listener congestion control choice is inherited. [see setsockopt(listenfd, SOL_TCP, TCP_CONGESTION, "name" ...) ] tcp_cookie_size - INTEGER Default size of TCP Cookie Transactions (TCPCT) option, that may be overridden on a per socket basis by the TCPCT socket option. Values greater than the maximum (16) are interpreted as the maximum. Values greater than zero and less than the minimum (8) are interpreted as the minimum. Odd values are interpreted as the next even value. Default: 0 (off). tcp_dsack - BOOLEAN Allows TCP to send "duplicate" SACKs. tcp_ecn - INTEGER Enable Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in TCP. ECN is only used when both ends of the TCP flow support it. It is useful to avoid losses due to congestion (when the bottleneck router supports ECN). Possible values are: 0 disable ECN 1 ECN enabled 2 Only server-side ECN enabled. If the other end does not support ECN, behavior is like with ECN disabled. Default: 2 tcp_fack - BOOLEAN Enable FACK congestion avoidance and fast retransmission. The value is not used, if tcp_sack is not enabled. tcp_fin_timeout - INTEGER Time to hold socket in state FIN-WAIT-2, if it was closed by our side. Peer can be broken and never close its side, or even died unexpectedly. Default value is 60sec. Usual value used in 2.2 was 180 seconds, you may restore it, but remember that if your machine is even underloaded WEB server, you risk to overflow memory with kilotons of dead sockets, FIN-WAIT-2 sockets are less dangerous than FIN-WAIT-1, because they eat maximum 1.5K of memory, but they tend to live longer. Cf. tcp_max_orphans. tcp_frto - INTEGER Enables Forward RTO-Recovery (F-RTO) defined in RFC4138. F-RTO is an enhanced recovery algorithm for TCP retransmission timeouts. It is particularly beneficial in wireless environments where packet loss is typically due to random radio interference rather than intermediate router congestion. F-RTO is sender-side only modification. Therefore it does not require any support from the peer. If set to 1, basic version is enabled. 2 enables SACK enhanced F-RTO if flow uses SACK. The basic version can be used also when SACK is in use though scenario(s) with it exists where F-RTO interacts badly with the packet counting of the SACK enabled TCP flow. tcp_frto_response - INTEGER When F-RTO has detected that a TCP retransmission timeout was spurious (i.e, the timeout would have been avoided had TCP set a longer retransmission timeout), TCP has several options what to do next. Possible values are: 0 Rate halving based; a smooth and conservative response, results in halved cwnd and ssthresh after one RTT 1 Very conservative response; not recommended because even though being valid, it interacts poorly with the rest of Linux TCP, halves cwnd and ssthresh immediately 2 Aggressive response; undoes congestion control measures that are now known to be unnecessary (ignoring the possibility of a lost retransmission that would require TCP to be more cautious), cwnd and ssthresh are restored to the values prior timeout Default: 0 (rate halving based) tcp_keepalive_time - INTEGER How often TCP sends out keepalive messages when keepalive is enabled. Default: 2hours. tcp_keepalive_probes - INTEGER How many keepalive probes TCP sends out, until it decides that the connection is broken. Default value: 9. tcp_keepalive_intvl - INTEGER How frequently the probes are send out. Multiplied by tcp_keepalive_probes it is time to kill not responding connection, after probes started. Default value: 75sec i.e. connection will be aborted after ~11 minutes of retries. tcp_low_latency - BOOLEAN If set, the TCP stack makes decisions that prefer lower latency as opposed to higher throughput. By default, this option is not set meaning that higher throughput is preferred. An example of an application where this default should be changed would be a Beowulf compute cluster. Default: 0 tcp_max_orphans - INTEGER Maximal number of TCP sockets not attached to any user file handle, held by system. If this number is exceeded orphaned connections are reset immediately and warning is printed. This limit exists only to prevent simple DoS attacks, you _must_ not rely on this or lower the limit artificially, but rather increase it (probably, after increasing installed memory), if network conditions require more than default value, and tune network services to linger and kill such states more aggressively. Let me to remind again: each orphan eats up to ~64K of unswappable memory. tcp_max_ssthresh - INTEGER Limited Slow-Start for TCP with large congestion windows (cwnd) defined in RFC3742. Limited slow-start is a mechanism to limit growth of the cwnd on the region where cwnd is larger than tcp_max_ssthresh. TCP increases cwnd by at most tcp_max_ssthresh segments, and by at least tcp_max_ssthresh/2 segments per RTT when the cwnd is above tcp_max_ssthresh. If TCP connection increased cwnd to thousands (or tens of thousands) segments, and thousands of packets were being dropped during slow-start, you can set tcp_max_ssthresh to improve performance for new TCP connection. Default: 0 (off) tcp_max_syn_backlog - INTEGER Maximal number of remembered connection requests, which have not received an acknowledgment from connecting client. The minimal value is 128 for low memory machines, and it will increase in proportion to the memory of machine. If server suffers from overload, try increasing this number. tcp_max_tw_buckets - INTEGER Maximal number of timewait sockets held by system simultaneously. If this number is exceeded time-wait socket is immediately destroyed and warning is printed. This limit exists only to prevent simple DoS attacks, you _must_ not lower the limit artificially, but rather increase it (probably, after increasing installed memory), if