[Lguest] [PATCHv2 10/14] virtio_net: limit xmit polling

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 06:20:35PM +0530, Krishna Kumar2 wrote:
> "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst at redhat.com> wrote on 05/24/2011 04:59:39 PM:
> 
> > > > > Maybe Rusty means it is a simpler model to free the amount
> > > > > of space that this xmit needs. We will still fail anyway
> > > > > at some time but it is unlikely, since earlier iteration
> > > > > freed up atleast the space that it was going to use.
> > > >
> > > > Not sure I nderstand.  We can't know space is freed in the previous
> > > > iteration as buffers might not have been used by then.
> > >
> > > Yes, the first few iterations may not have freed up space, but
> > > later ones should. The amount of free space should increase
> > > from then on, especially since we try to free double of what
> > > we consume.
> >
> > Hmm. This is only an upper limit on the # of entries in the queue.
> > Assume that vq size is 4 and we transmit 4 enties without
> > getting anything in the used ring. The next transmit will fail.
> >
> > So I don't really see why it's unlikely that we reach the packet
> > drop code with your patch.
> 
> I was assuming 256 entries :) I will try to get some
> numbers to see how often it is true tomorrow.

That would depend on how fast the hypervisor is.
Try doing something to make hypervisor slower than the guest.  I don't
think we need measurements to realize that with the host being slower
than guest that would happen a lot, though.

> > > I am not sure of why it was changed, since returning TX_BUSY
> > > seems more efficient IMHO.
> > > qdisc_restart() handles requeue'd
> > > packets much better than a stopped queue, as a significant
> > > part of this code is skipped if gso_skb is present
> >
> > I think this is the argument:
> > http://www.mail-archive.com/virtualization@lists.linux-
> > foundation.org/msg06364.html
> 
> Thanks for digging up that thread! Yes, that one skb would get
> sent first ahead of possibly higher priority skbs. However,
> from a performance point, TX_BUSY code skips a lot of checks
> and code for all subsequent packets till the device is
> restarted. I can test performance with both cases and report
> what I find (the requeue code has become very simple and clean
> from "horribly complex", thanks to Herbert and Dave).

Cc Herbert, and try to convince him :)

> > > (qdisc
> > > will eventually start dropping packets when tx_queue_len is
> >
> > tx_queue_len is a pretty large buffer so maybe no.
> 
> I remember seeing tons of drops (pfifo_fast_enqueue) when
> xmit returns TX_BUSY.
> 
> > I think the packet drops from the scheduler queue can also be
> > done intelligently (e.g. with CHOKe) which should
> > work better than dropping a random packet?
> 
> I am not sure of that - choke_enqueue checks against a random
> skb to drop current skb, and also during congestion. But for
> my "sample driver xmit", returning TX_BUSY could still allow
> to be used with CHOKe.
> 
> thanks,
> 
> - KK