tcp: early retransmit
This patch implements RFC 5827 early retransmit (ER) for TCP. It reduces DUPACK threshold (dupthresh) if outstanding packets are less than 4 to recover losses by fast recovery instead of timeout. While the algorithm is simple, small but frequent network reordering makes this feature dangerous: the connection repeatedly enter false recovery and degrade performance. Therefore we implement a mitigation suggested in the appendix of the RFC that delays entering fast recovery by a small interval, i.e., RTT/4. Currently ER is conservative and is disabled for the rest of the connection after the first reordering event. A large scale web server experiment on the performance impact of ER is summarized in section 6 of the paper "Proportional Rate Reduction for TCP”, IMC 2011. http://conferences.sigcomm.org/imc/2011/docs/p155.pdf Note that Linux has a similar feature called THIN_DUPACK. The differences are THIN_DUPACK do not mitigate reorderings and is only used after slow start. Currently ER is disabled if THIN_DUPACK is enabled. I would be happy to merge THIN_DUPACK feature with ER if people think it's a good idea. ER is enabled by sysctl_tcp_early_retrans: 0: Disables ER 1: Reduce dupthresh to packets_out - 1 when outstanding packets < 4. 2: (Default) reduce dupthresh like mode 1. In addition, delay entering fast recovery by RTT/4. Note: mode 2 is implemented in the third part of this patch series. Signed-off-by:Yuchung Cheng <ycheng@google.com> Acked-by: