The code currently resets the keepalive timer each time a packet is
received on a TCP session that has entered the ESTABLISHED state. This
results in a lot of calls to reset the keepalive timer.
This patch changes the behavior so we set the keepalive timer for the
keepalive idle time (TP_KEEPIDLE). When the keepalive timer fires, it will
first check to see if the session has been idle for TP_KEEPIDLE ticks. If
not, it will reschedule the keepalive timer for the time the session will
have been idle for TP_KEEPIDLE ticks.
For a session with regular communication, the keepalive timer should fire
approximately once every TP_KEEPIDLE ticks. For sessions with irregular
communication, the keepalive timer might fire more often. But, the
disruption from a periodic keepalive timer should be less than the regular
cost of resetting the keepalive timer on every packet.
(FWIW, this change saved approximately 1.73% of the busy CPU cycles on a
particular test system with a heavy TCP output load. Of course, the
actual impact is very specific to the particular hardware and workload.)
Reviewed by: gallatin, rrs
MFC after: 2 weeks
Sponsored by: Netflix
Differential Revision: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D8243