Checking Nagle Algorithm on opened socket

Question

One of the platforms we use opens TCP sockets (No source code available).

I need to check if the Nagle Algorithm is disabled or enabled on those sockets.

The operating system used can be Windows or Linux and we know the open ports.

Any tools and Ideas :)

Answer 1

Nagle's algorithm is on by default, but may be disabled in the setsockopt system call using the flag TCP_NODELAY.

One way under Linux would be to trace setsockopt using strace. Network activity can then be traced by the call :

strace -o /tmp/strace.out -s 10000 -e trace=network -fp PID

This will trace the calls of bind, listen, socket, setsockopt.

If your Linux distribution includes systemtap, then you may use the command pfiles.stp.

An example of usage comes from this answer :

$ ./pfiles.stp `pgrep udevd`
   787: udevd
  Current rlimit: 32 file descriptors
   0: S_IFCHR mode:0666 dev:0,15 ino:396 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:1,3
      O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE 
      /dev/null
   1: S_IFCHR mode:0666 dev:0,15 ino:396 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:1,3
      O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE 
      /dev/null
   2: S_IFCHR mode:0666 dev:0,15 ino:396 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:1,3
      O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE 
      /dev/null
   3: S_IFDIR mode:0600 dev:0,9 ino:1 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:0,0
      O_RDONLY 
      inotify
   4: S_IFSOCK mode:0777 dev:0,4 ino:2353 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:0,0
      O_RDWR 
      socket:[2353]
      SO_PASSCRED,SO_TYPE(2),SO_SNDBUF(111616),SO_RCVBUF(111616)
        sockname: AF_UNIX
   5: S_IFSOCK mode:0777 dev:0,4 ino:2354 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:0,0
      O_RDWR 
      socket:[2354]
      SO_TYPE(2),SO_SNDBUF(111616),SO_RCVBUF(33554432)
        ulocks: rcv
   6: S_IFIFO mode:0600 dev:0,6 ino:2355 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:0,0
      O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK 
      pipe:[2355]
   7: S_IFIFO mode:0600 dev:0,6 ino:2355 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:0,0
      O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK 
      pipe:[2355]