net: dev_weight: TX/RX orthogonality

Oftenly, introducing side effects on packet processing on the other half
of the stack by adjusting one of TX/RX via sysctl is not desirable.
There are cases of demand for asymmetric, orthogonal configurability.

This holds true especially for nodes where RPS for RFS usage on top is
configured and therefore use the 'old dev_weight'. This is quite a
common base configuration setup nowadays, even with NICs of superior processing
support (e.g. aRFS).

A good example use case are nodes acting as noSQL data bases with a
large number of tiny requests and rather fewer but large packets as responses.
It's affordable to have large budget and rx dev_weights for the
requests. But as a side effect having this large a number on TX
processed in one run can overwhelm drivers.

This patch therefore introduces an independent configurability via sysctl to
userland.

Signed-off-by: Matthias Tafelmeier <matthias.tafelmeier@gmx.net>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
index f0480f7..b80fbd4 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/net.txt
@@ -61,6 +61,27 @@ The maximum number of packets that kernel can handle on a NAPI interrupt,
 it's a Per-CPU variable.
 Default: 64
 
+dev_weight_rx_bias
+--------------
+
+RPS (e.g. RFS, aRFS) processing is competing with the registered NAPI poll function
+of the driver for the per softirq cycle netdev_budget. This parameter influences
+the proportion of the configured netdev_budget that is spent on RPS based packet
+processing during RX softirq cycles. It is further meant for making current
+dev_weight adaptable for asymmetric CPU needs on RX/TX side of the network stack.
+(see dev_weight_tx_bias) It is effective on a per CPU basis. Determination is based
+on dev_weight and is calculated multiplicative (dev_weight * dev_weight_rx_bias).
+Default: 1
+
+dev_weight_tx_bias
+--------------
+
+Scales the maximum number of packets that can be processed during a TX softirq cycle.
+Effective on a per CPU basis. Allows scaling of current dev_weight for asymmetric
+net stack processing needs. Be careful to avoid making TX softirq processing a CPU hog.
+Calculation is based on dev_weight (dev_weight * dev_weight_tx_bias).
+Default: 1
+
 default_qdisc
 --------------