network conditions require more than default value. tcp_mem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, pressure, max min: below this number of pages TCP is not bothered about its memory appetite. pressure: when amount of memory allocated by TCP exceeds this number of pages, TCP moderates its memory consumption and enters memory pressure mode, which is exited when memory consumption falls under "min". max: number of pages allowed for queueing by all TCP sockets. Defaults are calculated at boot time from amount of available memory. tcp_moderate_rcvbuf - BOOLEAN If set, TCP performs receive buffer auto-tuning, attempting to automatically size the buffer (no greater than tcp_rmem[2]) to match the size required by the path for full throughput. Enabled by default. tcp_mtu_probing - INTEGER Controls TCP Packetization-Layer Path MTU Discovery. Takes three values: 0 - Disabled 1 - Disabled by default, enabled when an ICMP black hole detected 2 - Always enabled, use initial MSS of tcp_base_mss. tcp_no_metrics_save - BOOLEAN By default, TCP saves various connection metrics in the route cache when the connection closes, so that connections established in the near future can use these to set initial conditions. Usually, this increases overall performance, but may sometimes cause performance degradation. If set, TCP will not cache metrics on closing connections. tcp_orphan_retries - INTEGER This value influences the timeout of a locally closed TCP connection, when RTO retransmissions remain unacknowledged. See tcp_retries2 for more details. The default value is 8. If your machine is a loaded WEB server, you should think about lowering this value, such sockets may consume significant resources. Cf. tcp_max_orphans. tcp_reordering - INTEGER Maximal reordering of packets in a TCP stream. Default: 3 tcp_retrans_collapse - BOOLEAN Bug-to-bug compatibility with some broken printers. On retransmit try to send bigger packets to work around bugs in certain TCP stacks. tcp_retries1 - INTEGER This value influences the time, after which TCP decides, that something is wrong due to unacknowledged RTO retransmissions, and reports this suspicion to the network layer. See tcp_retries2 for more details. RFC 1122 recommends at least 3 retransmissions, which is the default. tcp_retries2 - INTEGER This value influences the timeout of an alive TCP connection, when RTO retransmissions remain unacknowledged. Given a value of N, a hypothetical TCP connection following exponential backoff with an initial RTO of TCP_RTO_MIN would retransmit N times before killing the connection at the (N+1)th RTO. The default value of 15 yields a hypothetical timeout of 924.6 seconds and is a lower bound for the effective timeout. TCP will effectively time out at the first RTO which exceeds the hypothetical timeout. RFC 1122 recommends at least 100 seconds for the timeout, which corresponds to a value of at least 8. tcp_rfc1337 - BOOLEAN If set, the TCP stack behaves conforming to RFC1337. If unset, we are not conforming to RFC, but prevent TCP TIME_WAIT assassination. Default: 0 tcp_rmem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, default, max min: Minimal size of receive buffer used by TCP sockets. It is guaranteed to each TCP socket, even under moderate memory pressure. Default: 1 page default: initial size of receive buffer used by TCP sockets. This value overrides net.core.rmem_default used by other protocols. Default: 87380 bytes. This value results in window of 65535 with default setting of tcp_adv_win_scale and tcp_app_win:0 and a bit less for default tcp_app_win. See below about these variables. max: maximal size of receive buffer allowed for automatically selected receiver buffers for TCP socket. This value does not override net.core.rmem_max. Calling setsockopt() with SO_RCVBUF disables automatic tuning of that socket's receive buffer size, in which case this value is ignored. Default: between 87380B and 6MB, depending on RAM size. tcp_sack - BOOLEAN Enable select acknowledgments (SACKS). tcp_slow_start_after_idle - BOOLEAN If set, provide RFC2861 behavior and time out the congestion window after an idle period. An idle period is defined at the current RTO. If unset, the congestion window will not be timed out after an idle period. Default: 1 tcp_stdurg - BOOLEAN Use the Host requirements interpretation of the TCP urgent pointer field. Most hosts use the older BSD interpretation, so if you turn this on Linux might not communicate correctly with them. Default: FALSE tcp_synack_retries - INTEGER Number of times SYNACKs for a passive TCP connection attempt will be retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. Default value is 5, which corresponds to ~180seconds. tcp_syncookies - BOOLEAN Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYNCOOKIES Send out syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to prevent against the common 'SYN flood attack' Default: FALSE Note, that syncookies is fallback facility. It MUST NOT be used to help highly loaded servers to stand against legal connection rate. If you see SYN flood warnings in your logs, but investigation shows that they occur because of overload with legal connections, you should tune another parameters until this warning disappear. See: tcp_max_syn_backlog, tcp_synack_retries, tcp_abort_on_overflow. syncookies seriously violate TCP protocol, do not allow to use TCP extensions, can result in serious degradation of some services (f.e. SMTP relaying), visible not by you, but your clients and relays, contacting you. While you see SYN flood warnings in logs not being really flooded, your server is seriously misconfigured. tcp_syn_retries - INTEGER Number of times initial SYNs for an active TCP connection attempt will be retransmitted. Should