Re: ISCSI: draft-wakeley-iscsi-msgbndry-00.txt

[Matt Wakeley <matt_wakeley@agilent.com>]

Somesh,

What you describe is how current TCP stacks typically operate when it does not
know anything about the protocol running on top of it.  A customized TCP stack
that was closely coupled with the iSCSI protocol running on top of it could
provide the appropriate urgent pointer in each segment that is (re)transmitted
without "coalescing" the urgent data. Likewise a customized TCP inbound path
that was closely coupled with the iSCSI protocol running on top of it could
pass the urgent information to the iSCSI layer without "coalescing" the urgent
data. This could be done without any modifications or violations of current
TCP specifications.

-Matt

"GUPTA,SOMESH (HP-Cupertino,ex1)" wrote:

> Matt,
>
> Use of the urgent pointer requires very careful investigation. If you
> look at the TCP RFC it mentions that that the urgent pointer
> location is a connection-wide pointer, both on the receiver side
> and the sender side.
>
> >From the sender side, even if TCP emits a TCP segment for every
> user send, you are not guaranteed the preservation of the urgent
> pointer - e.g.
>
> 1. Let us say that a retransmission timeout occurs and a number
>    of segments have to be retransmitted. In this case, based on
>    (my interpretation) of RFC 793, only the last value of the
>    urgent pointer is meaningful.
>
> 2. Let us say that user data gets queued up due to flow control
>    issues. Again this will cause the last value of the urgent
>    pointer to take effect.
>
> the second part will have an impact in the slow start case. A
> further analysis is required, but it seems that in cases where
> packets are being dropped, the urgent pointer setting will not
> be the most optimal (just about when it is needed the most).
> The urgent pointer proposal may have a benefit when you are
> loosing exactly one packet per window size (maybe even two
> with SACK).
>
> On the receive side, again the same thing happens when multiple
> segments with urg pointer are received. Since it is a connection-
> wide pointer, only the last one should be provided to the user.
>
> If the data passes through "intermediate TCP devices" then again
> the urgent pointer setting will be again be suboptimal.
>
> I would urge some TCP expert to jump in here.
>
> Somesh