Summary

Monitoring and tuning the kernel are important tasks for networking performance. This chapter described some of the important kernel tunable variables and how they impact the system's performance. These variables are made available to the user via the sysctl (8) interface or the /proc interface. One of the most critical ways performance can be optimized is by setting the size of the socket buffers to be optimum for the desired workload and environment. We discussed some of the core networking variables that affect queue lengths, and also described some of the TCP protocol parameters that are commonly adjusted.