There are a few network parameters that can be tuned to better match
the kernel to your system hardware and intended usage. The defaults
are usually a good choice for 99% of the people 99% of the time, but
you should be aware they do exist and can be changed.
The current list of parameters can be found in the files:
linux/net/TUNABLE
Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt
Some of these are accessible via the sysctl interface, and many more are
scheduled to be added in this way. For example, some parameters related
to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) are very easily viewed and altered.
# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/arp_timeout
6000
# echo 7000 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/arp_timeout
# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/arp_timeout
7000
Others are already accessible via the related user space programs.
For example, MAX_WINDOW has a default of 32 k which is a good choice for
modern hardware, but if you have a slow (8 bit) Ethernet card and/or a slow
machine, then this will be far too big for the card to keep up with fast
machines transmitting on the same net, resulting in overruns and receive errors.
A value of about 4 k would be more appropriate, which can be set via:
# route add -net 192.168.3.0 window 4096
The remainder of these can only be presently changed by altering a #define
in the related header file. This means an edit and recompile cycle.
Paul Gortmaker 06/96-
Linus Torvalds authored
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history, even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about 3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good infrastructure for it. Let it rip!
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