Control the Appropriate Byte Count (ABC), defined in RFC 3465. ABC is a way of increasing the congestion window (cwnd) more slowly in response to partial acknowledgments. Possible values are:

Enable resetting connections if the listening service is too slow and unable to keep up and accept them. It means that if overflow occurred due to a burst, the connection will recover. Enable this option only if you are really sure that the listening daemon cannot be tuned to accept connections faster. Enabling this option can harm the clients of your server.

Count buffering overhead as bytes/2^tcp_adv_win_scale, if tcp_adv_win_scale is greater than 0; or bytes-bytes/2^(−tcp_adv_win_scale), if tcp_adv_win_scale is less than or equal to zero.

The socket receive buffer space is shared between the application and kernel. TCP maintains part of the buffer as the TCP window, this is the size of the receive window advertised to the other end. The rest of the space is used as the "application" buffer, used to isolate the network from scheduling and application latencies. The tcp_adv_win_scale default value of 2 implies that the space used for the application buffer is one fourth that of the total.

Show/set the congestion control algorithm choices available to unprivileged processes (see the description of the TCP_CONGESTION socket option). The list is a subset of those listed in tcp_available_congestion_control. The default value for this list is "reno" plus the default setting of tcp_congestion_control.

Show a list of the congestion-control algorithms that are registered. This list is a limiting set for the list in tcp_allowed_congestion_control. More congestion-control algorithms may be available as modules, but not loaded.

This variable defines how many bytes of the TCP window are reserved for buffering overhead.

A maximum of (window/2^tcp_app_win, mss) bytes in the window are reserved for the application buffer. A value of 0 implies that no amount is reserved.

The initial value of search_low to be used by the packetization layer Path MTU discovery (MTU probing). If MTU probing is enabled, this is the initial MSS used by the connection.

Enable BIC TCP congestion control algorithm. BIC-TCP is a sender-side only change that ensures a linear RTT fairness under large windows while offering both scalability and bounded TCP-friendliness. The protocol combines two schemes called additive increase and binary search increase. When the congestion window is large, additive increase with a large increment ensures linear RTT fairness as well as good scalability. Under small congestion windows, binary search increase provides TCP friendliness.

Set the threshold window (in packets) where BIC TCP starts to adjust the congestion window. Below this threshold BIC TCP behaves the same as the default TCP Reno.

Force BIC TCP to more quickly respond to changes in congestion window. Allows two flows sharing the same connection to converge more rapidly.

Set the default congestion-control algorithm to be used for new connections. The algorithm "reno" is always available, but additional choices may be available depending on kernel configuration. The default value for this file is set as part of kernel configuration.

Lower limit, in bytes, of the size of socket reads that will be offloaded to a DMA copy engine, if one is present in the system and the kernel was configured with the CONFIG_NET_DMA option.

Enable RFC 2883 TCP Duplicate SACK support.

Enable RFC 2884 Explicit Congestion Notification. When enabled, connectivity to some destinations could be affected due to older, misbehaving routers along the path causing connections to be dropped.

Enable TCP Forward Acknowledgement support.

This specifies how many seconds to wait for a final FIN packet before the socket is forcibly closed. This is strictly a violation of the TCP specification, but required to prevent denial-of-service attacks. In Linux 2.2, the default value was 180.

Enable F-RTO, an enhanced recovery algorithm for TCP retransmission timeouts (RTOs). It is particularly beneficial in wireless environments where packet loss is typically due to random radio interference rather than intermediate router congestion. See RFC 4138 for more details.

This file can have one of the following values:

Before Linux 2.6.22, this parameter was a Boolean value, supporting just values 0 and 1 above.

When F-RTO has detected that a TCP retransmission timeout was spurious (i.e, the timeout would have been avoided had TCP set a longer retransmission timeout), TCP has several options concerning what to do next. Possible values are:

The number of seconds between TCP keep-alive probes.

The maximum number of TCP keep-alive probes to send before giving up and killing the connection if no response is obtained from the other end.

The number of seconds a connection needs to be idle before TCP begins sending out keep-alive probes. Keep-alives are only sent when the SO_KEEPALIVE socket option is enabled. The default value is 7200 seconds (2 hours). An idle connection is terminated after approximately an additional 11 minutes (9 probes an interval of 75 seconds apart) when keep-alive is enabled.

Note that underlying connection tracking mechanisms and application timeouts may be much shorter.

If enabled, the TCP stack makes decisions that prefer lower latency as opposed to higher throughput. It this option is disabled, then higher throughput is preferred. An example of an application where this default should be changed would be a Beowulf compute cluster.

The maximum number of orphaned (not attached to any user file handle) TCP sockets allowed in the system. When this number is exceeded, the orphaned connection is reset and a warning is printed. This limit exists only to prevent simple denial-of-service attacks. Lowering this limit is not recommended. Network conditions might require you to increase the number of orphans allowed, but note that each orphan can eat up to ~64K of unswappable memory. The default initial value is set equal to the kernel parameter NR_FILE. This initial default is adjusted depending on the memory in the system.

