Bug 253680 - Shortcomings in network configuration
Summary: Shortcomings in network configuration
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: kernel
Version: 7
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kernel Maintainer List
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2007-08-21 06:55 UTC by David Campbell
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:12 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-08-21 15:59:02 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description David Campbell 2007-08-21 06:55:23 UTC
Description of problem:

Fedora 7 doesn't take a lowest-common-denominator approach to networking and
seems to presumes that the networking equipment being used is capable of
supporting networking features like tcp window scaling.

This is probably a reasonable assumption, but unfortunately a lot of
off-the-shelf networking hardware is broken with respect to some advanced
features of networking like tcp window scaling, which can result in dreadful
networking slowness and problems when used with linux, and at a complexity way
beyond what your average user will be able to diagnose or investigate following
linux installation.

In my case, adding net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf solved the
weird networking problems evident but it took some hours to figure out what the
problem was and I'm a programmer.

Yes there are problems with router devices that need fixing, but in the
circumstances of there being a lot of devices out there that are broken in some
respect, I believe that it is a shortcoming of the installation procedure that
it doesn't detect networking incompatibilities such as this and report any
incompatibility to the installer, offering installation of a workaround as I've
mentioned above.

Another question arises however for mobile computing users and that is...how can
these type of issues be dealt with when connecting to arbitrary networks?

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

as in 2.6.22.1-41.fc7

How reproducible:

always in my circumstance

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install linux from DVD
2. Observe lousy network behaviour and latency when connected to router that
apparently doesn't support tcp window scaling (Draytek 2900VG in my case)

Actual results:

Lousy network performance

Expected results:

Reasonable network performance

Additional info:

Comment 1 David Campbell 2007-08-21 10:55:31 UTC
This article contains some quite interesting information about tcp window
scaling....

http://lwn.net/Articles/92727/

Comment 2 Chuck Ebbert 2007-08-21 15:59:02 UTC
Sorry, we can't really mess with this because the simple fix would severely
limit performance for people whose networking hardware works properly, and we
can't implement a more complex one because we'd have to maintain that across
kernel releases.

Comment 3 David Campbell 2007-08-22 22:45:27 UTC
GRR someone reaassigned this to kernel and I did not raise this against
kernel... it isn't a kernel issue - my point being that either the installer or
the network scripts should have some smarts to detect network problems


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