NAME
tcp - Internet Transmission Control Protocol
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
int
socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);
DESCRIPTION
The TCP protocol provides reliable, flow-controlled, two-way transmission
of data. It is a byte-stream protocol used to support the SOCK_STREAM
abstraction. TCP uses the standard Internet address format and, in
addition, provides a per-host collection of “port addresses”. Thus, each
address is composed of an Internet address specifying the host and
network, with a specific TCP port on the host identifying the peer
entity.
Sockets utilizing the TCP protocol are either “active” or “passive”.
Active sockets initiate connections to passive sockets. By default, TCP
sockets are created active; to create a passive socket, the listen(2)
system call must be used after binding the socket with the bind(2) system
call. Only passive sockets may use the accept(2) call to accept incoming
connections. Only active sockets may use the connect(2) call to initiate
connections.
Passive sockets may “underspecify” their location to match incoming
connection requests from multiple networks. This technique, termed
“wildcard addressing”, allows a single server to provide service to
clients on multiple networks. To create a socket which listens on all
networks, the Internet address INADDR_ANY must be bound. The TCP port
may still be specified at this time; if the port is not specified, the
system will assign one. Once a connection has been established, the
socket’s address is fixed by the peer entity’s location. The address
assigned to the socket is the address associated with the network
interface through which packets are being transmitted and received.
Normally, this address corresponds to the peer entity’s network.
TCP supports a number of socket options which can be set with
setsockopt(2) and tested with getsockopt(2):
TCP_INFO Information about a socket’s underlying TCP session may be
retrieved by passing the read-only option TCP_INFO to
getsockopt(2). It accepts a single argument: a pointer to
an instance of struct tcp_info.
This API is subject to change; consult the source to
determine which fields are currently filled out by this
option. FreeBSD specific additions include send window
size, receive window size, and bandwidth-controlled window
space.
TCP_NODELAY Under most circumstances, TCP sends data when it is
presented; when outstanding data has not yet been
acknowledged, it gathers small amounts of output to be sent
in a single packet once an acknowledgement is received. For
a small number of clients, such as window systems that send
a stream of mouse events which receive no replies, this
packetization may cause significant delays. The boolean
option TCP_NODELAY defeats this algorithm.
TCP_MAXSEG By default, a sender- and receiver-TCP will negotiate among
themselves to determine the maximum segment size to be used
for each connection. The TCP_MAXSEG option allows the user
to determine the result of this negotiation, and to reduce
it if desired.
TCP_NOOPT TCP usually sends a number of options in each packet,
corresponding to various TCP extensions which are provided
in this implementation. The boolean option TCP_NOOPT is
provided to disable TCP option use on a per-connection
basis.
TCP_NOPUSH By convention, the sender-TCP will set the “push” bit, and
begin transmission immediately (if permitted) at the end of
every user call to write(2) or writev(2). When this option
is set to a non-zero value, TCP will delay sending any data
at all until either the socket is closed, or the internal
send buffer is filled.
TCP_MD5SIG This option enables the use of MD5 digests (also known as
TCP-MD5) on writes to the specified socket. In the current
release, only outgoing traffic is digested; digests on
incoming traffic are not verified. The current default
behavior for the system is to respond to a system
advertising this option with TCP-MD5; this may change.
One common use for this in a FreeBSD router deployment is to
enable based routers to interwork with Cisco equipment at
peering points. Support for this feature conforms to RFC
2385. Only IPv4 (AF_INET) sessions are supported.
In order for this option to function correctly, it is
necessary for the administrator to add a tcp-md5 key entry
to the system’s security associations database (SADB) using
the setkey(8) utility. This entry must have an SPI of
0x1000 and can therefore only be specified on a per-host
basis at this time.
If an SADB entry cannot be found for the destination, the
outgoing traffic will have an invalid digest option
prepended, and the following error message will be visible
on the system console: tcp_signature_compute: SADB lookup
failed for %d.%d.%d.%d.
The option level for the setsockopt(2) call is the protocol number for
TCP, available from getprotobyname(3), or IPPROTO_TCP. All options are
declared in
Options at the IP transport level may be used with TCP; see ip(4).
Incoming connection requests that are source-routed are noted, and the
reverse source route is used in responding.
MIB Variables
The TCP protocol implements a number of variables in the net.inet.tcp
branch of the sysctl(3) MIB.
TCPCTL_DO_RFC1323 (rfc1323) Implement the window scaling and timestamp
options of RFC 1323 (default is true).
TCPCTL_MSSDFLT (mssdflt) The default value used for the maximum
segment size (“MSS”) when no advice to the contrary is
received from MSS negotiation.