not be higher than 255. Default value is 5, which corresponds to ~180seconds. tcp_timestamps - BOOLEAN Enable timestamps as defined in RFC1323. tcp_tso_win_divisor - INTEGER This allows control over what percentage of the congestion window can be consumed by a single TSO frame. The setting of this parameter is a choice between burstiness and building larger TSO frames. Default: 3 tcp_tw_recycle - BOOLEAN Enable fast recycling TIME-WAIT sockets. Default value is 0. It should not be changed without advice/request of technical experts. tcp_tw_reuse - BOOLEAN Allow to reuse TIME-WAIT sockets for new connections when it is safe from protocol viewpoint. Default value is 0. It should not be changed without advice/request of technical experts. tcp_window_scaling - BOOLEAN Enable window scaling as defined in RFC1323. tcp_wmem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, default, max min: Amount of memory reserved for send buffers for TCP sockets. Each TCP socket has rights to use it due to fact of its birth. Default: 1 page default: initial size of send buffer used by TCP sockets. This value overrides net.core.wmem_default used by other protocols. It is usually lower than net.core.wmem_default. Default: 16K max: Maximal amount of memory allowed for automatically tuned send buffers for TCP sockets. This value does not override net.core.wmem_max. Calling setsockopt() with SO_SNDBUF disables automatic tuning of that socket's send buffer size, in which case this value is ignored. Default: between 64K and 4MB, depending on RAM size. tcp_workaround_signed_windows - BOOLEAN If set, assume no receipt of a window scaling option means the remote TCP is broken and treats the window as a signed quantity. If unset, assume the remote TCP is not broken even if we do not receive a window scaling option from them. Default: 0 tcp_dma_copybreak - INTEGER Lower limit, in bytes, of the size of socket reads that will be offloaded to a DMA copy engine, if one is present in the system and CONFIG_NET_DMA is enabled. Default: 4096 tcp_thin_linear_timeouts - BOOLEAN Enable dynamic triggering of linear timeouts for thin streams. If set, a check is performed upon retransmission by timeout to determine if the stream is thin (less than 4 packets in flight). As long as the stream is found to be thin, up to 6 linear timeouts may be performed before exponential backoff mode is initiated. This improves retransmission latency for non-aggressive thin streams, often found to be time-dependent. For more information on thin streams, see Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.txt Default: 0 tcp_thin_dupack - BOOLEAN Enable dynamic triggering of retransmissions after one dupACK for thin streams. If set, a check is performed upon reception of a dupACK to determine if the stream is thin (less than 4 packets in flight). As long as the stream is found to be thin, data is retransmitted on the first received dupACK. This improves retransmission latency for non-aggressive thin streams, often found to be time-dependent. For more information on thin streams, see Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.txt Default: 0 UDP variables: udp_mem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, pressure, max Number of pages allowed for queueing by all UDP sockets. min: Below this number of pages UDP is not bothered about its memory appetite. When amount of memory allocated by UDP exceeds this number, UDP starts to moderate memory usage. pressure: This value was introduced to follow format of tcp_mem. max: Number of pages allowed for queueing by all UDP sockets. Default is calculated at boot time from amount of available memory. udp_rmem_min - INTEGER Minimal size of receive buffer used by UDP sockets in moderation. Each UDP socket is able to use the size for receiving data, even if total pages of UDP sockets exceed udp_mem pressure. The unit is byte. Default: 1 page udp_wmem_min - INTEGER Minimal size of send buffer used by UDP sockets in moderation. Each UDP socket is able to use the size for sending data, even if total pages of UDP sockets exceed udp_mem pressure. The unit is byte. Default: 1 page CIPSOv4 Variables: cipso_cache_enable - BOOLEAN If set, enable additions to and lookups from the CIPSO label mapping cache. If unset, additions are ignored and lookups always result in a miss. However, regardless of the setting the cache is still invalidated when required when means you can safely toggle this on and off and the cache will always be "safe". Default: 1 cipso_cache_bucket_size - INTEGER The CIPSO label cache consists of a fixed size hash table with each hash bucket containing a number of cache entries. This variable limits the number of entries in each hash bucket; the larger the value the more CIPSO label mappings that can be cached. When the number of entries in a given hash bucket reaches this limit adding new entries causes the oldest entry in the bucket to be removed to make room. Default: 10 cipso_rbm_optfmt - BOOLEAN Enable the "Optimized Tag 1 Format" as defined in section 3.4.2.6 of the CIPSO draft specification (see Documentation/netlabel for details). This means that when set the CIPSO tag will be padded with empty categories in order to make the packet data 32-bit aligned. Default: 0 cipso_rbm_structvalid - BOOLEAN If set, do a very strict check of the CIPSO option when ip_options_compile() is called. If unset, relax the checks done during ip_options_compile(). Either way is "safe" as errors are caught else where in the CIPSO processing code but setting this to 0 (False) should result in less work (i.e. it should be faster) but could cause problems with other implementations that require strict checking. Default: 0 IP Variables: ip_local_port_range - 2 INTEGERS Defines the local port range