TCP_NOPUSH vs. TCP_CORK

I discussed sendfile() and related matters with Linus Torvalds and Dan Kegel (who has an interesting page about high-capacity servers). On Linux, sendfile() depends on the TCP_CORK socket option to avoid undesirable packet boundaries. FreeBSD has a similar option (part of the T/TCP extensions) called TCP_NOPUSH; there is a subtle difference, though: when TCP_CORK is turned off any buffered data is sent immediately, but this is not the case for TCP_NOPUSH. The Linux behaviour is helpful because, for example, it avoids you to avoid awkward delays waiting for the last packet of an HTTP response. I developed a kernel patch for FreeBSD which makes TCP_NOPUSH work like TCP_CORK, which is in FreeBSD-4.5 and later.

Although there was some discussion about making FreeBSD and Linux more compatible in this area, it stalled because of problems with naming, with T/TCP, and with design philosophy.

I have a program which I used to test the behaviour of TCP_NOPUSH and TCP_CORK.


Tony Finch <dot@dotat.at>

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