Subject: [PATCH net-next] tcp: Remove some spurious dropped packet profile hits from the passive connection accept path

From: [email-masked] (Rick Jones)
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 10:58:29 -0800 (PST)

From: Rick Jones <[email-masked]>

When a system is the passive accepter of many connections, for example
when the target of a netperf TCP_CC or TCP_CRR test, or as say a web
server, the discard of the skb containing the TCP SYN being processed
for the LISTEN endpoint should be a consume_skb() rather than a kfree_skb()
to avoid cluttering a dropped packet profile.

Signed-off-by: Rick Jones <[email-masked]>

---

perf top -a -g -e skb:kfree_sk output from a system which is the target
of a netperf TCP_CC test

before:

-  100.00%   100.00%  [kernel]  [k] kfree_skb
   - kfree_skb
      + 68.68% sk_stream_kill_queues
      + 31.32% tcp_rcv_state_process           

after:

-  100.00%   100.00%  [kernel]            [k] kfree_skb
   - kfree_skb
        99.89% sk_stream_kill_queues

Presumably, the consume_skb() versus kfree_skb() could be made conditional
on there actually being data in the TCP SYN segment, but the odds of there
actually being data seemed low enough to not warrant it.

diff --git a/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c b/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
index d91436b..999b0a4 100644
--- a/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
+++ b/net/ipv4/tcp_input.c
@@ -5624,8 +5624,12 @@ int tcp_rcv_state_process(struct sock *sk, struct sk_buff *skb,
 			 * against this problem. So, we drop the data
 			 * in the interest of security over speed unless
 			 * it's still in use.
+			 *
+			 * 99 times out of 10, there won't actually be any
+			 * data and so we aren't really dropping anything.
+			 * So, we consume_skb() rather than kfree_skb().
 			 */
-			kfree_skb(skb);
+			consume_skb(skb);
 			return 0;
 		}
 		goto discard;