TCPCTL_SENDSPACE (sendspace) Maximum TCP send window.
TCPCTL_RECVSPACE (recvspace) Maximum TCP receive window.
log_in_vain Log any connection attempts to ports where there is
not a socket accepting connections. The value of 1
limits the logging to SYN (connection establishment)
packets only. That of 2 results in any TCP packets to
closed ports being logged. Any value unlisted above
disables the logging (default is 0, i.e., the logging
is disabled).
slowstart_flightsize
The number of packets allowed to be in-flight during
the TCP slow-start phase on a non-local network.
local_slowstart_flightsize
The number of packets allowed to be in-flight during
the TCP slow-start phase to local machines in the same
subnet.
msl The Maximum Segment Lifetime, in milliseconds, for a
packet.
keepinit Timeout, in milliseconds, for new, non-established TCP
connections.
keepidle Amount of time, in milliseconds, that the connection
must be idle before keepalive probes (if enabled) are
sent.
keepintvl The interval, in milliseconds, between keepalive
probes sent to remote machines. After TCPTV_KEEPCNT
(default 8) probes are sent, with no response, the
connection is dropped.
always_keepalive Assume that SO_KEEPALIVE is set on all TCP
connections, the kernel will periodically send a
packet to the remote host to verify the connection is
still up.
icmp_may_rst Certain ICMP unreachable messages may abort
connections in SYN-SENT state.
do_tcpdrain Flush packets in the TCP reassembly queue if the
system is low on mbufs.
blackhole If enabled, disable sending of RST when a connection
is attempted to a port where there is not a socket
accepting connections. See blackhole(4).
delayed_ack Delay ACK to try and piggyback it onto a data packet.
delacktime Maximum amount of time, in milliseconds, before a
delayed ACK is sent.
newreno Enable TCP NewReno Fast Recovery algorithm, as
described in RFC 2582.
path_mtu_discovery
Enable Path MTU Discovery.
tcbhashsize Size of the TCP control-block hash table (read-only).
This may be tuned using the kernel option TCBHASHSIZE
or by setting net.inet.tcp.tcbhashsize in the
loader(8).
pcbcount Number of active process control blocks (read-only).
syncookies Determines whether or not SYN cookies should be
generated for outbound SYN-ACK packets. SYN cookies
are a great help during SYN flood attacks, and are
enabled by default. (See syncookies(4).)
isn_reseed_interval
The interval (in seconds) specifying how often the
secret data used in RFC 1948 initial sequence number
calculations should be reseeded. By default, this
variable is set to zero, indicating that no reseeding
will occur. Reseeding should not be necessary, and
will break TIME_WAIT recycling for a few minutes.
rexmit_min, rexmit_slop
Adjust the retransmit timer calculation for TCP. The
slop is typically added to the raw calculation to take
into account occasional variances that the SRTT
(smoothed round-trip time) is unable to accommodate,
while the minimum specifies an absolute minimum.
While a number of TCP RFCs suggest a 1 second minimum,
these RFCs tend to focus on streaming behavior, and
fail to deal with the fact that a 1 second minimum has
severe detrimental effects over lossy interactive
connections, such as a 802.11b wireless link, and over
very fast but lossy connections for those cases not
covered by the fast retransmit code. For this reason,
we use 200ms of slop and a near-0 minimum, which gives
us an effective minimum of 200ms (similar to Linux).
inflight.enable Enable TCP bandwidth-delay product limiting. An
attempt will be made to calculate the bandwidth-delay
product for each individual TCP connection, and limit
the amount of inflight data being transmitted, to
avoid building up unnecessary packets in the network.
This option is recommended if you are serving a lot of
data over connections with high bandwidth-delay
products, such as modems, GigE links, and fast long-
haul WANs, and/or you have configured your machine to
accommodate large TCP windows. In such situations,
without this option, you may experience high
interactive latencies or packet loss due to the
overloading of intermediate routers and switches.
