netdev - Re: NAT stops forwarding ACKs after PMTU discovery

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Date:	Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:49:19 +0200
From:	Christoph Paasch <christoph.paasch@...ouvain.be>
To:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
Cc:	Corey Hickey <bugfood-ml@...ooh.org>,
	Jozsef Kadlecsik <kadlec@...ckhole.kfki.hu>,
	Linux Netdev List <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	netfilter-devel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: NAT stops forwarding ACKs after PMTU discovery

On 19/08/13 - 06:24:17, Eric Dumazet wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-08-19 at 14:33 +0200, Christoph Paasch wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I would say, the problem is due to a sequence-number rewriting
> > middlebox, who does not correctly handle the SACK-blocks.
> > 
> > In remote.pcap, you see:
> > Packet#10: A Dup-ACK: ACK 1005503816, SACK: 1005505184-1005505648
> > The SACK actually covers Packet#9
> > 
> > In tun0.pcap, you have:
> > Packet#9: The one that is SACK'ed: SEQ: 3514869772
> > Packet#11: The Dup-ACK: ACK: 3514868404, SACK: 3570452498-3570452962
> > 
> > You can see that the SACK-block is not really aligned with the ACK-numbers.
> > 
> > Netfilter is probably dropping the Dup-ACK, because the SACK-block is
> > acknowledging unseen data.
> > 
> > 
> > There are middleboxes out there that randomize the sequence numbers, due to
> > an old bug in Windows, where the initial sequence number was not
> > sufficiently randomized. There are some of these middleboxes, who simply do
> > not support SACK, thus modify only the sequence numbers of the TCP-header
> > (https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-12668#TCP_Sequence_Number_Randomization_and_SACK).
> > 
> > This results in a TCP retransmission timeout on the sender, because of
> > the invalid SACK-blocks, the duplicate ACKs are not accounted. This
> > completly kills the performance, as you can see in our presentation given at
> > IETF87: http://tools.ietf.org/agenda/87/slides/slides-87-tcpm-11.pdf
> > 
> > We have a patch that accounts DUP-ACKs with invalid SACK-blocks effectively
> > as duplicate acknowledgments. I can send the patches, if the
> > netdev-community is interested in accepting these upstream.
> > 
> 
> You mean a netfilter patch, a tcp patch, or both ?

It's a TCP-patch, that interprets duplicate-acks with invalid SACK-blocks as
duplicate acks in tcp_sock->sacked_out.


Christoph

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