[PATCH net-next] tcp: apply a floor of 1 for RTT samples from TCP timestamps

[Jianfeng Wang <jfwang@google.com>]

For retransmitted packets, TCP needs to resort to using TCP timestamps
for computing RTT samples. In the common case where the data and ACK
fall in the same 1-millisecond interval, TCP senders with millisecond-
granularity TCP timestamps compute a ca_rtt_us of 0. This ca_rtt_us
of 0 propagates to rs->rtt_us.

This value of 0 can cause performance problems for congestion control
modules. For example, in BBR, the zero min_rtt sample can bring the
min_rtt and BDP estimate down to 0, reduce snd_cwnd and result in a
low throughput. It would be hard to mitigate this with filtering in
the congestion control module, because the proper floor to apply would
depend on the method of RTT sampling (using timestamp options or
internally-saved transmission timestamps).

This fix applies a floor of 1 for the RTT sample delta from TCP
timestamps, so that seq_rtt_us, ca_rtt_us, and rs->rtt_us will be at
least 1 * (USEC_PER_SEC / TCP_TS_HZ).

Note that the receiver RTT computation in tcp_rcv_rtt_measure() and
min_rtt computation in tcp_update_rtt_min() both already apply a floor
of 1 timestamp tick, so this commit makes the code more consistent in
avoiding this edge case of a value of 0.

Signed-off-by: Jianfeng Wang <jfwang@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Neal Cardwell <ncardwell@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Acked-by: Kevin Yang <yyd@google.com>
Acked-by: Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com>
---
 net/ipv4/tcp_input.c | 2 ++
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
index a018bafd7bdf..b725288b7e67 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
@@ -2950,6 +2950,8 @@ static bool tcp_ack_update_rtt(struct sock *sk, const int flag,
 		u32 delta = tcp_time_stamp(tp) - tp->rx_opt.rcv_tsecr;
 
 		if (likely(delta < INT_MAX / (USEC_PER_SEC / TCP_TS_HZ))) {
+			if (!delta)
+				delta = 1;
 			seq_rtt_us = delta * (USEC_PER_SEC / TCP_TS_HZ);
 			ca_rtt_us = seq_rtt_us;
 		}
-- 
2.28.0.163.g6104cc2f0b6-goog