|
| 1 | +Kernel Connection Mulitplexor |
| 2 | +----------------------------- |
| 3 | + |
| 4 | +Kernel Connection Multiplexor (KCM) is a mechanism that provides a message based |
| 5 | +interface over TCP for generic application protocols. With KCM an application |
| 6 | +can efficiently send and receive application protocol messages over TCP using |
| 7 | +datagram sockets. |
| 8 | + |
| 9 | +KCM implements an NxM multiplexor in the kernel as diagrammed below: |
| 10 | + |
| 11 | ++------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+ |
| 12 | +| KCM socket | | KCM socket | | KCM socket | | KCM socket | |
| 13 | ++------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+ |
| 14 | + | | | | |
| 15 | + +-----------+ | | +----------+ |
| 16 | + | | | | |
| 17 | + +----------------------------------+ |
| 18 | + | Multiplexor | |
| 19 | + +----------------------------------+ |
| 20 | + | | | | | |
| 21 | + +---------+ | | | ------------+ |
| 22 | + | | | | | |
| 23 | ++----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ |
| 24 | +| Psock | | Psock | | Psock | | Psock | | Psock | |
| 25 | ++----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ |
| 26 | + | | | | | |
| 27 | ++----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ |
| 28 | +| TCP sock | | TCP sock | | TCP sock | | TCP sock | | TCP sock | |
| 29 | ++----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ |
| 30 | + |
| 31 | +KCM sockets |
| 32 | +----------- |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +The KCM sockets provide the user interface to the muliplexor. All the KCM sockets |
| 35 | +bound to a multiplexor are considered to have equivalent function, and I/O |
| 36 | +operations in different sockets may be done in parallel without the need for |
| 37 | +synchronization between threads in userspace. |
| 38 | + |
| 39 | +Multiplexor |
| 40 | +----------- |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +The multiplexor provides the message steering. In the transmit path, messages |
| 43 | +written on a KCM socket are sent atomically on an appropriate TCP socket. |
| 44 | +Similarly, in the receive path, messages are constructed on each TCP socket |
| 45 | +(Psock) and complete messages are steered to a KCM socket. |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +TCP sockets & Psocks |
| 48 | +-------------------- |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +TCP sockets may be bound to a KCM multiplexor. A Psock structure is allocated |
| 51 | +for each bound TCP socket, this structure holds the state for constructing |
| 52 | +messages on receive as well as other connection specific information for KCM. |
| 53 | + |
| 54 | +Connected mode semantics |
| 55 | +------------------------ |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +Each multiplexor assumes that all attached TCP connections are to the same |
| 58 | +destination and can use the different connections for load balancing when |
| 59 | +transmitting. The normal send and recv calls (include sendmmsg and recvmmsg) |
| 60 | +can be used to send and receive messages from the KCM socket. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +Socket types |
| 63 | +------------ |
| 64 | + |
| 65 | +KCM supports SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_SEQPACKET socket types. |
| 66 | + |
| 67 | +Message delineation |
| 68 | +------------------- |
| 69 | + |
| 70 | +Messages are sent over a TCP stream with some application protocol message |
| 71 | +format that typically includes a header which frames the messages. The length |
| 72 | +of a received message can be deduced from the application protocol header |
| 73 | +(often just a simple length field). |
| 74 | + |
| 75 | +A TCP stream must be parsed to determine message boundaries. Berkeley Packet |
| 76 | +Filter (BPF) is used for this. When attaching a TCP socket to a multiplexor a |
| 77 | +BPF program must be specified. The program is called at the start of receiving |
| 78 | +a new message and is given an skbuff that contains the bytes received so far. |
| 79 | +It parses the message header and returns the length of the message. Given this |
| 80 | +information, KCM will construct the message of the stated length and deliver it |
| 81 | +to a KCM socket. |
| 82 | + |
| 83 | +TCP socket management |
| 84 | +--------------------- |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +When a TCP socket is attached to a KCM multiplexor data ready (POLLIN) and |
| 87 | +write space available (POLLOUT) events are handled by the multiplexor. If there |
