• Jon Maloy's avatar
    tipc: guarantee that group broadcast doesn't bypass group unicast · 2f487712
    Jon Maloy authored
    We need a mechanism guaranteeing that group unicasts sent out from a
    socket are not bypassed by later sent broadcasts from the same socket.
    We do this as follows:
    
    - Each time a unicast is sent, we set a the broadcast method for the
      socket to "replicast" and "mandatory". This forces the first
      subsequent broadcast message to follow the same network and data path
      as the preceding unicast to a destination, hence preventing it from
      overtaking the latter.
    
    - In order to make the 'same data path' statement above true, we let
      group unicasts pass through the multicast link input queue, instead
      of as previously through the unicast link input queue.
    
    - In the first broadcast following a unicast, we set a new header flag,
      requiring all recipients to immediately acknowledge its reception.
    
    - During the period before all the expected acknowledges are received,
      the socket refuses to accept any more broadcast attempts, i.e., by
      blocking or returning EAGAIN. This period should typically not be
      longer than a few microseconds.
    
    - When all acknowledges have been received, the sending socket will
      open up for subsequent broadcasts, this time giving the link layer
      freedom to itself select the best transmission method.
    
    - The forced and/or abrupt transmission method changes described above
      may lead to broadcasts arriving out of order to the recipients. We
      remedy this by introducing code that checks and if necessary
      re-orders such messages at the receiving end.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJon Maloy <jon.maloy@ericsson.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarYing Xue <ying.xue@windriver.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavid S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
    2f487712
group.h 3.31 KB