Re: [RFC PATCH 2/2] tcp: Early SYN limit and SYN cookie handling to mitigate SYN floods

Eric Dumazet
2012-05-30T06:41:19Z

On Tue, 2012-05-29 at 12:37 -0700, Andi Kleen wrote:

> So basically handling syncookie lockless?
>
> Makes sense. Syncookies is a bit obsolete these days of course, due
> to the lack of options. But may be still useful for this.
>
> Obviously you'll need to clean up the patch and support IPv6,
> but the basic idea looks good to me.

Also TCP Fast Open should be a good way to make the SYN flood no more
effective.

Yuchung Cheng and Jerry Chu should upstream this code in a very near
future.

Another way to mitigate SYN scalability issues before the full RCU
solution I was cooking is to either :

1) Use a hardware filter (like on Intel NICS) to force all SYN packets
going to one queue (so that they are all serviced on one CPU)

2) Tweak RPS (__skb_get_rxhash()) so that SYN packets rxhash is not
dependent on src port/address, to get same effect (All SYN packets
processed by one cpu). Note this only address the SYN flood problem, not
the general 3WHS scalability one, since if real connection is
established, the third packet (ACK from client) will have the 'real'
rxhash and will be processed by another cpu.

(Of course, RPS must be enabled to benefit from this)

Untested patch to get the idea :

include/net/flow_keys.h | 1 +
net/core/dev.c | 8 ++++++++
net/core/flow_dissector.c | 9 +++++++++
3 files changed, 18 insertions(+)

diff --git a/include/net/flow_keys.h b/include/net/flow_keys.h
index 80461c1..b5bae21 100644
--- a/include/net/flow_keys.h
+++ b/include/net/flow_keys.h
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ struct flow_keys {
__be16 port16[2];
};
u8 ip_proto;
+ u8 tcpflags;
};

extern bool skb_flow_dissect(const struct sk_buff *skb, struct flow_keys *flow);
diff --git a/net/core/dev.c b/net/core/dev.c
index cd09819..c9c039e 100644
--- a/net/core/dev.c
+++ b/net/core/dev.c
@@ -135,6 +135,7 @@
#include <linux/net_tstamp.h>
#include <linux/static_key.h>
#include <net/flow_keys.h>
+#include <net/tcp.h>

#include "net-sysfs.h"

@@ -2614,6 +2615,12 @@ void __skb_get_rxhash(struct sk_buff *skb)
return;

if (keys.ports) {
+ if ((keys.tcpflags & (TCPHDR_SYN | TCPHDR_ACK)) == TCPHDR_SYN) {
+ hash = jhash_2words((__force u32)keys.dst,
+ (__force u32)keys.port16[1],
+ hashrnd);
+ goto end;
+ }
if ((__force u16)keys.port16[1] < (__force u16)keys.port16[0])
swap(keys.port16[0], keys.port16[1]);
skb->l4_rxhash = 1;
@@ -2626,6 +2633,7 @@ void __skb_get_rxhash(struct sk_buff *skb)
hash = jhash_3words((__force u32)keys.dst,
(__force u32)keys.src,
(__force u32)keys.ports, hashrnd);
+end:
if (!hash)
hash = 1;

diff --git a/net/core/flow_dissector.c b/net/core/flow_dissector.c
index a225089..cd4aedf 100644
--- a/net/core/flow_dissector.c
+++ b/net/core/flow_dissector.c
@@ -137,6 +137,15 @@ ipv6:
ports = skb_header_pointer(skb, nhoff, sizeof(_ports), &_ports);
if (ports)
flow->ports = *ports;
+ if (ip_proto == IPPROTO_TCP) {
+ __u8 *tcpflags, _tcpflags;
+
+ tcpflags = skb_header_pointer(skb, nhoff + 13,
+ sizeof(_tcpflags),
+ &_tcpflags);
+ if (tcpflags)
+ flow->tcpflags = *tcpflags;
+ }
}

return true;