I’m trying to improve my TCP throughput over a “gigabit network with lots of connections and high traffic of small packets”. My server OS is Ubuntu 11.10 Server 64bit.

There are about 50.000 (and growing) clients connected to my server through TCP Sockets (all on the same port).

95% of of my packets have size of 1-150 bytes (TCP header and payload). The rest 5% vary from 150 up to 4096+ bytes.

With the config below my server can handle traffic up to 30 Mbps (full duplex).

Can you please advice best practice to tune OS for my needs?

My /etc/sysctl.cong looks like this:

kernel.pid_max = 1000000
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 2500 65000
fs.file-max = 1000000
#
net.core.netdev_max_backlog=3000
net.ipv4.tcp_sack=0
#
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
net.core.somaxconn = 2048
#
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 16777216 
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 16777216
#
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 50576   64768   98152
#
net.core.wmem_default = 65536
net.core.rmem_default = 65536
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling=1
#
net.ipv4.tcp_mem= 98304 131072 196608
#
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_rfc1337 = 1
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=cubic
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_recycle = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 0
#
net.ipv4.tcp_orphan_retries = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 25
net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans = 8192

Here are my limits:

$ ulimit -a
core file size          (blocks, -c) 0
data seg size           (kbytes, -d) unlimited
scheduling priority             (-e) 0
file size               (blocks, -f) unlimited
pending signals                 (-i) 193045
max locked memory       (kbytes, -l) 64
max memory size         (kbytes, -m) unlimited
open files                      (-n) 1000000
pipe size            (512 bytes, -p) 8
POSIX message queues     (bytes, -q) 819200
real-time priority              (-r) 0
stack size              (kbytes, -s) 8192
cpu time               (seconds, -t) unlimited
max user processes              (-u) 1000000

[ADDED]

My NICs are the following:

$ dmesg | grep Broad
[    2.473081] Broadcom NetXtreme II 5771x 10Gigabit Ethernet Driver bnx2x 1.62.12-0 (2011/03/20)
[    2.477808] bnx2x 0000:02:00.0: eth0: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM57711E XGb (A0) PCI-E x4 5GHz (Gen2) found at mem fb000000, IRQ 28, node addr d8:d3:85:bd:23:08
[    2.482556] bnx2x 0000:02:00.1: eth1: Broadcom NetXtreme II BCM57711E XGb (A0) PCI-E x4 5GHz (Gen2) found at mem fa000000, IRQ 40, node addr d8:d3:85:bd:23:0c

[ADDED 2]

ethtool -k eth0
Offload parameters for eth0:
rx-checksumming: on
tx-checksumming: on
scatter-gather: on
tcp-segmentation-offload: on
udp-fragmentation-offload: off
generic-segmentation-offload: on
generic-receive-offload: on
large-receive-offload: on
rx-vlan-offload: on
tx-vlan-offload: on
ntuple-filters: off
receive-hashing: off

[ADDED 3]

 sudo ethtool -S eth0|grep -vw 0
 NIC statistics:
      [1]: rx_bytes: 17521104292
      [1]: rx_ucast_packets: 118326392
      [1]: tx_bytes: 35351475694
      [1]: tx_ucast_packets: 191723897
      [2]: rx_bytes: 16569945203
      [2]: rx_ucast_packets: 114055437
      [2]: tx_bytes: 36748975961
      [2]: tx_ucast_packets: 194800859
      [3]: rx_bytes: 16222309010
      [3]: rx_ucast_packets: 109397802
      [3]: tx_bytes: 36034786682
      [3]: tx_ucast_packets: 198238209
      [4]: rx_bytes: 14884911384
      [4]: rx_ucast_packets: 104081414
      [4]: rx_discards: 5828
      [4]: rx_csum_offload_errors: 1
      [4]: tx_bytes: 35663361789
      [4]: tx_ucast_packets: 194024824
      [5]: rx_bytes: 16465075461
      [5]: rx_ucast_packets: 110637200
      [5]: tx_bytes: 43720432434
      [5]: tx_ucast_packets: 202041894
      [6]: rx_bytes: 16788706505
      [6]: rx_ucast_packets: 113123182
      [6]: tx_bytes: 38443961940
      [6]: tx_ucast_packets: 202415075
      [7]: rx_bytes: 16287423304
      [7]: rx_ucast_packets: 110369475
      [7]: rx_csum_offload_errors: 1
      [7]: tx_bytes: 35104168638
      [7]: tx_ucast_packets: 184905201
      [8]: rx_bytes: 12689721791
      [8]: rx_ucast_packets: 87616037
      [8]: rx_discards: 2638
      [8]: tx_bytes: 36133395431
      [8]: tx_ucast_packets: 196547264
      [9]: rx_bytes: 15007548011
      [9]: rx_ucast_packets: 98183525
      [9]: rx_csum_offload_errors: 1
      [9]: tx_bytes: 34871314517
      [9]: tx_ucast_packets: 188532637
      [9]: tx_mcast_packets: 12
      [10]: rx_bytes: 12112044826
      [10]: rx_ucast_packets: 84335465
      [10]: rx_discards: 2494
      [10]: tx_bytes: 36562151913
      [10]: tx_ucast_packets: 195658548
      [11]: rx_bytes: 12873153712
      [11]: rx_ucast_packets: 89305791
      [11]: rx_discards: 2990
      [11]: tx_bytes: 36348541675
      [11]: tx_ucast_packets: 194155226
      [12]: rx_bytes: 12768100958
      [12]: rx_ucast_packets: 89350917
      [12]: rx_discards: 2667
      [12]: tx_bytes: 35730240389
      [12]: tx_ucast_packets: 192254480
      [13]: rx_bytes: 14533227468
      [13]: rx_ucast_packets: 98139795
      [13]: tx_bytes: 35954232494
      [13]: tx_ucast_packets: 194573612
      [13]: tx_bcast_packets: 2
      [14]: rx_bytes: 13258647069
      [14]: rx_ucast_packets: 92856762
      [14]: rx_discards: 3509
      [14]: rx_csum_offload_errors: 1
      [14]: tx_bytes: 35663586641
      [14]: tx_ucast_packets: 189661305
      rx_bytes: 226125043936
      rx_ucast_packets: 1536428109
      rx_bcast_packets: 351
      rx_discards: 20126
      rx_filtered_packets: 8694
      rx_csum_offload_errors: 11
      tx_bytes: 548442367057
      tx_ucast_packets: 2915571846
      tx_mcast_packets: 12
      tx_bcast_packets: 2
      tx_64_byte_packets: 35417154
      tx_65_to_127_byte_packets: 2006984660
      tx_128_to_255_byte_packets: 373733514
      tx_256_to_511_byte_packets: 378121090
      tx_512_to_1023_byte_packets: 77643490
      tx_1024_to_1522_byte_packets: 43669214
      tx_pause_frames: 228

Some info about SACK: When to turn TCP SACK off?