From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tim Chen Subject: Re: 2.6.19-rc1: Volanomark slowdown Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 10:38:52 -0800 Message-ID: <1163011132.10806.189.camel@localhost.localdomain> References: <1162924354.10806.172.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1163001318.3138.346.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20061108162955.GA4364@suse.de> Reply-To: tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Arjan van de Ven , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, davem@sunset.davemloft.net, kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru, netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mga05.intel.com ([192.55.52.89]:53766 "EHLO fmsmga101.fm.intel.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1161694AbWKHT2V (ORCPT ); Wed, 8 Nov 2006 14:28:21 -0500 To: Olaf Kirch In-Reply-To: <20061108162955.GA4364@suse.de> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 17:29 +0100, Olaf Kirch wrote: > Is it proven that the number of ACKs actually cause bandwidth problems? > I found Volanomark to exercise the scheduler more than anything else, > so maybe the slowdown, while triggered by an increased number of ACKs, > is caused by something else entirely. > The patch in question affects purely TCP and not the scheduler. I don't think the scheduler has anything to do with the slowdown seen after the patch is applied. The total number of messages being exchanged around the chatrooms in Volanomark remain unchanged. But ACKS increase by 3.5 times and segments received increase by 38% from netstat. ACK is comparable in size to the actual Volanomark messages as those are pretty small (<100 byte). So I think it is reasonable to conclude that the increase in TCP traffic reduce the bandwidth and throughput in Volanomark. However, Volanomark is just a benchmark to alert us to changes. If in real applications with small segment, this patch is needed to fix congestion window adjustment as Dave pointed out, and impact on bandwidth not as important, so be it. Tim