Note that bandwidth-delay product limiting only
effects the transmit side of a TCP connection.
inflight.debug Enable debugging for the bandwidth-delay product
algorithm.
inflight.min This puts a lower bound on the bandwidth-delay product
window, in bytes. A value of 1024 is typically used
for debugging. 6000-16000 is more typical in a
production installation. Setting this value too low
may result in slow ramp-up times for bursty
connections. Setting this value too high effectively
disables the algorithm.
inflight.max This puts an upper bound on the bandwidth-delay
product window, in bytes. This value should not
generally be modified, but may be used to set a global
per-connection limit on queued data, potentially
allowing you to intentionally set a less than optimum
limit, to smooth data flow over a network while still
being able to specify huge internal TCP buffers.
inflight.stab The bandwidth-delay product algorithm requires a
slightly larger window than it otherwise calculates
for stability. This parameter determines the extra
window in maximal packets / 10. The default value of
20 represents 2 maximal packets. Reducing this value
is not recommended, but you may come across a
situation with very slow links where the ping(8) time
reduction of the default inflight code is not
sufficient. If this case occurs, you should first try
reducing inflight.min and, if that does not work,
reduce both inflight.min and inflight.stab, trying
values of 15, 10, or 5 for the latter. Never use a
value less than 5. Reducing inflight.stab can lead to
upwards of a 20% underutilization of the link as well
as reducing the algorithm’s ability to adapt to
changing situations and should only be done as a last
resort.
rfc3042 Enable the Limited Transmit algorithm as described in
RFC 3042. It helps avoid timeouts on lossy links and
also when the congestion window is small, as happens
on short transfers.
rfc3390 Enable support for RFC 3390, which allows for a
variable-sized starting congestion window on new
connections, depending on the maximum segment size.
This helps throughput in general, but particularly
affects short transfers and high-bandwidth large
propagation-delay connections.
When this feature is enabled, the slowstart_flightsize
and local_slowstart_flightsize settings are not
observed for new connection slow starts, but they are
still used for slow starts that occur when the
connection has been idle and starts sending again.
sack.enable Enable support for RFC 2018, TCP Selective
Acknowledgment option, which allows the receiver to
inform the sender about all successfully arrived
segments, allowing the sender to retransmit the
missing segments only.
sack.maxholes Maximum number of SACK holes per connection. Defaults
to 128.
sack.globalmaxholes
Maximum number of SACK holes per system, across all
connections. Defaults to 65536.
maxtcptw When a TCP connection enters the TIME_WAIT state, its
associated socket structure is freed, since it is of
negligible size and use, and a new structure is
allocated to contain a minimal amount of information
necessary for sustaining a connection in this state,
called the compressed TCP TIME_WAIT state. Since this
structure is smaller than a socket structure, it can
save a significant amount of system memory. The
net.inet.tcp.maxtcptw MIB variable controls the
maximum number of these structures allocated. By
default, it is initialized to kern.ipc.maxsockets / 5.
nolocaltimewait Suppress creating of compressed TCP TIME_WAIT states
for connections in which both endpoints are local.
fast_finwait2_recycle
Recycle TCP FIN_WAIT_2 connections faster when the
socket is marked as SBS_CANTRCVMORE (no user process
has the socket open, data received on the socket
cannot be read). The timeout used here is
finwait2_timeout.
finwait2_timeout Timeout to use for fast recycling of TCP FIN_WAIT_2
connections. Defaults to 60 seconds.
ecn.enable Enable support for TCP Explicit Congestion
Notification (ECN). ECN allows a TCP sender to reduce
the transmission rate in order to avoid packet drops.
ecn.maxretries Number of retries (SYN or SYN/ACK retransmits) before
disabling ECN on a specific connection. This is needed
to help with connection establishment when a broken
firewall is in the network path.
ERRORS
A socket operation may fail with one of the following errors returned:
[EISCONN] when trying to establish a connection on a socket
which already has one;
[ENOBUFS] when the system runs out of memory for an internal
data structure;
[ETIMEDOUT] when a connection was dropped due to excessive
retransmissions;
[ECONNRESET] when the remote peer forces the connection to be
closed;
[ECONNREFUSED] when the remote peer actively refuses connection
establishment (usually because no process is listening
to the port);
[EADDRINUSE] when an attempt is made to create a socket with a port
which has already been allocated;
[EADDRNOTAVAIL] when an attempt is made to create a socket with a
network address for which no network interface exists;
[EAFNOSUPPORT] when an attempt is made to bind or connect a socket to
a multicast address.
SEE ALSO
getsockopt(2), socket(2), sysctl(3), blackhole(4), inet(4), intro(4),
ip(4), syncache(4), setkey(8)
V. Jacobson, R. Braden, and D. Borman, TCP Extensions for High
Performance, RFC 1323.
A. Heffernan, Protection of BGP Sessions via the TCP MD5 Signature
Option, RFC 2385.
K. Ramakrishnan, S. Floyd, and D. Black, The Addition of Explicit
Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP, RFC 3168.
HISTORY
The TCP protocol appeared in 4.2BSD. The RFC 1323 extensions for window
scaling and timestamps were added in 4.4BSD. The TCP_INFO option was
introduced in Linux 2.6 and is subject to change.