that is used by TCP and UDP to choose the local port. The first number is the first, the second the last local port number. The default values are 32768 and 61000 respectively. ip_local_reserved_ports - list of comma separated ranges Specify the ports which are reserved for known third-party applications. These ports will not be used by automatic port assignments (e.g. when calling connect() or bind() with port number 0). Explicit port allocation behavior is unchanged. The format used for both input and output is a comma separated list of ranges (e.g. "1,2-4,10-10" for ports 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10). Writing to the file will clear all previously reserved ports and update the current list with the one given in the input. Note that ip_local_port_range and ip_local_reserved_ports settings are independent and both are considered by the kernel when determining which ports are available for automatic port assignments. You can reserve ports which are not in the current ip_local_port_range, e.g.: $ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range 32000 61000 $ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_reserved_ports 8080,9148 although this is redundant. However such a setting is useful if later the port range is changed to a value that will include the reserved ports. Default: Empty ip_nonlocal_bind - BOOLEAN If set, allows processes to bind() to non-local IP addresses, which can be quite useful - but may break some applications. Default: 0 ip_dynaddr - BOOLEAN If set non-zero, enables support for dynamic addresses. If set to a non-zero value larger than 1, a kernel log message will be printed when dynamic address rewriting occurs. Default: 0 icmp_echo_ignore_all - BOOLEAN If set non-zero, then the kernel will ignore all ICMP ECHO requests sent to it. Default: 0 icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts - BOOLEAN If set non-zero, then the kernel will ignore all ICMP ECHO and TIMESTAMP requests sent to it via broadcast/multicast. Default: 1 icmp_ratelimit - INTEGER Limit the maximal rates for sending ICMP packets whose type matches icmp_ratemask (see below) to specific targets. 0 to disable any limiting, otherwise the minimal space between responses in milliseconds. Default: 1000 icmp_ratemask - INTEGER Mask made of ICMP types for which rates are being limited. Significant bits: IHGFEDCBA9876543210 Default mask: 0000001100000011000 (6168) Bit definitions (see include/linux/icmp.h): 0 Echo Reply 3 Destination Unreachable * 4 Source Quench * 5 Redirect 8 Echo Request B Time Exceeded * C Parameter Problem * D Timestamp Request E Timestamp Reply F Info Request G Info Reply H Address Mask Request I Address Mask Reply * These are rate limited by default (see default mask above) icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses - BOOLEAN Some routers violate RFC1122 by sending bogus responses to broadcast frames. Such violations are normally logged via a kernel warning. If this is set to TRUE, the kernel will not give such warnings, which will avoid log file clutter. Default: FALSE icmp_errors_use_inbound_ifaddr - BOOLEAN If zero, icmp error messages are sent with the primary address of the exiting interface. If non-zero, the message will be sent with the primary address of the interface that received the packet that caused the icmp error. This is the behaviour network many administrators will expect from a router. And it can make debugging complicated network layouts much easier. Note that if no primary address exists for the interface selected, then the primary address of the first non-loopback interface that has one will be used regardless of this setting. Default: 0 igmp_max_memberships - INTEGER Change the maximum number of multicast groups we can subscribe to. Default: 20 Theoretical maximum value is bounded by having to send a membership report in a single datagram (i.e. the report can't span multiple datagrams, or risk confusing the switch and leaving groups you don't intend to). The number of supported groups 'M' is bounded by the number of group report entries you can fit into a single datagram of 65535 bytes. M = 65536-sizeof (ip header)/(sizeof(Group record)) Group records are variable length, with a minimum of 12 bytes. So net.ipv4.igmp_max_memberships should not be set higher than: (65536-24) / 12 = 5459 The value 5459 assumes no IP header options, so in practice this number may be lower. conf/interface/* changes special settings per interface (where "interface" is the name of your network interface) conf/all/* is special, changes the settings for all interfaces log_martians - BOOLEAN Log packets with impossible addresses to kernel log. log_martians for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/log_martians is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise accept_redirects - BOOLEAN Accept ICMP redirect messages. accept_redirects for the interface will be enabled if: - both conf/{all,interface}/accept_redirects are TRUE in the case forwarding for the interface is enabled or - at least one of conf/{all,interface}/accept_redirects is TRUE in the case forwarding for the interface is disabled accept_redirects for the interface will be disabled otherwise default TRUE (host) FALSE (router) forwarding - BOOLEAN Enable IP forwarding on this interface. mc_forwarding - BOOLEAN Do multicast routing. The kernel needs to be compiled with CONFIG_MROUTE and a multicast routing daemon is required. conf/all/mc_forwarding must also be set to TRUE to enable multicast routing for the interface medium_id - INTEGER Integer value used to differentiate the devices by the medium they are attached to. Two devices can have different id values when the broadcast packets are received only on one of them. The default