Re: Incremental update of TCP Checksum

Richard B. Johnson
2003-09-17T13:19:43Z

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Raf D'Halleweyn wrote:

>
> This is what I wrote some time ago. But I haven't used it recently.
>
> /* Incrementaly update a checksum, given old and new 32bit words */
> static inline __u16 incr_check_l(__u16 old_check, __u32 old, __u32 new)
> { /* see RFC's 1624, 1141 and 1071 for incremental checksum updates */
> __u32 l;
> old_check = ~ntohs(old_check);
> old = ~old;
> l = (__u32)old_check + (old>>16) + (old&0xffff)
> + (new>>16) + (new&0xffff);
> return htons(~( (__u16)(l>>16) + (l&0xffff) ));
> }
>
>
> I have a similar function that can be used when you only change a 16bit
> word:
>
>
> /* Incrementaly update a checksum, given old and new 16bit words */
> static inline __u16 incr_check_s(__u16 old_check, __u16 old, __u16 new)
> { /* see RFC's 1624, 1141 and 1071 for incremental checksum updates
> */
> __u32 l;
> old_check = ~ntohs(old_check);
> old = ~old;
> l = (__u32)old_check + old + new;
> return htons(~( (__u16)(l>>16) + (l&0xffff) ));
> }
>
>
> On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 16:32, Vishwas Raman wrote:
> > Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
> > > On Tue, 16 Sep 2003 11:50:16 PDT, Vishwas Raman <vishwas@eternal-
> > > systems.com> said:
> > >
> > >
> > >>Can anyone out there tell me the algorithm to update the checksum
> > >>without having to recalculate it.
> > >
> > >
> > > The canonical source is the RFCs:
> > >
> > > 1071 Computing the Internet checksum. R.T. Braden, D.A. Borman, C.
> > > Partridge. Sep-01-1988. (Format: TXT=54941 bytes) (Updated by
> > > RFC1141) (Status: UNKNOWN)
> > >
> > > 1141 Incremental updating of the Internet checksum. T. Mallory, A.
> > > Kullberg. Jan-01-1990. (Format: TXT=3587 bytes) (Updates RFC1071)
> > > (Updated by RFC1624) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
> > >
> > > 1624 Computation of the Internet Checksum via Incremental Update. A.
> > > Rijsinghani, Ed.. May 1994. (Format: TXT=9836 bytes) (Updates
> > > RFC1141) (Status: INFORMATIONAL)
> > >
> > > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1071.txt
> > > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1141.txt
> > > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1624.txt
> >
> > As mentioned in RFC1624, I did the following.
> > void changePacket(struct sk_buff* skb)
> > {
> > struct tcphdr *tcpHdr = skb->h.th;
> >
> > // Verifying the tcp checksum works here...
> >
> > __u16 oldDoff = tcpHeader->doff;
> > tcpHeader->doff += 1;
> >
> > // Formula from RFC1624 is HC' = ~(C + (-m) + m')
> > // where HC - old checksum in header
> > // C - one's complement sum of old header
> > // HC' - new checksum in header
> > // C' - one's complement sum of new header
> > // m - old value of a 16-bit field
> > // m' - new value of a 16-bit field
> >
> > long cksum = (~(tcpHdr->check))&0xffff;
> > cksum += (__u16)~oldDoff;
> > cksum += tcpHeader->doff;
> > while (cksum >> 16)
> > {
> > cksum = (cksum & 0xffff) + (cksum >> 16);
> > }
> > tcpHeader->check = ~cksum;
> >
> > // Verifying tcp checksum here fails with bad cksum
> > }
> >
> > Is there any glaring mistake in the above code. If so, can someone
> > please let me know what it is. It will be of great help.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -Vishwas.

This is all wonderful. This assumes that the stuff being modified
in the packet is on well-defined boundaries, seldom the case when
you are re-writing packet data, but certainly the case if you
are re-writing an IP address.

Also, modern switches do not rewrite checksums using software.
Therefore, they do not use a re-write algorithm as stated by
others. The checksum gets calculated "for free" during the
hardware transfer to an output holding FIFO. It is done using
an ASIC with the appropriate adder and "stumble-carry".

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
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