[tcp] Improve robustness in the presence of duplicated received packets

gPXE responds to duplicated ACKs with an immediate retransmission,
which can lead to a sorceror's apprentice syndrome.  It also responds
to out-of-range (or old duplicate) ACKs with a RST, which can cause
valid connections to be dropped.

Fix the sorceror's apprentice syndrome by leaving the retransmission
timer running (and so inhibiting the immediate retransmission) when we
receive a potential duplicate ACK.  This seems to match the behaviour
of Linux observed via wireshark traces.

Fix the RST issue by sending RST only on out-of-range ACKs that occur
before the connection is fully established, as per RFC 793.

These problems were exposed during development of the 802.11 wireless
link layer; the 802.11 protocol has a failure mode that can easily
cause duplicated packets.  The fixes were tested in a controlled way
by faking large numbers of duplicated packets in the rtl8139 driver.

Originally-fixed-by: Joshua Oreman <oremanj@rwcr.net>

1 files changed, 28 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/src/net/tcp.c b/src/net/tcp.c
index 1de2abf0..29e233fa 100644
--- a/src/net/tcp.c
+++ b/src/net/tcp.c
@@ -704,30 +704,45 @@ static int tcp_rx_ack ( struct tcp_connection *tcp, uint32_t ack,
 	size_t len;
 	unsigned int acked_flags;
 
-	/* Ignore duplicate or out-of-range ACK */
-	if ( ack_len > tcp->snd_sent ) {
-		DBGC ( tcp, "TCP %p received ACK for [%08x,%08zx), "
-		       "sent only [%08x,%08x)\n", tcp, tcp->snd_seq,
-		       ( tcp->snd_seq + ack_len ), tcp->snd_seq,
-		       ( tcp->snd_seq + tcp->snd_sent ) );
-		return -EINVAL;
-	}
-
-	/* Acknowledge any flags being sent */
+	/* Determine acknowledged flags and data length */
 	len = ack_len;
 	acked_flags = ( TCP_FLAGS_SENDING ( tcp->tcp_state ) &
 			( TCP_SYN | TCP_FIN ) );
 	if ( acked_flags )
 		len--;
 
+	/* Stop retransmission timer if necessary */
+	if ( ack_len == 0 ) {
+		/* Duplicate ACK (or just a packet that isn't
+		 * intending to ACK any new data).  If the
+		 * retransmission timer is running, leave it running
+		 * so that we don't immediately retransmit and cause a
+		 * sorceror's apprentice syndrome.
+		 */
+	} else if ( ack_len <= tcp->snd_sent ) {
+		/* ACK of new data.  Stop the retransmission timer. */
+		stop_timer ( &tcp->timer );
+	} else {
+		/* Out-of-range (or old duplicate) ACK.  Leave the
+		 * timer running, as for the ack_len==0 case, to
+		 * handle old duplicate ACKs.
+		 */
+		DBGC ( tcp, "TCP %p received ACK for [%08x,%08zx), "
+		       "sent only [%08x,%08x)\n", tcp, tcp->snd_seq,
+		       ( tcp->snd_seq + ack_len ), tcp->snd_seq,
+		       ( tcp->snd_seq + tcp->snd_sent ) );
+		/* Send RST if an out-of-range ACK is received on a
+		 * not-yet-established connection.
+		 */
+		if ( ! TCP_HAS_BEEN_ESTABLISHED ( tcp->tcp_state ) )
+			return -EINVAL;
+	}
+
 	/* Update SEQ and sent counters, and window size */
 	tcp->snd_seq = ack;
 	tcp->snd_sent = 0;
 	tcp->snd_win = win;
 
-	/* Stop the retransmission timer */
-	stop_timer ( &tcp->timer );
-
 	/* Remove any acknowledged data from transmit queue */
 	tcp_process_queue ( tcp, len, NULL, 1 );