The maximum number of queued connection requests which have still not received an acknowledgement from the connecting client. If this number is exceeded, the kernel will begin dropping requests. The default value of 256 is increased to 1024 when the memory present in the system is adequate or greater (>= 128Mb), and reduced to 128 for those systems with very low memory (<= 32Mb). It is recommended that if this needs to be increased above 1024, TCP_SYNQ_HSIZE in include/net/tcp.h be modified to keep TCP_SYNQ_HSIZE*16<=tcp_max_syn_backlog, and the kernel be recompiled.

The maximum number of sockets in TIME_WAIT state allowed in the system. This limit exists only to prevent simple denial-of-service attacks. The default value of NR_FILE*2 is adjusted depending on the memory in the system. If this number is exceeded, the socket is closed and a warning is printed.

If enabled, TCP performs receive buffer auto-tuning, attempting to automatically size the buffer (no greater than tcp_rmem[2]) to match the size required by the path for full throughput.

This is a vector of 3 integers: [low, pressure, high]. These bounds, measured in units of the system page size, are used by TCP to track its memory usage. The defaults are calculated at boot time from the amount of available memory. (TCP can only use low memory for this, which is limited to around 900 megabytes on 32-bit systems. 64-bit systems do not suffer this limitation.)

This parameter controls TCP Packetization-Layer Path MTU Discovery. The following values may be assigned to the file:

By default, TCP saves various connection metrics in the route cache when the connection closes, so that connections established in the near future can use these to set initial conditions. Usually, this increases overall performance, but it may sometimes cause performance degradation. If tcp_no_metrics_save is enabled, TCP will not cache metrics on closing connections.

The maximum number of attempts made to probe the other end of a connection which has been closed by our end.

The maximum a packet can be reordered in a TCP packet stream without TCP assuming packet loss and going into slow start. It is not advisable to change this number. This is a packet reordering detection metric designed to minimize unnecessary back off and retransmits provoked by reordering of packets on a connection.

Try to send full-sized packets during retransmit.

The number of times TCP will attempt to retransmit a packet on an established connection normally, without the extra effort of getting the network layers involved. Once we exceed this number of retransmits, we first have the network layer update the route if possible before each new retransmit. The default is the RFC specified minimum of 3.

The maximum number of times a TCP packet is retransmitted in established state before giving up. The default value is 15, which corresponds to a duration of approximately between 13 to 30 minutes, depending on the retransmission timeout. The RFC 1122 specified minimum limit of 100 seconds is typically deemed too short.

Enable TCP behavior conformant with RFC 1337. When disabled, if a RST is received in TIME_WAIT state, we close the socket immediately without waiting for the end of the TIME_WAIT period.

This is a vector of 3 integers: [min, default, max]. These parameters are used by TCP to regulate receive buffer sizes. TCP dynamically adjusts the size of the receive buffer from the defaults listed below, in the range of these values, depending on memory available in the system.

Enable RFC 2018 TCP Selective Acknowledgements.

If enabled, provide RFC 2861 behavior and time out the congestion window after an idle period. An idle period is defined as the current RTO (retransmission timeout). If disabled, the congestion window will not be timed out after an idle period.

If this option is enabled, then use the RFC 1122 interpretation of the TCP urgent-pointer field. According to this interpretation, the urgent pointer points to the last byte of urgent data. If this option is disabled, then use the BSD-compatible interpretation of the urgent pointer: the urgent pointer points to the first byte after the urgent data. Enabling this option may lead to interoperability problems.

The maximum number of times initial SYNs for an active TCP connection attempt will be retransmitted. This value should not be higher than 255. The default value is 5, which corresponds to approximately 180 seconds.

The maximum number of times a SYN/ACK segment for a passive TCP connection will be retransmitted. This number should not be higher than 255.

Enable TCP syncookies. The kernel must be compiled with CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES. Send out syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. The syncookies feature attempts to protect a socket from a SYN flood attack. This should be used as a last resort, if at all. This is a violation of the TCP protocol, and conflicts with other areas of TCP such as TCP extensions. It can cause problems for clients and relays. It is not recommended as a tuning mechanism for heavily loaded servers to help with overloaded or misconfigured conditions. For recommended alternatives see tcp_max_syn_backlog, tcp_synack_retries, and tcp_abort_on_overflow.

Enable RFC 1323 TCP timestamps.

This parameter controls what percentage of the congestion window can be consumed by a single TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) frame. The setting of this parameter is a tradeoff between burstiness and building larger TSO frames.

Enable fast recycling of TIME_WAIT sockets. Enabling this option is not recommended since this causes problems when working with NAT (Network Address Translation).

Allow to reuse TIME_WAIT sockets for new connections when it is safe from protocol viewpoint. It should not be changed without advice/request of technical experts.