value 0 means that the device is the only interface to its medium, value of -1 means that medium is not known. Currently, it is used to change the proxy_arp behavior: the proxy_arp feature is enabled for packets forwarded between two devices attached to different media. proxy_arp - BOOLEAN Do proxy arp. proxy_arp for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/proxy_arp is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise proxy_arp_pvlan - BOOLEAN Private VLAN proxy arp. Basically allow proxy arp replies back to the same interface (from which the ARP request/solicitation was received). This is done to support (ethernet) switch features, like RFC 3069, where the individual ports are NOT allowed to communicate with each other, but they are allowed to talk to the upstream router. As described in RFC 3069, it is possible to allow these hosts to communicate through the upstream router by proxy_arp'ing. Don't need to be used together with proxy_arp. This technology is known by different names: In RFC 3069 it is called VLAN Aggregation. Cisco and Allied Telesyn call it Private VLAN. Hewlett-Packard call it Source-Port filtering or port-isolation. Ericsson call it MAC-Forced Forwarding (RFC Draft). shared_media - BOOLEAN Send(router) or accept(host) RFC1620 shared media redirects. Overrides ip_secure_redirects. shared_media for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/shared_media is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise default TRUE secure_redirects - BOOLEAN Accept ICMP redirect messages only for gateways, listed in default gateway list. secure_redirects for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/secure_redirects is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise default TRUE send_redirects - BOOLEAN Send redirects, if router. send_redirects for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/send_redirects is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise Default: TRUE bootp_relay - BOOLEAN Accept packets with source address 0.b.c.d destined not to this host as local ones. It is supposed, that BOOTP relay daemon will catch and forward such packets. conf/all/bootp_relay must also be set to TRUE to enable BOOTP relay for the interface default FALSE Not Implemented Yet. accept_source_route - BOOLEAN Accept packets with SRR option. conf/all/accept_source_route must also be set to TRUE to accept packets with SRR option on the interface default TRUE (router) FALSE (host) accept_local - BOOLEAN Accept packets with local source addresses. In combination with suitable routing, this can be used to direct packets between two local interfaces over the wire and have them accepted properly. default FALSE rp_filter - INTEGER 0 - No source validation. 1 - Strict mode as defined in RFC3704 Strict Reverse Path Each incoming packet is tested against the FIB and if the interface is not the best reverse path the packet check will fail. By default failed packets are discarded. 2 - Loose mode as defined in RFC3704 Loose Reverse Path Each incoming packet's source address is also tested against the FIB and if the source address is not reachable via any interface the packet check will fail. Current recommended practice in RFC3704 is to enable strict mode to prevent IP spoofing from DDos attacks. If using asymmetric routing or other complicated routing, then loose mode is recommended. The max value from conf/{all,interface}/rp_filter is used when doing source validation on the {interface}. Default value is 0. Note that some distributions enable it in startup scripts. arp_filter - BOOLEAN 1 - Allows you to have multiple network interfaces on the same subnet, and have the ARPs for each interface be answered based on whether or not the kernel would route a packet from the ARP'd IP out that interface (therefore you must use source based routing for this to work). In other words it allows control of which cards (usually 1) will respond to an arp request. 0 - (default) The kernel can respond to arp requests with addresses from other interfaces. This may seem wrong but it usually makes sense, because it increases the chance of successful communication. IP addresses are owned by the complete host on Linux, not by particular interfaces. Only for more complex setups like load- balancing, does this behaviour cause problems. arp_filter for the interface will be enabled if at least one of conf/{all,interface}/arp_filter is set to TRUE, it will be disabled otherwise arp_announce - INTEGER Define different restriction levels for announcing the local source IP address from IP packets in ARP requests sent on interface: 0 - (default) Use any local address, configured on any interface 1 - Try to avoid local addresses that are not in the target's subnet for this interface. This mode is useful when target hosts reachable via this interface require the source IP address in ARP requests to be part of their logical network configured on the receiving interface. When we generate the request we will check all our subnets that include the target IP and will preserve the source address if it is from such subnet. If there is no such subnet we select source address according to the rules for level 2. 