RE: OT: VPS with Routed IP space

2015-02-24 Thread Michael Helmeste
ARP Networks: https://www.arpnetworks.com/vps

Routed IP space (v4 and v6) as well as BGP peering.

> -Original Message-
> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Zachary
> Giles
> Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2015 12:29 PM
> To: Owen DeLong
> Cc: NANOG
> Subject: Re: OT: VPS with Routed IP space
> 
> 
> How about VPS providers who will do BGP... Do they exist?
> 
> [...]
> > > Den 24/02/2015 19.25 skrev "Alex Buie" :
> > >
> > >> Anybody know of or have recommendations for providers of small
> > >> VPS-line boxen (or alternative solutions) to serve as GRE endpoints?
> > [...]


RE: AWS Elastic IP architecture

2015-05-28 Thread Michael Helmeste
> -Original Message-
> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Christopher
> Morrow
> Subject: Re: AWS Elastic IP architecture
> [...]
> i sort of doesn't matter right? it is PROBABLY some form of encapsulation
> (like gre, ip-in-ip, lisp, mpls, vpls, etc) ...
> [...]

I don't know how the public blocks get to the datacenter (e.g. whether they are 
using MPLS) but after that I think it is pretty straightforward. All of the VMs 
have only one IPv4 address assigned out of 10/8. This doesn't change when you 
attach an Elastic IP to them.

All that is happening is that they have some NAT device somewhere (maybe even 
just a redundant pair of VMs?) that has a block of public IPs assigned to it 
and they are static NAT'ing the Elastic IP to the VM. They control the 
allocation of the Elastic IPs, so they just pick one that is routed out of that 
datacenter already. They probably don't need to do anything out of the ordinary 
to get it there.

(See: http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1346 )


RE: AWS Elastic IP architecture

2015-05-28 Thread Michael Helmeste
> -Original Message-
> From: christopher.mor...@gmail.com
> Subject: Re: AWS Elastic IP architecture
> > [...]
> > All that is happening is that they have some NAT device somewhere
> > (maybe even just a redundant pair of VMs?) that has a block of public
> > IPs assigned to it and they
> 
> i'd question scalability of that sort of thing... but sure, sounds like a
> reasonable model to think about.

I agree it appears ugly from a traditional network service provider 
perspective, but to my understanding much of the large scale cloud stuff is 
built using the cheapest, dumbest switching you can find and as little rich L3 
routing gear (e.g. ASR/MX) as you can get away with.

The more functionality you can pack into software (with the universal building 
block being a VM), the less you have to worry about buying network hardware to 
any particular requirement other than "forwards Ethernet most of the time." It 
gives more control and agility to the developers of the platform, and spending 
a few gigabytes of RAM for every /23 and adding a little more latency and 
jitter ultimately becomes an economical trade off.

You can also move the network stuff up to the hypervisor layer (which I am sure 
they have done for things like Security Groups), but it makes rolling out 
updates harder and increases the general hack-level.


Good MPLS/VPLS book?

2010-12-23 Thread Michael Helmeste
  Does anyone have a favorite book or resource discussing MPLS and all 
associated Lego blocks (e.g. LDP, TE, VPLS, martini, mBGP et. al.)?


  I understand the basics of what MPLS is and how you create a circuit from
A to B but I'm afraid it still escapes me when trying to figure out how 
someone would, say, create a multicast capable VPN with 5 edge points.


  Any pointers to a good way to reduce my level of ignorance on this 
subject would be appreciated. Vendor literature doesn't bother me as long 
as the concepts are there.


  Regards,
Michael H.




Re: Good MPLS/VPLS book?

2010-12-23 Thread Michael Helmeste
Thanks for the suggestions, all! Looks like I have some reading to do.

