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Performance Tuning

klzgrad edited this page Oct 7, 2022 · 3 revisions

Linux kernel

Use a kernel as new as possible

HTTP/2 uses a single connection per host. Most of TCP tuning is no longer needed (e.g. net.ipv4.tcp_wmem).

Use BBR congestion control

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_congestion_control=bbr

Turn off tcp_slow_start_after_idle

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle=0

This setting can improve persistent single connection performance slightly.

(Server only) Consider setting tcp_notsent_lowat

sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_notsent_lowat=16384

This setting can improve interactive latency by optimizing send buffer handling. Note that this kernel setting is useful for HTTP/2 and may be detrimental to other applications, as it applies to all applications on the server.

Be cautious with this setting. Small values tend to increase server CPU usage and negatively affect throughput. You need to benchmark it to determine good settings. You can check the HTTP/2 load time in https://http2.akamai.com/demo while also downloading a large file with and without this setting.

Common values range from 16KB to 128KB.

Do not turn on TCP Fast Open

Its Linux implementation is too conservative to be useful, and its usage is rare in practice thus creating a distinct traffic feature.

Chromium

Chromium limits the number of connections per proxy to 32. New connections that exceed this limit will be stalled, but multi-tab browsing often needs more than 32 connections. Create a policy to override this limit.

Note: This is a browser setting, not applicable to any proxies.

  • For Chromium on Linux:
sudo mkdir -p /etc/chromium/policies/managed
echo '{ "MaxConnectionsPerProxy": 99 }' | sudo tee /etc/chromium/policies/managed/proxy.json
  • For Chrome on macOS:
defaults write com.google.Chrome MaxConnectionsPerProxy -int 99

and restart Chrome to update the policy.

You should be able to see it in chrome://policy once set up.

99 is the maximum value for MaxConnectionsPerProxy allowed by Chromium. It is still too low. You are recommended to use an ad-blocker to save on connections.

For Chrome or other OSes, see: