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Date:      Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:32:33 +0200 (METDST)
From:      hm@hcs.de (Hellmuth Michaelis)
To:        FreeBSD-Stable List <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   "Hanging" TCP connections over ISDN
Message-ID:  <20020716133233.13299566@hcswork.hcs.de>

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Hi,

since upgrading two ISDN-connected systems from 4.5 RC1 to 4.6 TCP 
connections between this two systems "hang" from time to time.

When both ran under 4.5, interactive connections (mostly ssh and scp)
run smoothly, no "hangs" or interruptions were noticed. The two systems
ran (nearly) same OS versions using i4b and userland ppp(8).

When 4.6 arrived, i decided to test the RC's and since then both systems
ran RC1, RC2 and now a stable from the first week of July.

Since the first 4.6 i began noticing "hangs" when using interactive 
programs (elm, editors, etc.) which occur now and then sometimes more 
often, sometimes less, sometimes in intervalls of 3 or 5 seconds - i 
cant see a regularity in it. With scp, data flows, gets slower, stalls,
flows, stalls, flows etc. all in all it the transfer rate much lower
than the expected 7.5 Kb/s: about 1.5 to 3 Kb/s.

First i traced the ISDN traffic: all seems well, no anomalies, just the
B-channel traffic stopped sometines, see above.

Then i saw a mail from phk "Is newreno still sick ?": i disabled newreno
on all machines and it got much better: where the "hangs" lasted several
seconds, the now lasted just one or two seconds and i "felt" they occured 
much less. Still, it is boring to work over such a link.

Last weekend i instrumented the i4b rbch-driver, but as hard as i tried,
i found nothing wrong. Then i reduced the mtu and mru (1500 by default)
for ppp(8) and the smaller i made it, the smoother the connection became.
Still "hangs" but the frequency got lower and the hangs were much shorter - 
nearly gone.

Now today i replaced the combination i4b-rbch/userland-ppp with the i4b
isp/sppp combination and i get the same hangs as with the default rbch/ppp
setup.

I'm a bit stuck here. It still might be a bug in the ISDN subsystem, 
but nothing important has changed between 4.5 and 4.6. Two totally 
different ISDN interfaces to the network stack show the same behaviour.
So it might not be a bug in the ISDN subsystem.

Using several different parameters in the networking code leads to a
changed behaviour. So it might be a bug in the network subsystem ;-)

As i said, i'm a bit stuck here. Perhaps someone has an idea or a hint
for me where to have a more detailed look or what knobs to use to fix
this problem.

hellmuth
-- 
Hellmuth Michaelis                                    Tel   +49 40 55 97 47-70
HCS Hanseatischer Computerservice GmbH                Fax   +49 40 55 97 47-77
Oldesloer Strasse 97-99                               Mail  hm [at] hcs.de
D-22457 Hamburg                                       WWW   http://www.hcs.de

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