| 88 | +is a state change (disconnection) or other error on a TCP socket, an error is |
| 89 | +posted on the TCP socket so that a POLLERR event happens and KCM discontinues |
| 90 | +using the socket. When the application gets the error notification for a |
| 91 | +TCP socket, it should unattach the socket from KCM and then handle the error |
| 92 | +condition (the typical response is to close the socket and create a new |
| 93 | +connection if necessary). |
| 94 | + |
| 95 | +KCM limits the maximum receive message size to be the size of the receive |
| 96 | +socket buffer on the attached TCP socket (the socket buffer size can be set by |
| 97 | +SO_RCVBUF). If the length of a new message reported by the BPF program is |
| 98 | +greater than this limit a corresponding error (EMSGSIZE) is posted on the TCP |
| 99 | +socket. The BPF program may also enforce a maximum messages size and report an |
| 100 | +error when it is exceeded. |
| 101 | + |
| 102 | +A timeout may be set for assembling messages on a receive socket. The timeout |
| 103 | +value is taken from the receive timeout of the attached TCP socket (this is set |
| 104 | +by SO_RCVTIMEO). If the timer expires before assembly is complete an error |
| 105 | +(ETIMEDOUT) is posted on the socket. |
| 106 | + |
| 107 | +User interface |
| 108 | +============== |
| 109 | + |
| 110 | +Creating a multiplexor |
| 111 | +---------------------- |
| 112 | + |
| 113 | +A new multiplexor and initial KCM socket is created by a socket call: |
| 114 | + |
| 115 | + socket(AF_KCM, type, protocol) |
| 116 | + |
| 117 | + - type is either SOCK_DGRAM or SOCK_SEQPACKET |
| 118 | + - protocol is KCMPROTO_CONNECTED |
| 119 | + |
| 120 | +Cloning KCM sockets |
| 121 | +------------------- |
| 122 | + |
| 123 | +After the first KCM socket is created using the socket call as described |
| 124 | +above, additional sockets for the multiplexor can be created by cloning |
| 125 | +a KCM socket. This is accomplished by an ioctl on a KCM socket: |
| 126 | + |
| 127 | + /* From linux/kcm.h */ |
| 128 | + struct kcm_clone { |
| 129 | + int fd; |
| 130 | + }; |
| 131 | + |
| 132 | + struct kcm_clone info; |
| 133 | + |
| 134 | + memset(&info, 0, sizeof(info)); |
| 135 | + |
| 136 | + err = ioctl(kcmfd, SIOCKCMCLONE, &info); |
| 137 | + |
| 138 | + if (!err) |
| 139 | + newkcmfd = info.fd; |
| 140 | + |
| 141 | +Attach transport sockets |
| 142 | +------------------------ |
| 143 | + |
| 144 | +Attaching of transport sockets to a multiplexor is performed by calling an |
| 145 | +ioctl on a KCM socket for the multiplexor. e.g.: |
| 146 | + |
| 147 | + /* From linux/kcm.h */ |
| 148 | + struct kcm_attach { |
| 149 | + int fd; |
| 150 | + int bpf_fd; |
| 151 | + }; |
| 152 | + |
| 153 | + struct kcm_attach info; |
| 154 | + |
| 155 | + memset(&info, 0, sizeof(info)); |
| 156 | + |
| 157 | + info.fd = tcpfd; |
| 158 | + info.bpf_fd = bpf_prog_fd; |
| 159 | + |
| 160 | + ioctl(kcmfd, SIOCKCMATTACH, &info); |
| 161 | + |
| 162 | +The kcm_attach structure contains: |
| 163 | + fd: file descriptor for TCP socket being attached |
| 164 | + bpf_prog_fd: file descriptor for compiled BPF program downloaded |
| 165 | + |
| 166 | +Unattach transport sockets |
| 167 | +-------------------------- |
| 168 | + |
| 169 | +Unattaching a transport socket from a multiplexor is straightforward. An |
| 170 | +"unattach" ioctl is done with the kcm_unattach structure as the argument: |
| 171 | + |
| 172 | + /* From linux/kcm.h */ |
| 173 | + struct kcm_unattach { |
| 174 | + int fd; |
| 175 | + }; |
| 176 | + |
| 177 | + struct kcm_unattach info; |
| 178 | + |
| 179 | + memset(&info, 0, sizeof(info)); |
| 180 | + |
| 181 | + info.fd = cfd; |
| 182 | + |
| 183 | + ioctl(fd, SIOCKCMUNATTACH, &info); |
| 184 | + |
| 185 | +Disabling receive on KCM socket |
| 186 | +------------------------------- |
| 187 | + |
| 188 | +A setsockopt is used to disable or enable receiving on a KCM socket. |
| 189 | +When receive is disabled, any pending messages in the socket's |
| 190 | +receive buffer are moved to other sockets. This feature is useful |
| 191 | +if an application thread knows that it will be doing a lot of |
| 192 | +work on a request and won't be able to service new messages for a |
| 193 | +while. Example use: |
| 194 | + |
| 195 | + int val = 1; |
| 196 | + |
| 197 | + setsockopt(kcmfd, SOL_KCM, KCM_RECV_DISABLE, &val, sizeof(val)) |
| 198 | + |
| 199 | +BFP programs for message delineation |
| 200 | +------------------------------------ |
| 201 | + |
| 202 | +BPF programs can be compiled using the BPF LLVM backend. For exmple, |
