tree d6cd83b38438a03d52a3fbbcba382f51cfd6511f
parent ec48a7879e4bd9b95a076c7e999d4c3bd7093554
author Daniel Borkmann <dborkman@redhat.com> 1389799534 +0100
committer David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> 1389917831 -0800

packet: improve socket create/bind latency in some cases

Most people acquire PF_PACKET sockets with a protocol argument in
the socket call, e.g. libpcap does so with htons(ETH_P_ALL) for
all its sockets. Most likely, at some point in time a subsequent
bind() call will follow, e.g. in libpcap with ...

  memset(&sll, 0, sizeof(sll));
  sll.sll_family          = AF_PACKET;
  sll.sll_ifindex         = ifindex;
  sll.sll_protocol        = htons(ETH_P_ALL);

... as arguments. What happens in the kernel is that already
in socket() syscall, we install a proto hook via register_prot_hook()
if our protocol argument is != 0. Yet, in bind() we're almost
doing the same work by doing a unregister_prot_hook() with an
expensive synchronize_net() call in case during socket() the proto
was != 0, plus follow-up register_prot_hook() with a bound device
to it this time, in order to limit traffic we get.

In the case when the protocol and user supplied device index (== 0)
does not change from socket() to bind(), we can spare us doing
the same work twice. Similarly for re-binding to the same device
and protocol. For these scenarios, we can decrease create/bind
latency from ~7447us (sock-bind-2 case) to ~89us (sock-bind-1 case)
with this patch.

Alternatively, for the first case, if people care, they should
simply create their sockets with proto == 0 argument and define
the protocol during bind() as this saves a call to synchronize_net()
as well (sock-bind-3 case).

In all other cases, we're tied to user space behaviour we must not
change, also since a bind() is not strictly required. Thus, we need
the synchronize_net() to make sure no asynchronous packet processing
paths still refer to the previous elements of po->prot_hook.

In case of mmap()ed sockets, the workflow that includes bind() is
socket() -> setsockopt(<ring>) -> bind(). In that case, a pair of
{__unregister, register}_prot_hook is being called from setsockopt()
in order to install the new protocol receive handler. Thus, when
we call bind and can skip a re-hook, we have already previously
installed the new handler. For fanout, this is handled different
entirely, so we should be good.

Timings on an i7-3520M machine:

  * sock-bind-1:   89 us
  * sock-bind-2: 7447 us
  * sock-bind-3:   75 us

sock-bind-1:
  socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_IP)) = 3
  bind(3, {sa_family=AF_PACKET, proto=htons(ETH_P_IP), if=all(0),
           pkttype=PACKET_HOST, addr(0)={0, }, 20) = 0

sock-bind-2:
  socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, htons(ETH_P_IP)) = 3
  bind(3, {sa_family=AF_PACKET, proto=htons(ETH_P_IP), if=lo(1),
           pkttype=PACKET_HOST, addr(0)={0, }, 20) = 0

sock-bind-3:
  socket(PF_PACKET, SOCK_RAW, 0) = 3
  bind(3, {sa_family=AF_PACKET, proto=htons(ETH_P_IP), if=lo(1),
           pkttype=PACKET_HOST, addr(0)={0, }, 20) = 0

Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann <dborkman@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>