TCP Projects for FreeBSD 8.0

This wiki page is a catalog of known major TCP projects underway for FreeBSD 8.0. More detailed information on the projects may be found below.

Project

Flag Wavers

Schedule

MFC 7?

Link

Summary

TCP Offload

KipMacy

Merge to CVS in progress

desired

?

Support for complete TCP connection offload to 10gbps network device drivers.

TCP overhaul

AndreOppermann

?

no

?

Andre is planning a general cleanup of the TCP implementation.

TCP pluggable congestion control

SamLeffler, RuiPaulo, AndreOppermann, KipMacy, James Healy, LawrenceStewart

Prototype in svn

desired

tcp_cc svn project

Abstract the congestion control mechanism so that they may be plugged; provide alternative algorithms, and support algorithms present for TOE cards.

TCP locking granularity/parallelism

RobertWatson

Planning phase

partially

?

Improve the granularity of TCP locking, and create new opportunities for parallel execution.

TCP ABI cleanup

RobertWatson

Planning phase

desired

tcpabi P4 project

Clean up data structures exported to userspace by TCP sysctls.

TCP ECN

RuiPaulo

Committed to HEAD

no

tcpecn P4 project

TCP Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)

TCP ABC

LawrenceStewart, RuiPaulo

Committed to HEAD

desired

N/A

TCP Appropriate Byte Counting

TCP UTO

RuiPaulo / FangWang

In preparation to be committed

no

?

Per-connection timeout period defined by the user.

TCP LO

RuiPaulo (?)

Waiting for RFC

no

?

Extension of the TCP options field.

TCP AO

RuiPaulo (?)

Waiting for RFC

no

?

Replacement of TCP-MD5 and more.

Schedule

So far, only a guess at the 8.0 schedule is possible:

Date

Significance

December 2008

All major TCP changes for 8.0 must be completed to allow six months of testing time before 8.0-RELEASE.

June 2009

Possible 8.0 release date

Projects

TCP Offload

Support for complete TCP connection offload to 10gbps network device drivers. Kip is the author of the Chelsio 10gbps driver for FreeBSD, and has updated the driver to support the prototype TOE interface now in CVS.

TCP overhaul

TCP pluggable congestion control

Several plans exist to merge support for pluggable congestion control for TCP, as well as provide support for algorithm selection for TOE device drivers. This may require moderate restructuring of TCP to abstract congestion control decisions currently scattered implicitly around the TCP implementation.

TCP locking granularity/parallelism

The TCP implementation is MPSAFE, but the tcbinfo lock protects all global data structures, so is acquired in the input path during lookup and in timers, leading to reduced parallelism. This task works to break down the tcbinfo lock, improving locking granularity, but also attempts to improve parallelism by distributing work over multiple CPUs and introducing weak CPU affinities for TCP connections.

TCP ABI cleanup

Perforce: //depot/user/rwatson/tcpabi/...

The "guts" of TCP data structures are currently exposed to userspace via sysctl, meaning that even minor kernel data structure layouts disturb the monitoring API/ABI used by user processes to track network connections. I.e., netstat. This task creates new exported data structures that contain no kernel-specific structures, such as mutexes or callout structures, and attempts to stabilize monitoring ABIs by adding plenty of padding for future extension.

TCP ECN

Perforce: //depot/projects/tcpecn/...

TCP ECN is a small modification to TCP end hosts and routers that notifies the peers when congestion is about to occur, allowing them to reduce the sending rate.

TCP ABC

TCP appropriate byte counting (RFC 3465) addresses a congestion control (CC) related issue introduced by the early TCP specs. It suggests increasing the congestion window by the number of bytes ACK'ed by a TCP ACK, as opposed to the current scheme which relies on an approximation driven by ACK clocking. ABC will also benefit the modular CC work as many of the new CC algorithms break some of the implicit assumptions required for the currently used approximation to function correctly.

TCP UTO

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5482.txt

From the Abstract:

TCP Long Options

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-eddy-tcp-loo-04.txt

From the Abstract:

TCP Authentication Option

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-tcpm-tcp-auth-opt-04.txt

From the Abstract:


CategoryHistorical

TCPProjects8 (last edited 2021-03-30T07:40:10+0000 by KubilayKocak)