Download Leading edge technologies in the HEAnet network - Redbrick

Leading edge technologies
in the HEAnet network
Brian Nisbet
&
John Lyons
<[email protected]>
Overview of talk
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HEAnet FAQ - what, why, who, where.
National and international links
- Gigabit ethernet in the WAN
Some services
- Mirroring
- Cisco Distributed Director
Some projects
IP routing fundamentals
- IP routing in HEAnet using OSPF, IS-IS & BGP
What?
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HEAnet is the national network for education and
research
 Not-for-profit, not-for-loss too.
 Operating since 1983
 Incorporated in 1997
 Located in Dublin
 PoPs in Cork, Dublin, Citywest, Galway, Limerick &
Kilcarbery
Why?
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Intercommunication
 Resource sharing
 Economies of scale
 Research collaboration
 Network technology
 National strategy
Who?
40 institutions (universities, ITs, …)
 Owned by the members
 Small central staff
 Collaboration with members
 International associations/partnerships
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Where?
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HEAnet Ltd., Ground Floor, Brooklawn House,
Crampton Ave, Shelbourne Rd, Dublin 4
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Tel: +353-1-6609040
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E-mail: [email protected] or
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GPS Coordinates: 53.3381ºN 6.2403ºW
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Web: http://www.heanet.ie
Fax: +353-1-6603666
[email protected]
Network Map
DCU Bandwidth Usage
DCU – MRTG (12th –20th March)
Maximum bandwidth available to
DCU : 63 Mbps ATM over STM1
Mantova Pic
Gigabit Backbone
Citywest – Galway (March 12th)
Citywest – NOC March 17th –25th
Gigabit Ethernet WAN
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Bigger, Better, Faster?
 Pros
 Mass Produced
 Less Demanding of Hardware
 Less Complex to Configure
 Higher Bandwidth
 Cheaper
Gigabit Ethernet WAN
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Cons
 Slower convergence times
 More difficult to troubleshoot
 Next steps may lose some of the
advantages
 10GE (add another zero)
 Complicates things by adding more
framing for long haul.
 May cost the same as STM-64.
Gigabit Ethernet WAN
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National Backbone Links
 Router to router, very straightforward.
 Client Links
 HEAnet to TCD, Ratelimited 120Mbps
over GE.
 Cisco 7200 onsite in TCD. Point-to-point
from there into a Routing-Switch.
 Allows better visibility of circuit and
development of Routing-Switches makes
things cheaper.
International Links
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155Mbps: Teleglobe, Abilene & StarTap
 622Mbps: GlobalCrossing
 1Gbps: JANET, Ca*net4, INEX
 2.5Gpbs: Géant
Some Operational Services
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National Information Server
IP address and Domain registration
Listserv
Statistics
Seminars, training
Databases
Webhosting
Mirroring
IPv6
NTP
Network security evaluation
Hot standby (Cisco DD)
Mirroring - ftp.heanet.ie
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2.2 Terabyte Server with dual GigE connectivity
IPv6 Capable in HTTP/FTP and RSYNC
One of the busiest mirrors in Europe and an official mirror of
RedHat, Debian, FreeBSD
Over 60 projects mirrored
Developed custom Apache patches to tweak service.
[email protected]
Hotstandby Web services
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HEAnet offer failover protection for webservers using Cisco
“Distributed Director” technology
Router (Cisco 3620/7200) acts as an authoritative DNS server
with a TTL of 0
Clients cannot cache the DNS records
Router monitors the primary webserver with full TCP
connections on port 80 at specified intervals (eg. Every 10
seconds)
Cisco Distributed Director
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Router has IP address of both main webserver and backup
“standby server”
If the router cannot connect to the main webserver it will
redirect queries to standby
Continues to initiate connections to main webserver and
reverts back to it when the webserver recovers
In HEAnet CDD is simply set-up to telnet to webserver on port
80. If it receives a response it considers the webserver to be
up but more granularity can be added.
Has limitations
- IPv6 not supported
- https not supported
Some HEAnet service developments
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IPv6 (Also a service)
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Test traffic project
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Multicast
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MAN
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Honeypots
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Videoservices
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Netflow
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PKI
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National Backbone
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Next Generation Internet
IP routing Fundamentals
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Routing is the process of selecting the interfaces
through which a packet should be sent
 Forwarding is the process of actually moving this packet
once the route has been determined
 Classful routing only passes network addresses,
classless routing uses both network and subnet
addresses
 Classless interdomain routing (CIDR) was brought in in
a bid to reserve IPv4 addresses and allows blocks of
class C addresses to be combined/aggregated eg.
