I am creating a TCP connection from my linux program with boost.asio. I wonder how do I get the value of its congestion window (cwnd) from the program? The only way I know of is to parse /proc/net/tcp, but this does not feel right. I'd rather use a dedicated syscall to get this info.
A solution to a similar question (How to monitor cwnd and ssthresh values for a TCP connection?) suggests using TCP Probe, but it feels even less appealing.
So what is the best way to get the value of cwnd?
I did this with netlink and INET_DIAG-sockets based on this helpful example: https://github.com/kristrev/inet-diag-example
It turned out getsockopt() is able to return the same tcp_info when called with TCP_INFO option:
tcp_info tcpi = {};
socklen_t len = sizeof(tcp_info);
getsockopt(tcp_socket, SOL_TCP, TCP_INFO, &tcpi, &len);
tcpi.tcpi_snd_cwnd; // <-- CWND