Date:	Sun, 10 Aug 2014 13:14:34 -0700
From:	Tom Herbert <therbert@...gle.com>
To:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>
Cc:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	Linux Netdev List <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 net-next] udp: clear rps flow table for packets recv on
 UDP unconnected sockets

On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 9:59 AM, Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2014-08-09 at 10:15 -0700, Tom Herbert wrote:
>> This patch addresses a problem posed by Eric Dumazet in RPS/RFS
>> concerning the interaction between connected sockets and traffic on
>> unnconnected sockets.
>>
>> On a server which has both traffic using connected connected sockets
>> and traffic that is going through unconnected UDP sockets, it is
>> very possible that the connected sockets could heavily populate the
>> RPS flow tables. Packets received on unconnected sockets would then
>> be steered based on unrelated entries in the flow tables which leads
>> to suboptimal steering. This happens even if the connections that
>> populate the table are inactive with no traffic, as long as the
>> connected sockets simply remain open unrelated traffic can be steered
>> using that information. This problem would further be exacerbated
>> if the packets on the unconnected UDP sockets are actually part of
>> long lived flows (which apparently would happen with QUIC in their
>> current implementation).
>>
>> This patch clears the RPS flow hash table for packet recieved on
>> unnconnected UDP sockets. The effect is that the "flows" on unconnected
>> socekts will be steered using RPS. We don't do this for unconnected UDP
>> tunnels (encap_rcv) under the assumption that the flow table entries
>> will be adjusted during processing of inner packets.
>>
>> Tested using super_netperf UDP_RR with 200 flows. Did not see any
>> noticeable regression in writing to flow table for every packet.
>>
>> Before fix:
>>   76.99% CPU utilization
>>   112/158/230 90/95/99% latencies
>>   1.62776e+06 tps
>>
>> After fix:
>>   76.03% CPU utilization
>>   115/162/239 90/95/99% latencies
>>   1.62257e+06 tps
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Tom Herbert <therbert@...gle.com>
>> ---
>>  net/ipv4/udp.c | 2 ++
>>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/net/ipv4/udp.c b/net/ipv4/udp.c
>> index f57c0e4..7ba764a 100644
>> --- a/net/ipv4/udp.c
>> +++ b/net/ipv4/udp.c
>> @@ -1444,6 +1444,8 @@ static int __udp_queue_rcv_skb(struct sock *sk, struct sk_buff *skb)
>>       if (inet_sk(sk)->inet_daddr) {
>>               sock_rps_save_rxhash(sk, skb);
>>               sk_mark_napi_id(sk, skb);
>> +     } else {
>> +             sock_rps_reset_flow_hash(skb->hash);
>>       }
>>
>>       rc = sock_queue_rcv_skb(sk, skb);
>
>
> I believe this patch is absolutely wrong.
>
> 1) Your benchmarks are either all TCP, either all UDP, so you cant see
> any problem with these kind of heuristics.
>
> Now, a server might have a mixed workload, with some TCP flows, and some
> thousands of 'unconnected' UDP messages per second.
>
> This patch would completely destroy TCP performance, by lowering RFS hit
> rate (table would be almost empty)
>
> If this was valid, admin would not setup RFS in the first place.
>
You also need to size the tables for your workload and desired hit
rate, this patch does not address that it is part of configuration the
admin needs to do. If the admin is unwilling to do this, then, yes,
they shouldn't bother setting up RFS!

> 2) there is no guarantee skb->hash at this time is spread, so you might
> add a false sharing in some cases (GRE tunnels for instance), as
> rps_reset_sock_flow() would constantly set the same entry to RPS_NO_CPU
> from multiple cpus.
>
> Lets face it, RFS only works if workload is specialized, not generic.
>

RFS is a probabilistic algorithm, it is not designed to be correct
100% of the time, but it is adaptive.

P(x) = probability of packet being steering to "incorrect" CPU. So RFS
is useful on server if P(x) < some delta, say 0.01.

P(x) = F(D, S): Probability of incorrect steering is a function of D,
flow distribution in some time quantum, and S size of the flow tables.
So for an expected flow distribution, table should be sized
accordingly to make P(X) < 0.01.

Assuming that the correct CPU choice for unconnected sockets is to use
RPS, then this patch fixes the problem of choosing an incorrect CPU
because of interference with *idle* TCP connections. Hence, reduces
P(x) for the work load.

> If you want RFS being more usable, you need to find a way so that UDP
> messages do not share a hash table used by TCP (which by definition only
> deals with connected flows)
>

Sorry, I don't see how this is feasible and would fundamentally break
the whole model that RPS/RFS is flow based, not protocol-flow based--
we don't need to know the protocol to steer packets. There is simply
nothing special about UDP, as far as RFS/RPS is concerned these are
flows. Note that connected UDP sockets work perfectly well and UDP
tunnels packet often carry TCP packets anyway which also work as
expected. Even in TCP, if the number of active connections far exceeds
the flow table size P(x) could start to approach 1.

>
>
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