Files
tailscale/ipn/ipnlocal
Simon Law e84e58c567 ipn/ipnlocal: use rendezvous hashing to traffic-steer exit nodes
With auto exit nodes enabled, the client picks exit nodes from the
ones advertised in the network map. Usually, it picks the one with the
highest priority score, but when the top spot is tied, it used to pick
randomly. Then, once it made a selection, it would strongly prefer to
stick with that exit node. It wouldn’t even consider another exit node
unless the client was shutdown or the exit node went offline. This is
to prevent flapping, where a client constantly chooses a different
random exit node.

The major problem with this algorithm is that new exit nodes don’t get
selected as often as they should. In fact, they wouldn’t even move
over if a higher scoring exit node appeared.

Let’s say that you have an exit node and it’s overloaded. So you spin
up a new exit node, right beside your existing one, in the hopes that
the traffic will be split across them. But since the client had this
strong affinity, they stick with the exit node they know and love.

Using rendezvous hashing, we can have different clients spread
their selections equally across their top scoring exit nodes. When an
exit node shuts down, its clients will spread themselves evenly to
their other equal options. When an exit node starts, a proportional
number of clients will migrate to their new best option.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_hashing

The trade-off is that starting up a new exit node may cause some
clients to move over, interrupting their existing network connections.
So this change is only enabled for tailnets with `traffic-steering`
enabled.

Updates tailscale/corp#29966
Fixes #16551

Signed-off-by: Simon Law <sfllaw@tailscale.com>
2025-07-16 12:54:49 -07:00
..
2025-06-17 17:53:22 -07:00