Add notes about TCP programming quirks.

Signed-off-by: Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@googlemail.com>
This commit is contained in:
Denys Vlasenko 2013-07-25 14:00:37 +02:00
parent 688a7e3f04
commit 7801148a81

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docs/tcp.txt Normal file
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Some less-widely known details of TCP connections.
Properly closing the connection.
After this code sequence:
sock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
connect(sock, &remote, sizeof(remote));
write(sock, buffer, 1000000);
a large block of data is only buffered by kernel, it can't be sent all at once.
What will happen if we close the socket?
"A host MAY implement a 'half-duplex' TCP close sequence, so that
an application that has called close() cannot continue to read
data from the connection. If such a host issues a close() call
while received data is still pending in TCP, or if new data is
received after close() is called, its TCP SHOULD send a RST
to show that data was lost."
IOW: if we just close(sock) now, kernel can reset the TCP connection,
discarding some not-yet sent data.
What can be done about it?
Solution #1: block until sending is done:
/* When enabled, a close(2) or shutdown(2) will not return until
* all queued messages for the socket have been successfully sent
* or the linger timeout has been reached.
*/
struct linger {
int l_onoff; /* linger active */
int l_linger; /* how many seconds to linger for */
} linger;
linger.l_onoff = 1;
linger.l_linger = SOME_NUM;
setsockopt(sock, SOL_SOCKET, SO_LINGER, &linger, sizeof(linger));
close(sock);
Solution #2: tell kernel that you are done sending.
This makes kernel send FIN, not RST:
shutdown(sock, SHUT_WR);
close(sock);
Defeating Nagle.
Method #1: manually control whether partial sends are allowed:
This prevents partially filled packets being sent:
int state = 1;
setsockopt(fd, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_CORK, &state, sizeof(state));
and this forces last, partially filled packet (if any) to be sent:
int state = 0;
setsockopt(fd, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_CORK, &state, sizeof(state));
Method #2: make any write to immediately send data, even if it's partial:
int state = 1;
setsockopt(fd, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_NODELAY, &state, sizeof(state));