tcp: enforce receive buffer memory limits by allowing the tcp window to shrink

Under certain circumstances, the tcp receive buffer memory limit
set by autotuning (sk_rcvbuf) is increased due to incoming data
packets as a result of the window not closing when it should be.
This can result in the receive buffer growing all the way up to
tcp_rmem[2], even for tcp sessions with a low BDP.

To reproduce:  Connect a TCP session with the receiver doing
nothing and the sender sending small packets (an infinite loop
of socket send() with 4 bytes of payload with a sleep of 1 ms
in between each send()).  This will cause the tcp receive buffer
to grow all the way up to tcp_rmem[2].

As a result, a host can have individual tcp sessions with receive
buffers of size tcp_rmem[2], and the host itself can reach tcp_mem
limits, causing the host to go into tcp memory pressure mode.

The fundamental issue is the relationship between the granularity
of the window scaling factor and the number of byte ACKed back
to the sender.  This problem has previously been identified in
RFC 7323, appendix F [1].

The Linux kernel currently adheres to never shrinking the window.

In addition to the overallocation of memory mentioned above, the
current behavior is functionally incorrect, because once tcp_rmem[2]
is reached when no remediations remain (i.e. tcp collapse fails to
free up any more memory and there are no packets to prune from the
out-of-order queue), the receiver will drop in-window packets
resulting in retransmissions and an eventual timeout of the tcp
session.  A receive buffer full condition should instead result
in a zero window and an indefinite wait.

In practice, this problem is largely hidden for most flows.  It
is not applicable to mice flows.  Elephant flows can send data
fast enough to "overrun" the sk_rcvbuf limit (in a single ACK),
triggering a zero window.

But this problem does show up for other types of flows.  Examples
are websockets and other type of flows that send small amounts of
data spaced apart slightly in time.  In these cases, we directly
encounter the problem described in [1].

RFC 7323, section 2.4 [2], says there are instances when a retracted
window can be offered, and that TCP implementations MUST ensure
that they handle a shrinking window, as specified in RFC 1122,
section 4.2.2.16 [3].  All prior RFCs on the topic of tcp window
management have made clear that sender must accept a shrunk window
from the receiver, including RFC 793 [4] and RFC 1323 [5].

This patch implements the functionality to shrink the tcp window
when necessary to keep the right edge within the memory limit by
autotuning (sk_rcvbuf).  This new functionality is enabled with
the new sysctl: net.ipv4.tcp_shrink_window

Additional information can be found at:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/unbounded-memory-usage-by-tcp-for-receive-buffers-and-how-we-fixed-it/

[1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7323#appendix-F
[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7323#section-2.4
[3] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1122#page-91
[4] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793
[5] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1323

Signed-off-by: Mike Freemon <mfreemon@cloudflare.com>
Reviewed-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
index 356afe54951c..2afb0870648b 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/sysctl_net_ipv4.c
@@ -1480,6 +1480,15 @@ static struct ctl_table ipv4_net_table[] = {
 		.extra1		= SYSCTL_ZERO,
 		.extra2		= &tcp_syn_linear_timeouts_max,
 	},
+	{
+		.procname	= "tcp_shrink_window",
+		.data		= &init_net.ipv4.sysctl_tcp_shrink_window,
+		.maxlen		= sizeof(u8),
+		.mode		= 0644,
+		.proc_handler	= proc_dou8vec_minmax,
+		.extra1		= SYSCTL_ZERO,
+		.extra2		= SYSCTL_ONE,
+	},
 	{ }
 };