xfrm: policy: remove pcpu policy cache

commit e4db5b61c572475bbbcf63e3c8a2606bfccf2c9d upstream.

Kristian Evensen says:
  In a project I am involved in, we are running ipsec (Strongswan) on
  different mt7621-based routers. Each router is configured as an
  initiator and has around ~30 tunnels to different responders (running
  on misc. devices). Before the flow cache was removed (kernel 4.9), we
  got a combined throughput of around 70Mbit/s for all tunnels on one
  router. However, we recently switched to kernel 4.14 (4.14.48), and
  the total throughput is somewhere around 57Mbit/s (best-case). I.e., a
  drop of around 20%. Reverting the flow cache removal restores, as
  expected, performance levels to that of kernel 4.9.

When pcpu xdst exists, it has to be validated first before it can be
used.

A negative hit thus increases cost vs. no-cache.

As number of tunnels increases, hit rate decreases so this pcpu caching
isn't a viable strategy.

Furthermore, the xdst cache also needs to run with BH off, so when
removing this the bh disable/enable pairs can be removed too.

Kristian tested a 4.14.y backport of this change and reported
increased performance:

  In our tests, the throughput reduction has been reduced from around -20%
  to -5%. We also see that the overall throughput is independent of the
  number of tunnels, while before the throughput was reduced as the number
  of tunnels increased.

Reported-by: Kristian Evensen <kristian.evensen@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de>
Signed-off-by: Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@secunet.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/include/net/xfrm.h b/include/net/xfrm.h
index db99efb2d1d0..bdf185ae93db 100644
--- a/include/net/xfrm.h
+++ b/include/net/xfrm.h
@@ -323,7 +323,6 @@ int xfrm_policy_register_afinfo(const struct xfrm_policy_afinfo *afinfo, int fam
 void xfrm_policy_unregister_afinfo(const struct xfrm_policy_afinfo *afinfo);
 void km_policy_notify(struct xfrm_policy *xp, int dir,
 		      const struct km_event *c);
-void xfrm_policy_cache_flush(void);
 void km_state_notify(struct xfrm_state *x, const struct km_event *c);
 
 struct xfrm_tmpl;