2 - Always use the best local address for this target. In this mode we ignore the source address in the IP packet and try to select local address that we prefer for talks with the target host. Such local address is selected by looking for primary IP addresses on all our subnets on the outgoing interface that include the target IP address. If no suitable local address is found we select the first local address we have on the outgoing interface or on all other interfaces, with the hope we will receive reply for our request and even sometimes no matter the source IP address we announce. The max value from conf/{all,interface}/arp_announce is used. Increasing the restriction level gives more chance for receiving answer from the resolved target while decreasing the level announces more valid sender's information. arp_ignore - INTEGER Define different modes for sending replies in response to received ARP requests that resolve local target IP addresses: 0 - (default): reply for any local target IP address, configured on any interface 1 - reply only if the target IP address is local address configured on the incoming interface 2 - reply only if the target IP address is local address configured on the incoming interface and both with the sender's IP address are part from same subnet on this interface 3 - do not reply for local addresses configured with scope host, only resolutions for global and link addresses are replied 4-7 - reserved 8 - do not reply for all local addresses The max value from conf/{all,interface}/arp_ignore is used when ARP request is received on the {interface} arp_notify - BOOLEAN Define mode for notification of address and device changes. 0 - (default): do nothing 1 - Generate gratuitous arp requests when device is brought up or hardware address changes. arp_accept - BOOLEAN Define behavior for gratuitous ARP frames who's IP is not already present in the ARP table: 0 - don't create new entries in the ARP table 1 - create new entries in the ARP table Both replies and requests type gratuitous arp will trigger the ARP table to be updated, if this setting is on. If the ARP table already contains the IP address of the gratuitous arp frame, the arp table will be updated regardless if this setting is on or off. app_solicit - INTEGER The maximum number of probes to send to the user space ARP daemon via netlink before dropping back to multicast probes (see mcast_solicit). Defaults to 0. disable_policy - BOOLEAN Disable IPSEC policy (SPD) for this interface disable_xfrm - BOOLEAN Disable IPSEC encryption on this interface, whatever the policy tag - INTEGER Allows you to write a number, which can be used as required. Default value is 0. Alexey Kuznetsov. kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru Updated by: Andi Kleen ak@muc.de Nicolas Delon delon.nicolas@wanadoo.fr /proc/sys/net/ipv6/* Variables: IPv6 has no global variables such as tcp_*. tcp_* settings under ipv4/ also apply to IPv6 [XXX?]. bindv6only - BOOLEAN Default value for IPV6_V6ONLY socket option, which restricts use of the IPv6 socket to IPv6 communication only. TRUE: disable IPv4-mapped address feature FALSE: enable IPv4-mapped address feature Default: FALSE (as specified in RFC3493) IPv6 Fragmentation: ip6frag_high_thresh - INTEGER Maximum memory used to reassemble IPv6 fragments. When ip6frag_high_thresh bytes of memory is allocated for this purpose, the fragment handler will toss packets until ip6frag_low_thresh is reached. ip6frag_low_thresh - INTEGER See ip6frag_high_thresh ip6frag_time - INTEGER Time in seconds to keep an IPv6 fragment in memory. ip6frag_secret_interval - INTEGER Regeneration interval (in seconds) of the hash secret (or lifetime for the hash secret) for IPv6 fragments. Default: 600 conf/default/*: Change the interface-specific default settings. conf/all/*: Change all the interface-specific settings. [XXX: Other special features than forwarding?] conf/all/forwarding - BOOLEAN Enable global IPv6 forwarding between all interfaces. IPv4 and IPv6 work differently here; e.g. netfilter must be used to control which interfaces may forward packets and which not. This also sets all interfaces' Host/Router setting 'forwarding' to the specified value. See below for details. This referred to as global forwarding. proxy_ndp - BOOLEAN Do proxy ndp. conf/interface/*: Change special settings per interface. The functional behaviour for certain settings is different depending on whether local forwarding is enabled or not. accept_ra - INTEGER Accept Router Advertisements; autoconfigure using them. It also determines whether or not to transmit Router Solicitations. If and only if the functional setting is to accept Router Advertisements, Router Solicitations will be transmitted. Possible values are: 0 Do not accept Router Advertisements. 1 Accept Router Advertisements if forwarding is disabled. 2 Overrule forwarding behaviour. Accept Router Advertisements even if forwarding is enabled. Functional default: enabled if local forwarding is disabled. disabled if local forwarding is enabled. accept_ra_defrtr - BOOLEAN Learn default router in Router Advertisement. Functional default: enabled if accept_ra is enabled. disabled if accept_ra is disabled. accept_ra_pinfo - BOOLEAN Learn Prefix Information in Router Advertisement. Functional default: enabled if accept_ra is enabled. disabled if accept_ra is disabled. accept_ra_rt_info_max_plen - INTEGER Maximum prefix length of Route Information in RA. Route Information w/ prefix larger than or equal to this variable shall be ignored. Functional default: 0 if accept_ra_rtr_pref is enabled. -1 if accept_ra_rtr_pref is disabled. accept_ra_rtr_pref - BOOLEAN Accept Router Preference in RA. Functional default: enabled if accept_ra is enabled. disabled if accept_ra is disabled. accept_redirects - BOOLEAN Accept Redirects. Functional default: enabled if local forwarding is disabled. disabled if local forwarding is enabled. accept_source_route - INTEGER Accept source routing (routing extension header). >= 0: Accept only routing header type 2. < 0: Do not accept routing header. Default: 0 autoconf - BOOLEAN Autoconfigure addresses using Prefix Information in Router Advertisements. Functional default: enabled if accept_ra_pinfo is enabled. disabled if accept_ra_pinfo is disabled. dad_transmits - INTEGER The amount of Duplicate Address Detection probes to send. Default: 1 forwarding - INTEGER Configure interface-specific Host/Router behaviour. Note: It is recommended to have the same setting on all interfaces; mixed router/host scenarios are rather uncommon. Possible values are: 0 Forwarding disabled 1 Forwarding enabled FALSE (0): By default, Host behaviour is assumed. This means: 1. IsRouter flag is not set in Neighbour Advertisements. 