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authorBreno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>2026-08-05 07:52:36 -0700
committerTejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>2026-08-10 11:47:20 -1000
commita5bde5d8fde8a8cb28e59a672d5ddc5b9c1e7656 (patch)
tree39f5b258386e1127d253d293194e9a2991bf3c34 /Documentation/networking/tcp-thin.rst
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workqueue: skip the node_nr_active update for non-unbound workqueuesgrafted
apply_wqattrs_commit() updates node_nr_active->max unconditionally. wq->node_nr_active[] is only allocated for unbound workqueues, so guard the call before per-cpu workqueues start using this path. No functional change: only unbound workqueues reach apply_wqattrs_*() today. Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org> Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+====================
+Thin-streams and TCP
+====================
+
+A wide range of Internet-based services that use reliable transport
+protocols display what we call thin-stream properties. This means
+that the application sends data with such a low rate that the
+retransmission mechanisms of the transport protocol are not fully
+effective. In time-dependent scenarios (like online games, control
+systems, stock trading etc.) where the user experience depends
+on the data delivery latency, packet loss can be devastating for
+the service quality. Extreme latencies are caused by TCP's
+dependency on the arrival of new data from the application to trigger
+retransmissions effectively through fast retransmit instead of
+waiting for long timeouts.
+
+After analysing a large number of time-dependent interactive
+applications, we have seen that they often produce thin streams
+and also stay with this traffic pattern throughout its entire
+lifespan. The combination of time-dependency and the fact that the
+streams provoke high latencies when using TCP is unfortunate.
+
+In order to reduce application-layer latency when packets are lost,
+a set of mechanisms has been made, which address these latency issues
+for thin streams. In short, if the kernel detects a thin stream,
+the retransmission mechanisms are modified in the following manner:
+
+1) If the stream is thin, fast retransmit on the first dupACK.
+2) If the stream is thin, do not apply exponential backoff.
+
+These enhancements are applied only if the stream is detected as
+thin. This is accomplished by defining a threshold for the number
+of packets in flight. If there are less than 4 packets in flight,
+fast retransmissions can not be triggered, and the stream is prone
+to experience high retransmission latencies.
+
+Since these mechanisms are targeted at time-dependent applications,
+they must be specifically activated by the application using the
+TCP_THIN_LINEAR_TIMEOUTS and TCP_THIN_DUPACK IOCTLS or the
+tcp_thin_linear_timeouts and tcp_thin_dupack sysctls. Both
+modifications are turned off by default.
+
+References
+==========
+More information on the modifications, as well as a wide range of
+experimental data can be found here:
+
+"Improving latency for interactive, thin-stream applications over
+reliable transport"
+http://simula.no/research/nd/publications/Simula.nd.477/simula_pdf_file