✎ soc:2010:cooldavid:project_plan:start

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====== Guo-Fu Tseng: Implement and Port Ethernet Drivers for gPXE ======

===== Project Plan =====

==== Summary ====
In order to obtain better performance from JMicron Ethernet Card. Instead of using the UNDI driver, I would implement a better performance native driver for gPXE. The tg3 driver of gPXE project still using old etherboot API, I would buy a Broadcom NIC and try to port it into new gPXE API.

Implement TCP receive queue to handle out-of-order packets, and SACK, window scaleing support. To have better performance on high latency network(WAN), or unstable networks(Wireless).

==== Outline ====
Current gPXE limited the TCP window size at 4KB. Which makes sence when the TCP stack dose not handle out-of-order packets, in order to prevent large amount of useless packets on slow and unstable network(Such as wireless). If any packet was dropped 

==== Milestones and Timeline ====
=== JMicron Ethernet Driver ===
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:weekb4|Week -4: Debug hardware problem]]
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:weekb3|Week -3: Trace gPXE code base]]
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:weekb2|Week -2: Implement JMicron driver]]
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:weekb1|Week -1: Modify JMicron driver, RX offloading]]

=== Tuning TCP stack ===
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:week0|Week 0: TCP performance test and tunning]]
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:week1|Week 1: Update wiki, TCP tunning]]
  * [[soc:2010:cooldavid:journal:week2|Week 2: Discussing TCP and memory changes]]
  * Week 3-6:
    * Have a solution for bigger heap size.
    * Fine tune window size, heap size.
    * Clean-up TCP receivw queue/SACK/Window scale patches.
    * Submit it on gPXE-devel, and discuss it.

=== Broadcom tg3 driver ===
  * Week 7:\\
    * Trace tg3 driver of both Linux and gPXE.
  * Week 8-10:\\
    * Port latest tg3 driver from Linux to gPXE.
  * Week 11-12:\\
    * Testing and Debuging.

==== Extra stuff from original plan ====
  * Ethernet RX checksum offloading support
  * TCP out-of-order receive queue
  * TCP Selective acknowledgement [RFC 2018][RFC 1323]
  * TCP Window scale [RFC 1323]
  * TCP PAWS(Protect Against Wrapped Sequence Nunbers) [RFC 1323]
  * Possible tunning TCP/HTTP xfer interface.

Trace: • notes • romomatic • usermode_ideas • elf-ebi-initramfs-lnxi-howto • info • week1 • week12 • week2 • gpxe-timeline • week10 • debian_lenny_iscsi • willem • 2006