2. If accept_ra is TRUE (default), transmit Router Solicitations. 3. If accept_ra is TRUE (default), accept Router Advertisements (and do autoconfiguration). 4. If accept_redirects is TRUE (default), accept Redirects. TRUE (1): If local forwarding is enabled, Router behaviour is assumed. This means exactly the reverse from the above: 1. IsRouter flag is set in Neighbour Advertisements. 2. Router Solicitations are not sent unless accept_ra is 2. 3. Router Advertisements are ignored unless accept_ra is 2. 4. Redirects are ignored. Default: 0 (disabled) if global forwarding is disabled (default), otherwise 1 (enabled). hop_limit - INTEGER Default Hop Limit to set. Default: 64 mtu - INTEGER Default Maximum Transfer Unit Default: 1280 (IPv6 required minimum) router_probe_interval - INTEGER Minimum interval (in seconds) between Router Probing described in RFC4191. Default: 60 router_solicitation_delay - INTEGER Number of seconds to wait after interface is brought up before sending Router Solicitations. Default: 1 router_solicitation_interval - INTEGER Number of seconds to wait between Router Solicitations. Default: 4 router_solicitations - INTEGER Number of Router Solicitations to send until assuming no routers are present. Default: 3 use_tempaddr - INTEGER Preference for Privacy Extensions (RFC3041). <= 0 : disable Privacy Extensions == 1 : enable Privacy Extensions, but prefer public addresses over temporary addresses. > 1 : enable Privacy Extensions and prefer temporary addresses over public addresses. Default: 0 (for most devices) -1 (for point-to-point devices and loopback devices) temp_valid_lft - INTEGER valid lifetime (in seconds) for temporary addresses. Default: 604800 (7 days) temp_prefered_lft - INTEGER Preferred lifetime (in seconds) for temporary addresses. Default: 86400 (1 day) max_desync_factor - INTEGER Maximum value for DESYNC_FACTOR, which is a random value that ensures that clients don't synchronize with each other and generate new addresses at exactly the same time. value is in seconds. Default: 600 regen_max_retry - INTEGER Number of attempts before give up attempting to generate valid temporary addresses. Default: 5 max_addresses - INTEGER Maximum number of autoconfigured addresses per interface. Setting to zero disables the limitation. It is not recommended to set this value too large (or to zero) because it would be an easy way to crash the kernel by allowing too many addresses to be created. Default: 16 disable_ipv6 - BOOLEAN Disable IPv6 operation. If accept_dad is set to 2, this value will be dynamically set to TRUE if DAD fails for the link-local address. Default: FALSE (enable IPv6 operation) When this value is changed from 1 to 0 (IPv6 is being enabled), it will dynamically create a link-local address on the given interface and start Duplicate Address Detection, if necessary. When this value is changed from 0 to 1 (IPv6 is being disabled), it will dynamically delete all address on the given interface. accept_dad - INTEGER Whether to accept DAD (Duplicate Address Detection). 0: Disable DAD 1: Enable DAD (default) 2: Enable DAD, and disable IPv6 operation if MAC-based duplicate link-local address has been found. force_tllao - BOOLEAN Enable sending the target link-layer address option even when responding to a unicast neighbor solicitation. Default: FALSE Quoting from RFC 2461, section 4.4, Target link-layer address: "The option MUST be included for multicast solicitations in order to avoid infinite Neighbor Solicitation "recursion" when the peer node does not have a cache entry to return a Neighbor Advertisements message. When responding to unicast solicitations, the option can be omitted since the sender of the solicitation has the correct link- layer address; otherwise it would not have be able to send the unicast solicitation in the first place. However, including the link-layer address in this case adds little overhead and eliminates a potential race condition where the sender deletes the cached link-layer address prior to receiving a response to a previous solicitation." icmp/*: ratelimit - INTEGER Limit the maximal rates for sending ICMPv6 packets. 0 to disable any limiting, otherwise the minimal space between responses in milliseconds. Default: 1000 IPv6 Update by: Pekka Savola YOSHIFUJI Hideaki / USAGI Project /proc/sys/net/bridge/* Variables: bridge-nf-call-arptables - BOOLEAN 1 : pass bridged ARP traffic to arptables' FORWARD chain. 0 : disable this. Default: 1 bridge-nf-call-iptables - BOOLEAN 1 : pass bridged IPv4 traffic to iptables' chains. 0 : disable this. Default: 1 bridge-nf-call-ip6tables - BOOLEAN 1 : pass bridged IPv6 traffic to ip6tables' chains. 0 : disable this. Default: 1 bridge-nf-filter-vlan-tagged - BOOLEAN 1 : pass bridged vlan-tagged ARP/IP/IPv6 traffic to {arp,ip,ip6}tables. 0 : disable this. Default: 1 bridge-nf-filter-pppoe-tagged - BOOLEAN 1 : pass bridged pppoe-tagged IP/IPv6 traffic to {ip,ip6}tables. 0 : disable this. Default: 1 proc/sys/net/sctp/* Variables: addip_enable - BOOLEAN Enable or disable extension of Dynamic Address Reconfiguration (ADD-IP) functionality specified in RFC5061. This extension provides the ability to dynamically add and remove new addresses for the SCTP associations. 1: Enable extension. 