192.168.1.0 /21
More fundamentals …
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Variable length subnet masks (VLSM) - greater
granularity eg.192.168.0.0/28
 Distance Vector protocols use hop count as a metric,
link state (eg. OSPF) use cost. Hybrid protocols like
EIGRP can use complex rules involving delay, reliability
 Convergence is the length of time after a network
change (Interface/line down, router added etc.)that
routing tables take to update
 An Autonomous system (AS) is a group of IP networks
operated by one or more network operator/s which has a
single and clearly defined external routing policy
Rip v1/v2
RIPv1 – RFC1058
- Classful, Periodic updates, transfers entire routing
tables, distance vector, uses holddown timers.
 RIPv2
- Added classless, authentication, multicast support.
 Uses “routing by rumour” as it only sees directly
connected routers
 Both of these routing protocols are inefficient and
are now only used on very small networks. They have
been phased out in favour of more “intelligent”
Interior gateway protocols (IGP’s) such as OSPF and ISIS.
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OSPF Overview
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Features
- Supports CIDR/VLSM
- Fast convergence
- Uses multicast addresses for hello packets
- Load balancing
- Uses areas to cut down CPU usage
 Uses hello packets to establish adjacencies initially via
a 6 step process
 Once adjacency established it uses regular Link State
advertisements (LSA) and Link state updates (LSU) to
describe links & adjacencies changes
OSPF
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9 types of LSA, 5 of which are used extensively :
1-Router link
2-Network link
3-Network summary
4-ASBR summary
5-AS external.
(other 4 for TOS)
Link state databases (LSDB) built from info in LSA’s
Each router in an Area has the same LSDB and using this &
the SPF algorithm (Dijkstra) to build its routing table
It’s an efficient & quiet routing protocol as it can have separate
LSDB for each area & only sends LSA updates
OSPF
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Works under different network topologies differently
- Broadcast multiaccess (LAN)
- Point to Point (eg. Serial connection)
- Point to Multipoint (eg ATM using multiple VC’s)
- Point to Multipoint (Non broadcast multi access (NBMA))
Reacts quickly to network changes (Line down, router death)
- Hello interval every 10 secs
- Dead interval (Link down) is 4 times hello interval
Routing descisions based on cost of 100000000/1
- Cost ranges from 0 to 65535 with 0 being the best
- 100Mb = OSPF cost of 1
- OSPF can do load balancing between same cost routes
OSPF in HEAnet
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In HEAnet we have only one area (backbone: area 0)although
we are investigating the use of multiple areas in the future (or
using IS-IS)
In conjunction with static routes and BGP we use OSPF to
route traffic throughout our internal network
Routers in DCU have full visibility of all routers running OSPF
in our AS ie. They have the same LSDB as the other routers in
the AS
Does have its limitations:
- Currently running OSPF v2 which doesn’t handle IPv6
- OSPF v3 does but isnt considered stable enough yet
- For IPv6 we need to run another routing protocol IS-IS
IS-IS
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IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate
System). Part of the OSI standard.
ISO/IEC 10589, RFC 1195 and RFC 2763
Not originally designed for IP.
Uses Link-State PDUs, similar to OSPF
LSAs.
Extensible Protocol, updated to deal with
IPv6 faster than OSPF.
Add more Type-Length-Values to the PDUs
to handle more protocols.
IS-IS in HEAnet
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Used purely for IPv6 routing within the
HEAnet network.
 Communication between routers.
 IPv6 connections to clients.
BGP
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BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is an EGP
(External Gateway Protocol) and an IGP
(Internal Gateway Protocol).
RFC 1771
Deals with AS’ (Autonomous Systems)
Exchanges routing information between
peers.
Makes routing decisions based on a number
of different criteria applied to each route.
BGP
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These criteria feed into the BGP Best Path
Algorithm. Each step is gone through until a
definite routing decision can be made.
 Invalid paths are ignored.
 Common values/criteria:
 Local Preference
 AS Path Length
 Multi Exit Discriminator (MED)
 Will eventually choose the path to the
router with the lowest IP address.
BGP in HEAnet
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We have BGP peerings with all of the
networks we directly connect to eg Géant,
JANET, Ca*net4, Global Crossing,
Teleglobe etc.
 A large number of the routers in HEAnet
form part of our internal BGP mesh.
 Allows for proper route selection to any
accessible point in the internet from
anywhere in HEAnet.
Contacts
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http://www.heanet.ie
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[email protected]
Questions ?