net: Consistent skb timestamping

With RPS inclusion, skb timestamping is not consistent in RX path.

If netif_receive_skb() is used, its deferred after RPS dispatch.

If netif_rx() is used, its done before RPS dispatch.

This can give strange tcpdump timestamps results.

I think timestamping should be done as soon as possible in the receive
path, to get meaningful values (ie timestamps taken at the time packet
was delivered by NIC driver to our stack), even if NAPI already can
defer timestamping a bit (RPS can help to reduce the gap)

Tom Herbert prefer to sample timestamps after RPS dispatch. In case
sampling is expensive (HPET/acpi_pm on x86), this makes sense.

Let admins switch from one mode to another, using a new
sysctl, /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_tstamp_prequeue

Its default value (1), means timestamps are taken as soon as possible,
before backlog queueing, giving accurate timestamps.

Setting a 0 value permits to sample timestamps when processing backlog,
after RPS dispatch, to lower the load of the pre-RPS cpu.

Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
This commit is contained in:
Eric Dumazet
2010-05-15 23:57:10 -07:00
committed by David S. Miller
parent a1aa348304
commit 3b098e2d7c
4 changed files with 49 additions and 19 deletions

View File

@@ -84,6 +84,16 @@ netdev_max_backlog
Maximum number of packets, queued on the INPUT side, when the interface
receives packets faster than kernel can process them.
netdev_tstamp_prequeue
----------------------
If set to 0, RX packet timestamps can be sampled after RPS processing, when
the target CPU processes packets. It might give some delay on timestamps, but
permit to distribute the load on several cpus.
If set to 1 (default), timestamps are sampled as soon as possible, before
queueing.
optmem_max
----------