>From looking over the code, running some experiments, and from the mailing list archive, it looks like packets simply get dropped inside the kernel when the queues overflow. This seems to interact badly with TCP. If the initial retransmit time out is 3 seconds, and one of the first few packets gets dropped (before the rtt estimate is updated), then the connection is stalled for 3 seconds. (TCP packet gets dropped silently, then kernel waits an RTT for a response before retransmitting.) Two questions: 1. Can this really happen, or have I overlooked something? (Our experiments suggest that it can happen.) 2. If this can happen, is it worth changing? In particular, we might not want to wait the entire RTT before retransmitting the packet if it was dropped inside the kernel. Thanks. - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-net" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
