Author:		Shannon Noe <shannon.noe@flightaware.com>
State:		Draft
Type:		Project
Vote:		Pending
Created:	03-Apr-2017
Post-History:  
Keywords:	Tcl, socket, SOMAXCONN
Tcl-Version:	8.7

Abstract

This TIP adds the ability to control the TCP backlog depth used by the listen system call within the socket Command. The API function, Tcl_OpenTcpServerEx, will be extended to allow the passing of the backlog value. Currently, the SOMAXCONN macro is used as the default. Backlog values are hard coded to a minimum of 100. The backlog values of 1 and 0 are useful on the Linux platform.

Rationale

Modern Linux TCP supports the kernel managing the listen queue for TCP sockets. Multiple processes open the same socket address and ports with SOREUSEADDR and SOREUSEPORT. Each process then uses a backlog value of 1 to process a single connection at a time. This is explained in detail on this website http://veithen.github.io/2014/01/01/how-tcp-backlog-works-in-linux.html

Tighter control over this would allow Tcl scripts to have tighter control over whether to support a large backlog of sockets waiting to be opened. (Exceeding the limit would cause the OS to automatically reject the socket connection, which might be preferable in some high-availability situations to being blocked for an unknown amount of time.)

Specification

A Tcl_OpenTcpServerEx function will be changed to add a backlog parameter with this signature:

Tcl_Channel Tcl_OpenTcpServerEx(Tcl_Interp *interp, const char * service, const char *myHost, unsigned int flags, int backlog, Tcl_TcpAcceptProc *acceptProc, ClientData acceptProcData)

As for the Tcl side, the socket command gains a new optional switch that are only valid for server sockets: ?-backlog int?. Omitting the parameter will cause the default value to be used.

Tcl code includes local macro’s for SOMAXCONN which override all platforms values for SOMAXCONN. This makes backwards compatibility easier. We only need to preserve the macro value in the default code path.

Reference Implementation

Please refer to the tip-??? branch of the core Tcl repository.

Backwards Compatibility

The Tcl_OpenTcpServerEx will retain the old behavior by default as SOMAXCONN. The SOMAXCONN is defined by macros in the Tcl source. All Tcl code paths with a listen() system call pass a backlog value. No new code paths are introduced, only new values for the listen backlog parameter.

The socket command will be backwards compatible. The default -backlog parameter is set to SOMAXCONN. Omission of the new parameter provides the current behavior.

Copyright