With RPS inclusion, skb timestamping is not consistent in RX path.
If netif_receive_skb() is used, its deferred after RPS dispatch.
If netif_rx() is used, its done before RPS dispatch.
This can give strange tcpdump timestamps results.
I think timestamping should be done as soon as possible in the receive
path, to get meaningful values (ie timestamps taken at the time packet
was delivered by NIC driver to our stack), even if NAPI already can
defer timestamping a bit (RPS can help to reduce the gap)
Tom Herbert prefer to sample timestamps after RPS dispatch. In case
sampling is expensive (HPET/acpi_pm on x86), this makes sense.
Let admins switch from one mode to another, using a new
sysctl, /proc/sys/net/core/netdev_tstamp_prequeue
Its default value (1), means timestamps are taken as soon as possible,
before backlog queueing, giving accurate timestamps.
Setting a 0 value permits to sample timestamps when processing backlog,
after RPS dispatch, to lower the load of the pre-RPS cpu.
Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