On Thu, 23 Dec 2010 18:49:46 -0500
Dan Snyder  wrote:

> 
> 
> On Dec 23, 2010, at 5:49 PM, Michael Helmeste  wrote:
> 
> >  Does anyone have a favorite book or resource discussing MPLS and all 
> > associated Lego blocks (e.g. LDP, TE, VPLS, martini, mBGP et. al.)?
> > 
> >  I understand the basics of what MPLS is and how you create a circuit from
> > A to B but I'm afraid it still escapes me when trying to figure out how 
> > someone would, say, create a multicast capable VPN with 5 edge points.
> > 
> >  Any pointers to a good way to reduce my level of ignorance on this subject 
> > would be appreciated. Vendor literature doesn't bother me as long as the 
> > concepts are there.
> > 
> >  Regards,
> >Michael H.
> > 
> > 
> 
> Designing and Implementing IP/MPLS-Based Ethernet Layer 2 VPN Services: An 
> Advanced Guide for VPLS and VLL (Paperback)
> Zhuo Xu
> 
> I thought was pretty good.




Re: Speed Testing and Throughput testing

2009-11-04 Thread Michael Helmeste
We had a problem where our (mostly research network connected, international) 
users were getting generally low HTTP transfer speeds, even though the path was 
often gigabit. The classic high bandwidth/high latency problem.

Initially I tried using iperf/ndt and friends but found that iperf required too 
much user knowledge and interaction, and NDT was sometimes inaccurate at 
diagnosing problems -- it seemed to be overly fond of saying there was a duplex 
mismatch or congestion. Iperf in TCP mode either requires manually seeking the 
number of streams to try and find optimum throughput, or doing window size 
tweaks.

I also found that packet captures were useful for discovering problems in the 
path; you can load it up in wireshark or tcptrace and get a sequence no. vs 
time graph, look for packetloss, or other good things like that.

Anyways I didn't find much out there in terms of automating this type of thing 
(simple throughput tests with packet capture) so I just ended up making my own. 
It does a dump of 10 sec. of test traffic, uses a somewhat dumb algorithm to 
seek up the number of TCP streams, and gets an AS path from a BGP route server 
and displays it to the user. The caveat is that it only tests your download 
speed, not upload, since that was primarily what I was interested in.

You can give it a try at: http://caranthir.dao.nrc.ca/netperf-www/ (login 
nanog/nanog). User guide here: 
http://www.cadc-ccda.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/netperf/testdetail.shtml

I might end up packaging and releasing the code if there is interest.

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 15:56:56 -0600
Mark Urbach  wrote:

> Anyone have a good solution to get "accurate" speed results when testing at 
> 10/100/1000 Ethernet speeds?
> 
> Do you have a server/software that customer can test too?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Mark Urbach
> PinPoint Communications, Inc.
> 100 N. 12th St  Suite 500
> Lincoln, NE 68508
> 402-438-6211  ext 1923  Office
> 402-660-7982  Cell
> mark.urb...@pnpt.com
> [cid:image003.jpg@01CA5BD5.1A5CEE20]
> 
> 




ACLs vs. full firewalls

2009-04-07 Thread Michael Helmeste
Hi all,
  One of the duties of my current place of employ is reorganizing the
network. We have a few Catalyst 6500 series L3 switches, but currently
do all packet filtering (and some routing) using a software based
firewall. Don't ask me, I didn't design it :)

  Current security requirements are only based on TCP and non-stateful
UDP src/dst net/port filtering, and so my suggestion was to use ACLs
applied on the routed interface of each VLAN. There was some talk of
using another software based firewall or a Cisco FWSM card to filter
traffic at the border, mostly for management concerns. We expect full 1
gig traffic levels today, and 10 gig traffic levels in the future.

  I view ACLs as being a cheap, easy to administrate solution that
scales with upgrades to new interface line speeds, where a full stateful
firewall isn't necessary. However, I wanted to get other opinions of
what packet filtering solutions people use in the border and in the
core, and why.

  What's out there, and why do you guys use it? How do you feel about
the scalability, performance, security, and manageability of your
solution? What kind of traffic levels do you put through it?



Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls

2009-04-07 Thread Michael Helmeste
While there are no specific audit requirements, overall traffic auditing
(not just for dropped packets) is definitely something I'm considering.
One way of gathering this data without using a firewall would seem to be
netflow; I don't think netflow specifically calls out (or even shows?)
traffic blocked by ACLs though, which could be a point for consideration.

Eric Gauthier wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> Do you have logging or audit requirements to your filters?
> We use ACLs almost everywhere for non-stateful filtering, but
> there are a few locations (e.g. HIPPA) that require an 
> audit trail which is perhaps better accomplished by a firewall.
> 
> Eric :)
> [...]