Enable BBR tcp congestion control under CentOS 7

It’s been a while since a new tcp congestion has been developed (by Google), which has the potential to replace the default cubic one! The TCP BBR tries to keep being fast and improves the network connectivity when there is packet loss. Enabling it on the server does not require it to enable it on the client to function BBR algorithm properly. So probably we’ll see the switch to this new tcp congestion control in the next major linux distros releases.

Here we present how to enable TCP BBR on your CentOS 7 box. As you know the CentOS 7 uses kernel 3.10.X and the TCP BBR was introduced in version 4.9+ kernels and in version 4.13 and on it has a tcp-level pacing so you do not need the qdisc “fq” to be enabled, when using TCP BBR. So we need a new kernel version 4.9 and on and the easiest and safest way to do it to use the mainline kernel from https://www.elrepo.org/. We have a detailed howto for this if you need more information on using mainline kernel with your CentOS 7.

Here are the steps, you need to be root to execute the following commands:

STEP 1) Update your system and reboot

yum clean all
yum -y update
reboot

Keep on reading!