dccp ccid-3: A lower bound for the inter-packet scheduling algorithm

This fixes a subtle bug in the calculation of the inter-packet gap and shows
that t_delta, as it is currently used, is not needed.

The algorithm from RFC 5348, 8.3 below continually computes a send time t_nom,
which is initialised with the current time t_now; t_gran = 1E6 / HZ specifies
the scheduling granularity, s the packet size, and X the sending rate:

  t_distance = t_nom - t_now;		// in microseconds
  t_delta    = min(t_ipi, t_gran) / 2;	// `delta' parameter in microseconds

  if (t_distance >= t_delta) {
	reschedule after (t_distance / 1000) milliseconds;
  } else {
  	t_ipi  = s / X;			// inter-packet interval in usec
	t_nom += t_ipi;			// compute the next send time
	send packet now;
  }

Problem:
--------
Rescheduling requires a conversion into milliseconds (sk_reset_timer()). The
highest jiffy resolution with HZ=1000 is 1 millisecond, so using a higher
granularity does not make much sense here.

As a consequence, values of t_distance < 1000 are truncated to 0. This issue
has so far been resolved by using instead

  if (t_distance >= t_delta + 1000)
	reschedule after (t_distance / 1000) milliseconds;

This is unnecessarily large, a lower bound is t_delta' = max(t_delta, 1000).
And it implies a further simplification:

 a) when HZ >= 500, then t_delta <= t_gran/2 = 10^6/(2*HZ) <= 1000, so that
    t_delta' = MAX(1000, t_delta) = 1000 (constant value);

 b) when HZ < 500, then t_delta = 1/2*MIN(rtt, t_ipi, t_gran) <= t_gran/2,
    so that 1000 <= t_delta' <= t_gran/2.

The maximum error of using a constant t_delta in (b) is less than half a jiffy.

Fix:
----
The patch replaces t_delta with a constant, whose value depends on CONFIG_HZ,
changing the above algorithm to:

  if (t_distance >= t_delta')
	reschedule after (t_distance / 1000) milliseconds;

where t_delta' = 10^6/(2*HZ) if HZ < 500, and t_delta' = 1000 otherwise.

Signed-off-by: Gerrit Renker <gerrit@erg.abdn.ac.uk>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions