tcp_syncookies

file: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies
variable: net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies
Official reference

Only valid when the kernel was compiled with CONFIG_SYN_COOKIES Send out syncookies when the syn backlog queue of a socket overflows. This is to prevent against the common ‘SYN flood attack’ Default: 1

Note, that syncookies is fallback facility. It MUST NOT be used to help highly loaded servers to stand against legal connection rate. If you see SYN flood warnings in your logs, but investigation shows that they occur because of overload with legal connections, you should tune another parameters until this warning disappear. See: tcp_max_syn_backlog, tcp_synack_retries, tcp_abort_on_overflow.

syncookies seriously violate TCP protocol, do not allow to use TCP extensions, can result in serious degradation of some services (f.e. SMTP relaying), visible not by you, but your clients and relays, contacting you. While you see SYN flood warnings in logs not being really flooded, your server is seriously misconfigured.

If you want to test which effects syncookies have to your network connections you can set this knob to 2 to enable unconditionally generation of syncookies.

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