[PATCH 5.7 037/265] tcp_cubic: fix spurious HYSTART_DELAY exit upon drop in min RTT

Sasha Levin
2020-06-29T21:31:52Z

From: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>

[ Upstream commit b344579ca8478598937215f7005d6c7b84d28aee ]

Mirja Kuehlewind reported a bug in Linux TCP CUBIC Hystart, where
Hystart HYSTART_DELAY mechanism can exit Slow Start spuriously on an
ACK when the minimum rtt of a connection goes down. From inspection it
is clear from the existing code that this could happen in an example
like the following:

o The first 8 RTT samples in a round trip are 150ms, resulting in a
curr_rtt of 150ms and a delay_min of 150ms.

o The 9th RTT sample is 100ms. The curr_rtt does not change after the
first 8 samples, so curr_rtt remains 150ms. But delay_min can be
lowered at any time, so delay_min falls to 100ms. The code executes
the HYSTART_DELAY comparison between curr_rtt of 150ms and delay_min
of 100ms, and the curr_rtt is declared far enough above delay_min to
force a (spurious) exit of Slow start.

The fix here is simple: allow every RTT sample in a round trip to
lower the curr_rtt.

Fixes: ae27e98a5152 ("[TCP] CUBIC v2.3")
Reported-by: Mirja Kuehlewind <mirja.kuehlewind@ericsson.com>
Signed-off-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Acked-by: Soheil Hassas Yeganeh <soheil@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
---
net/ipv4/tcp_cubic.c | 5 ++---
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_cubic.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_cubic.c
index 8f8eefd3a3ce1..c7bf5b26bf0c2 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/tcp_cubic.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/tcp_cubic.c
@@ -432,10 +432,9 @@ static void hystart_update(struct sock *sk, u32 delay)

if (hystart_detect & HYSTART_DELAY) {
/* obtain the minimum delay of more than sampling packets */
+ if (ca->curr_rtt > delay)
+ ca->curr_rtt = delay;
if (ca->sample_cnt < HYSTART_MIN_SAMPLES) {
- if (ca->curr_rtt > delay)
- ca->curr_rtt = delay;
-
ca->sample_cnt++;
} else {
if (ca->curr_rtt > ca->delay_min +
--
2.25.1