skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Potential performance bottleneck in Linux TCP

Journal Article ·
OSTI ID:897196

TCP is the most widely used transport protocol on the Internet today. Over the years, especially recently, due to requirements of high bandwidth transmission, various approaches have been proposed to improve TCP performance. The Linux 2.6 kernel is now preemptible. It can be interrupted mid-task, making the system more responsive and interactive. However, we have noticed that Linux kernel preemption can interact badly with the performance of the networking subsystem. In this paper we investigate the performance bottleneck in Linux TCP. We systematically describe the trip of a TCP packet from its ingress into a Linux network end system to its final delivery to the application; we study the performance bottleneck in Linux TCP through mathematical modeling and practical experiments; finally we propose and test one possible solution to resolve this performance bottleneck in Linux TCP.

Research Organization:
Fermi National Accelerator Lab. (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-07CH11359
OSTI ID:
897196
Report Number(s):
FERMILAB-PUB-06-432-CD; TRN: US200704%%650
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English