| 203 | +the BPF program for parsing Thrift is: |
| 204 | + |
| 205 | + #include "bpf.h" /* for __sk_buff */ |
| 206 | + #include "bpf_helpers.h" /* for load_word intrinsic */ |
| 207 | + |
| 208 | + SEC("socket_kcm") |
| 209 | + int bpf_prog1(struct __sk_buff *skb) |
| 210 | + { |
| 211 | + return load_word(skb, 0) + 4; |
| 212 | + } |
| 213 | + |
| 214 | + char _license[] SEC("license") = "GPL"; |
| 215 | + |
| 216 | +Use in applications |
| 217 | +=================== |
| 218 | + |
| 219 | +KCM accelerates application layer protocols. Specifically, it allows |
| 220 | +applications to use a message based interface for sending and receiving |
| 221 | +messages. The kernel provides necessary assurances that messages are sent |
| 222 | +and received atomically. This relieves much of the burden applications have |
| 223 | +in mapping a message based protocol onto the TCP stream. KCM also make |
| 224 | +application layer messages a unit of work in the kernel for the purposes of |
| 225 | +steerng and scheduling, which in turn allows a simpler networking model in |
| 226 | +multithreaded applications. |
| 227 | + |
| 228 | +Configurations |
| 229 | +-------------- |
| 230 | + |
| 231 | +In an Nx1 configuration, KCM logically provides multiple socket handles |
| 232 | +to the same TCP connection. This allows parallelism between in I/O |
| 233 | +operations on the TCP socket (for instance copyin and copyout of data is |
| 234 | +parallelized). In an application, a KCM socket can be opened for each |
| 235 | +processing thread and inserted into the epoll (similar to how SO_REUSEPORT |
| 236 | +is used to allow multiple listener sockets on the same port). |
| 237 | + |
| 238 | +In a MxN configuration, multiple connections are established to the |
| 239 | +same destination. These are used for simple load balancing. |
| 240 | + |
| 241 | +Message batching |
| 242 | +---------------- |
| 243 | + |
| 244 | +The primary purpose of KCM is load balancing between KCM sockets and hence |
| 245 | +threads in a nominal use case. Perfect load balancing, that is steering |
| 246 | +each received message to a different KCM socket or steering each sent |
| 247 | +message to a different TCP socket, can negatively impact performance |
| 248 | +since this doesn't allow for affinities to be established. Balancing |
| 249 | +based on groups, or batches of messages, can be beneficial for performance. |
| 250 | + |
| 251 | +On transmit, there are three ways an application can batch (pipeline) |
| 252 | +messages on a KCM socket. |
| 253 | + 1) Send multiple messages in a single sendmmsg. |
| 254 | + 2) Send a group of messages each with a sendmsg call, where all messages |
| 255 | + except the last have MSG_BATCH in the flags of sendmsg call. |
| 256 | + 3) Create "super message" composed of multiple messages and send this |
| 257 | + with a single sendmsg. |
| 258 | + |
| 259 | +On receive, the KCM module attempts to queue messages received on the |
| 260 | +same KCM socket during each TCP ready callback. The targeted KCM socket |
| 261 | +changes at each receive ready callback on the KCM socket. The application |
| 262 | +does not need to configure this. |
| 263 | + |
| 264 | +Error handling |
| 265 | +-------------- |
| 266 | + |
| 267 | +An application should include a thread to monitor errors raised on |
| 268 | +the TCP connection. Normally, this will be done by placing each |
| 269 | +TCP socket attached to a KCM multiplexor in epoll set for POLLERR |
| 270 | +event. If an error occurs on an attached TCP socket, KCM sets an EPIPE |
| 271 | +on the socket thus waking up the application thread. When the application |
| 272 | +sees the error (which may just be a disconnect) it should unattach the |
| 273 | +socket from KCM and then close it. It is assumed that once an error is |
| 274 | +posted on the TCP socket the data stream is unrecoverable (i.e. an error |
| 275 | +may have occurred in in the middle of receiving a messssge). |
| 276 | + |
| 277 | +TCP connection monitoring |
| 278 | +------------------------- |
| 279 | + |
| 280 | +In KCM there is no means to correlate a message to the TCP socket that |
| 281 | +was used to send or receive the message (except in the case there is |
| 282 | +only one attached TCP socket). However, the application does retain |
| 283 | +an open file descriptor to the socket so it will be able to get statistics |
| 284 | +from the socket which can be used in detecting issues (such as high |
| 285 | +retransmissions on the socket). |
0 commit comments