Categories
Networking Wireless WISP xISP

Why every ISP should be deploying hAP Lite to customers

So Mikrotik has a very cheap hAP Lite coming out.   This is a 4 port, 2.4 b/g/n router/access point which retails for $21.95. Baltic networks has pre-orders for $18.95.

Why should you deploy this little gem and how? We have found over the years routers account for more than half of the support issues. In some networks this number is closer to 80-90%. Whether it be a substandard router, one with out of date firmware, or poor placement by the customer.

Deployment of the hAP lite can be approached in one of two ways.  Both ways accomplish the same goal for the ISP. That goal is to have a device to test from that closely duplicates what the customer would see. Sure you can run tests from most modern wireless CPE, but it’s not the same as running tests m the customer side of the POE.

Many ISPs are offering a managed router service to their customers.  Some charge a nominal monthly fee, while others include it in the service.  This is a pretty straightforward thing.  The customer DMARC becomes the wireless router.  The ISP sets it up, does firmware updates, and generally takes care of it should there be issues.  The managed router can be an additional revenue stream in addition to providing a better customer experience.  Having a solid router that has been professionally setup by the ISP is a huge benefit to both the provider and the customer.  We will get into this a little later.

Second option lends itself better to a product such as the hAP lite. With the relative cheap cost you can install one as a “modem” if the customer chooses their own router option.  The actual method of setup can vary depending on your network philosophy.  You can simply bridge all the ports together and pass the data through like a switch.  The only difference is you add a “management ip” to the bridge interface on your network. This way you can reach it.  Another popular method, especially if you are running PPPoE or other radius methods, is to make the “modem” the PPPoE client.  This removes some of the burden from the wireless CPE onto something a little more powerful.   There are definite design considerations and cons for this setup.  We will go into those in a future article. But for now let’s just assume the hAP is just a managed switch you can access.

So what are the benefits of adding one of these cheap devices?
-You can run pings and traceroutes from the device.  This is helpful if a customer says they can’t reach a certain web-site.
-Capacity is becoming a larger and larger issue in the connected home.  iPads, gaming consoles, tvs, and even appliances are all sharing bandwidth.  If you are managing the customer router you can see the number of connected devices and do things like Torch to see what they are doing. If a customer calls and says its slow, being able to tell them that little Billy is downloading 4 megs a second on a device called “Billy’s xbox” can help a customer. It could also lead to an upsell.
-Wireless issues are another huge benefit.  If the customer bought their own router and stuck it in the basement and now their internet is slow you have a couple of tricks to troubleshoot without a truck roll.  If the hAP is in bridge mode simply enable the wireless, setup an SSID for the customer to test with and away you go.  This could uncover issues in the house, issues with their router, or it might even point to a problem on your side.
-Physical issues and ID10T errors can be quickly diagnosed.  If you can’t reach your device it’s either off or a cabling issue.  If you can reach the hAP and the port has errors it could be cabling or POE.

These are just a few benefits you can gleam from sticking a $20 Mikrotik device on your customer side network. It becomes a troubleshooting tool, which makes it money back if it saves you a single truck roll. The implementation is not as important as having a tool closer to the customer.  There several vendoars you can order the hAP lite from.  Baltic Networks is close to me so they are my go-to.  http://www.balticnetworks.com/mikrotik-hap-lite-tc-2-4ghz-indoor-access-point-tower-case-built-in-1-5dbi-antenna.html .

This isn’t practical for business and Enterprise customers, but you should already be deploying a router which has these features anyway right? 🙂

Categories
Security

SHA-1 Certificates EOL

The SHA-1 cryptographic hash algorithm has been known to be considerably weaker than it was designed to besince at least 2005 — 9 years ago. Collision attacks against SHA-1 are too affordable for us to consider it safe for the public web PKI. We can only expect that attacks will get cheaper.

That’s why Chrome will start the process of sunsetting SHA-1 (as used in certificate signatures for HTTPS) with Chrome 39 in November. HTTPS sites whose certificate chains use SHA-1 and are valid past 1 January 2017 will no longer appear to be fully trustworthy in Chrome’s user interface.

https://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.ro/2015/12/an-update-on-sha-1-certificates-in.html

Categories
BGP Mikrotik Networking

Quick and dirty DDoS mitigation for Mikrotik

Update: This article is not meant  to be a permanent solution.  It’s a way to stop the tidal wave of traffic you could be getting.  Many times it’s important to just get the customers up to some degree while you figure out the best course of action.  

Many of the Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks many folks see these days involve attacks coming from APNIC (Asia Pacific) IP addresses.  A trend is to open as many connections as possible and overwhelm the number of entries in the connection table. You are limited to 65,535 ports to be open.  Ports below 10000 are reserved ports, but anything above that can be used for client type connections.

 Now, Imagine you have a botnet with 10,000 computers all bearing their weight on your network.  Say you have a web-site someone doesn’t like.  If these 10,000 machines all send just 7 legitimate GET requests to your web-server you can bring, even a big router to a grinding halt.   Firewalls, due to the extra CPU they are exerting, are even more prone to these types of attacks.

So, how do you begin to mitigate this attack? By the time you are under attack you are in defensive mode.  Someone, or alot of someone’s, are at your door trying to huff and puff and blow your house down. You need to slow the tide.  One of the first things you can do is start refusing the traffic. A simple torch normally shows many of the attacking IPs, are from APNIC.  If this is the case, we enable a firewall rule that says if the IP is not sourced from the below “ARIN” address list go ahead and drop it.

add chain=forward comment="WebServer ACL" dst-address=1.2.3.4 src-address-list=!ARIN action=drop

The above rule says if our attacked host is being contacted by anything not on the “ARIN” list go ahead and drop it.

Make sure to paste this into /ip firewall address-list . These were copied off the ARIN web-site as of this writing. APNIC and other registries all have similar lists. Keep in mind, this won’t stop the traffic from coming to you, but will shield you some in order to have a somewhat functional network while you track down the issues.

Some people will say to blackhole the IP via a BGP blackhole server, but if you have production machines on the attacked host taking them offline for the entire world could be a problem.  This way, you are at least limiting who can talk to them.

add address=23.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=24.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=45.16.0.0/12 list=ARIN
add address=45.32.0.0/11 list=ARIN
add address=45.72.0.0/13 list=ARIN
add address=50.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=63.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=64.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=65.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=66.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=67.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=68.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=69.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=70.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=71.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=72.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=73.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=74.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=75.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=76.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=96.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=97.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=98.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=99.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=100.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=104.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=107.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=108.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=135.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=136.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=142.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=147.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=162.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=166.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=172.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=173.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=174.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=184.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=192.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=198.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=199.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=204.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=205.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=206.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=207.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=208.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=209.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
add address=216.0.0.0/8 list=ARIN
Categories
BGP Networking

IP space terms to know

When you are talking about the type of assigned Public IP space you have there are a couple of terms that are handy to know.

Provider assigned (PA) space. This is space assigned by your upstream provider. These “belong” to someone you are buying services from. If you wish to advertise these via your own ASN to other providers you need a Letter of Authority (LOA) from whom these IPs are assigned to.

Provider independent (PI) is space directly assigned to you from a registry such as ARIN, RIPE,etc. These addresses “belong ” to you. You have authority over these addresses to assign them out, as long as it meets the terms set by the registry.