Enable TCP Vegas congestion avoidance algorithm. TCP Vegas is a sender-side only change to TCP that anticipates the onset of congestion by estimating the bandwidth. TCP Vegas adjusts the sending rate by modifying the congestion window. TCP Vegas should provide less packet loss, but it is not as aggressive as TCP Reno.

Enable TCP Westwood+ congestion control algorithm. TCP Westwood+ is a sender-side only modification of the TCP Reno protocol stack that optimizes the performance of TCP congestion control. It is based on end-to-end bandwidth estimation to set congestion window and slow start threshold after a congestion episode. Using this estimation, TCP Westwood+ adaptively sets a slow start threshold and a congestion window which takes into account the bandwidth used at the time congestion is experienced. TCP Westwood+ significantly increases fairness with respect to TCP Reno in wired networks and throughput over wireless links.

Enable RFC 1323 TCP window scaling. This feature allows the use of a large window (> 64K) on a TCP connection, should the other end support it. Normally, the 16 bit window length field in the TCP header limits the window size to less than 64K bytes. If larger windows are desired, applications can increase the size of their socket buffers and the window scaling option will be employed. If tcp_window_scaling is disabled, TCP will not negotiate the use of window scaling with the other end during connection setup.

This is a vector of 3 integers: [min, default, max]. These parameters are used by TCP to regulate send buffer sizes. TCP dynamically adjusts the size of the send buffer from the default values listed below, in the range of these values, depending on memory available.

If enabled, assume that no receipt of a window-scaling option means that the remote TCP is broken and treats the window as a signed quantity. If disabled, assume that the remote TCP is not broken even if we do not receive a window scaling option from it.

If set, don't send out partial frames. All queued partial frames are sent when the option is cleared again. This is useful for prepending headers before calling sendfile(2), or for throughput optimization. As currently implemented, there is a 200 millisecond ceiling on the time for which output is corked by TCP_CORK. If this ceiling is reached, then queued data is automatically transmitted. This option can be combined with TCP_NODELAY only since Linux 2.5.71. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Allow a listener to be awakened only when data arrives on the socket. Takes an integer value (seconds), this can bound the maximum number of attempts TCP will make to complete the connection. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Used to collect information about this socket. The kernel returns a struct tcp_info as defined in the file /usr/include/linux/tcp.h. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

The maximum number of keepalive probes TCP should send before dropping the connection. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

The time (in seconds) the connection needs to remain idle before TCP starts sending keepalive probes, if the socket option SO_KEEPALIVE has been set on this socket. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

The time (in seconds) between individual keepalive probes. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

The lifetime of orphaned FIN_WAIT2 state sockets. This option can be used to override the system-wide setting in the file /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_fin_timeout for this socket. This is not to be confused with the socket(7) level option SO_LINGER. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

The maximum segment size for outgoing TCP packets. If this option is set before connection establishment, it also changes the MSS value announced to the other end in the initial packet. Values greater than the (eventual) interface MTU have no effect. TCP will also impose its minimum and maximum bounds over the value provided.

If set, disable the Nagle algorithm. This means that segments are always sent as soon as possible, even if there is only a small amount of data. When not set, data is buffered until there is a sufficient amount to send out, thereby avoiding the frequent sending of small packets, which results in poor utilization of the network. This option is overridden by TCP_CORK; however, setting this option forces an explicit flush of pending output, even if TCP_CORK is currently set.

Enable quickack mode if set or disable quickack mode if cleared. In quickack mode, acks are sent immediately, rather than delayed if needed in accordance to normal TCP operation. This flag is not permanent, it only enables a switch to or from quickack mode. Subsequent operation of the TCP protocol will once again enter/leave quickack mode depending on internal protocol processing and factors such as delayed ack timeouts occurring and data transfer. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Set the number of SYN retransmits that TCP should send before aborting the attempt to connect. It cannot exceed 255. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Bound the size of the advertised window to this value. The kernel imposes a minimum size of SOCK_MIN_RCVBUF/2. This option should not be used in code intended to be portable.

Returns the amount of queued unread data in the receive buffer. The socket must not be in LISTEN state, otherwise an error (EINVAL) is returned.

Returns true (i.e., value is nonzero) if the inbound data stream is at the urgent mark.

If the SO_OOBINLINE socket option is set, and SIOCATMARK returns true, then the next read from the socket will return the urgent data. If the SO_OOBINLINE socket option is not set, and SIOCATMARK returns true, then the next read from the socket will return the bytes following the urgent data (to actually read the urgent data requires the recv(MSG_OOB) flag).

Note that a read never reads across the urgent mark. If an application is informed of the presence of urgent data via select(2) (using the exceptfds argument) or through delivery of a SIGURG signal, then it can advance up to the mark using a loop which repeatedly tests SIOCATMARK and performs a read (requesting any number of bytes) as long as SIOCATMARK returns false.

Returns the amount of unsent data in the socket send queue. The socket must not be in LISTEN state, otherwise an error (EINVAL) is returned.