0: Disable extension. Default: 0 addip_noauth_enable - BOOLEAN Dynamic Address Reconfiguration (ADD-IP) requires the use of authentication to protect the operations of adding or removing new addresses. This requirement is mandated so that unauthorized hosts would not be able to hijack associations. However, older implementations may not have implemented this requirement while allowing the ADD-IP extension. For reasons of interoperability, we provide this variable to control the enforcement of the authentication requirement. 1: Allow ADD-IP extension to be used without authentication. This should only be set in a closed environment for interoperability with older implementations. 0: Enforce the authentication requirement Default: 0 auth_enable - BOOLEAN Enable or disable Authenticated Chunks extension. This extension provides the ability to send and receive authenticated chunks and is required for secure operation of Dynamic Address Reconfiguration (ADD-IP) extension. 1: Enable this extension. 0: Disable this extension. Default: 0 prsctp_enable - BOOLEAN Enable or disable the Partial Reliability extension (RFC3758) which is used to notify peers that a given DATA should no longer be expected. 1: Enable extension 0: Disable Default: 1 max_burst - INTEGER The limit of the number of new packets that can be initially sent. It controls how bursty the generated traffic can be. Default: 4 association_max_retrans - INTEGER Set the maximum number for retransmissions that an association can attempt deciding that the remote end is unreachable. If this value is exceeded, the association is terminated. Default: 10 max_init_retransmits - INTEGER The maximum number of retransmissions of INIT and COOKIE-ECHO chunks that an association will attempt before declaring the destination unreachable and terminating. Default: 8 path_max_retrans - INTEGER The maximum number of retransmissions that will be attempted on a given path. Once this threshold is exceeded, the path is considered unreachable, and new traffic will use a different path when the association is multihomed. Default: 5 rto_initial - INTEGER The initial round trip timeout value in milliseconds that will be used in calculating round trip times. This is the initial time interval for retransmissions. Default: 3000 rto_max - INTEGER The maximum value (in milliseconds) of the round trip timeout. This is the largest time interval that can elapse between retransmissions. Default: 60000 rto_min - INTEGER The minimum value (in milliseconds) of the round trip timeout. This is the smallest time interval the can elapse between retransmissions. Default: 1000 hb_interval - INTEGER The interval (in milliseconds) between HEARTBEAT chunks. These chunks are sent at the specified interval on idle paths to probe the state of a given path between 2 associations. Default: 30000 sack_timeout - INTEGER The amount of time (in milliseconds) that the implementation will wait to send a SACK. Default: 200 valid_cookie_life - INTEGER The default lifetime of the SCTP cookie (in milliseconds). The cookie is used during association establishment. Default: 60000 cookie_preserve_enable - BOOLEAN Enable or disable the ability to extend the lifetime of the SCTP cookie that is used during the establishment phase of SCTP association 1: Enable cookie lifetime extension. 0: Disable Default: 1 rcvbuf_policy - INTEGER Determines if the receive buffer is attributed to the socket or to association. SCTP supports the capability to create multiple associations on a single socket. When using this capability, it is possible that a single stalled association that's buffering a lot of data may block other associations from delivering their data by consuming all of the receive buffer space. To work around this, the rcvbuf_policy could be set to attribute the receiver buffer space to each association instead of the socket. This prevents the described blocking. 1: rcvbuf space is per association 0: recbuf space is per socket Default: 0 sndbuf_policy - INTEGER Similar to rcvbuf_policy above, this applies to send buffer space. 1: Send buffer is tracked per association 0: Send buffer is tracked per socket. Default: 0 sctp_mem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, pressure, max Number of pages allowed for queueing by all SCTP sockets. min: Below this number of pages SCTP is not bothered about its memory appetite. When amount of memory allocated by SCTP exceeds this number, SCTP starts to moderate memory usage. pressure: This value was introduced to follow format of tcp_mem. max: Number of pages allowed for queueing by all SCTP sockets. Default is calculated at boot time from amount of available memory. sctp_rmem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, default, max Only the first value ("min") is used, "default" and "max" are ignored. min: Minimal size of receive buffer used by SCTP socket. It is guaranteed to each SCTP socket (but not association) even under moderate memory pressure. Default: 1 page sctp_wmem - vector of 3 INTEGERs: min, default, max Currently this tunable has no effect. addr_scope_policy - INTEGER Control IPv4 address scoping - draft-stewart-tsvwg-sctp-ipv4-00 0 - Disable IPv4 address scoping 1 - Enable IPv4 address scoping 2 - Follow draft but allow IPv4 private addresses 3 - Follow draft but allow IPv4 link local addresses Default: 1 /proc/sys/net/core/* dev_weight - INTEGER The maximum number of packets that kernel can handle on a NAPI interrupt, it's a Per-CPU variable. Default: 64 /proc/sys/net/unix/* max_dgram_qlen - INTEGER The maximum length of dgram socket receive queue Default: 10 UNDOCUMENTED: /proc/sys/net/irda/* fast_poll_increase FIXME warn_noreply_time FIXME discovery_slots FIXME slot_timeout FIXME max_baud_rate FIXME discovery_timeout FIXME lap_keepalive_time FIXME max_noreply_time FIXME max_tx_data_size FIXME max_tx_window FIXME min_tx_turn_time FIXME