Comment 1 for bug 1034281

A peer (or local user) may cause TCP to use a nominal MSS of as little
as 88 (actual MSS of 76 with timestamps). Given that we have a
sufficiently prodigious local sender and the peer ACKs quickly enough,
it is nevertheless possible to grow the window for such a connection
to the point that we will try to send just under 64K at once. This
results in a single skb that expands to 861 segments.

In some drivers with TSO support, such an skb will require hundreds of
DMA descriptors; a substantial fraction of a TX ring or even more than
a full ring. The TX queue selected for the skb may stall and trigger
the TX watchdog repeatedly (since the problem skb will be retried
after the TX reset).

Upstream patch:
http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg206332.html

References:
http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2012/q3/171

Acknowledgements:

Red Hat would like to thank Ben Hutchings of Solarflare (tm) for reporting this issue.