net: document a side effect of ip_local_reserved_ports
authorOtto Hollmann <otto.hollmann@suse.com>
Thu, 1 Apr 2021 15:57:05 +0000 (17:57 +0200)
committerDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Thu, 1 Apr 2021 22:58:36 +0000 (15:58 -0700)
commita7a80b17c750c0f4b2c15cc61be5ff7c1d29f8d6
tree85a89221458ff8b2a25853552c23e4973ccdf3b8
parente228c0de904c8c5eb732dafb49a8446c1794dc72
net: document a side effect of ip_local_reserved_ports

If there is overlapp between ip_local_port_range and ip_local_reserved_ports with a huge reserved block, it will affect probability of selecting ephemeral ports, see file net/ipv4/inet_hashtables.c:723

    int __inet_hash_connect(
    ...
            for (i = 0; i < remaining; i += 2, port += 2) {
                    if (unlikely(port >= high))
                            port -= remaining;
                    if (inet_is_local_reserved_port(net, port))
                            continue;

    E.g. if there is reserved block of 10000 ports, two ports right after this block will be 5000 more likely selected than others.
    If this was intended, we can/should add note into documentation as proposed in this commit, otherwise we should think about different solution. One option could be mapping table of continuous port ranges. Second option could be letting user to modify step (port+=2) in above loop, e.g. using new sysctl parameter.

Signed-off-by: Otto Hollmann <otto.hollmann@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.rst