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BGP Data Center Networking WISP

The problem with peering from a logistics standpoint

Many ISPs run into this problem as part of their growing pains.  This scenario usually starts happening with their third or 4th peer.

Scenario.  ISP grows beyond the single connection they have.  This can be 10 meg, 100 meg, gig or whatever.  They start out looking for redundancy. The ISP brings in a second provider, usually at around the same bandwidth level.  This way the network has two pretty equal paths to go out.

A unique problem usually develops as the network grows to the point of peaking the capacity of both of these connections.  The ISP has to make a decision. Do they increase the capacity to just one provider? Most don’t have the budget to increase capacities to both providers. Now, if you increase one you are favouring one provider over another until the budget allows you to increase capacity on both. You are essentially in a state where you have to favor one provider in order to keep up capacity.  If you fail over to the smaller pipe things could be just as bad as being down.

This is where many ISPs learn the hard way that BGP is not load balancing. But what about padding, communities, local-pref, and all that jazz? We will get to that.  In the meantime, our ISP may have the opportunity to get to an Internet Exchange (IX) and offload things like streaming traffic.  Traffic returns to a little more balance because you essentially have a 3rd provider with the IX connection. But, they growing pains don’t stop there.

As ISP’s, especially WISPs, have more and more resources to deal with cutting down latency they start seeking out better-peered networks.  The next growing pain that becomes apparent is the networks with lots of high-end peers tend to charge more money.  In order for the ISP to buy bandwidth they usually have to do it in smaller quantities from these types of providers. This introduces the probably of a mismatched pipe size again with a twist. The twist is the more, and better peers a network has the more traffic is going to want to travel to that peer. So, the more expensive peer, which you are probably buying less of, now wants to handle more of your traffic.

So, the network geeks will bring up things like padding, communities, local-pref, and all the tricks BGP has.  But, at the end of the day, BGP is not load balancing.  You can *influence* traffic, but BGP does not allow you to say “I want 100 megs of traffic here, and 500 megs here.”  Keep in mind BGP deals with traffic to and from IP blocks, not the traffic itself.

So, how does the ISP solve this? Knowing about your upstream peers is the first thing.  BGP looking glasses, peer reports such as those from Hurricane Electric, and general news help keep you on top of things.  Things such as new peering points, acquisitions, and new data centers can influence an ISPs traffic.  If your equipment supports things such as netflow, sflow, and other tools you can begin to build a picture of your traffic and what ASNs it is going to. This is your first major step. Get tools to know what ASNs the traffic is going to   You can then take this data, and look at how your own peers are connected with these ASNs.  You will start to see things like provider A is poorly peered with ASN 2906.

Once you know who your peers are and have a good feel on their peering then you can influence your traffic.  If you know you don’t want to send traffic destined for ASN 2906 in or out provider A you can then start to implement AS padding and all the tricks we mentioned before.  But, you need the greater picture before you can do that.

One last note. Peering is dynamic.  You have to keep on top of the ecosystem as a whole.

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Uncategorized

This is a Premium Test

 

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Site News

Premium Content?

Folks,

I have been going over the idea of premium content within my blogs. I find myself wanting to write more and more, and writing would help one of my other projects I have going.  However, I don’t make any direct money from the blog.

In an effort to provide more regular content, I have come up with the following ideas.

1.I will be implementing a premium posts section of this blog.  For the foreseeable future, this will be a free section. All that will be required is you fill out a simple registration.  We won’t spam you, but you will have the option to be notified of updates.

2.I will be doing more sponsored posts to keep as much content as possible in the non-premium space.  As a result, I am looking for vendors with products they would like reviewed.  The idea is if I buy a product with my own money, it’s most likely going to be a premium post.  If a vendor or manufacturer wish to send a product to be reviewed this will be a public post.

I am looking for vendors and manufacturers that wish to be regular sponsors. This strategy is open and fluid as things progress.

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Uncategorized

Product Review: Sync Stop

As I get ready for my trip to Vegas to attend WISPAPALLOZA 2017 the following product becomes relevant.  Security, namely Identity Theft, is becoming more and more of something we have to deal with.  Much like pickpockets, digital Identity theft is a real thing.

This is where the SyncStop by Xipiter comes in.  This is a simple device.  It allows you to charge your phone on any USB enabled connection, but does not allow syncing by cutting off access to the data pins of the USB connection at the hardware level.

If you travel alot I would suggest investing in a few of these.  Let’s face it, we try and find an outlet anywhere we can when it comes to charging our phones.  Hackers know this.  A cleverly designed “public charge station” could be easily compromised to feed your data back to a remote server in just a few minutes and you would probably never notice.

Categories
Networking Security Wireless WISP

WPA is not encrypting your customer traffic

There was a Facebook discussion that popped up tonight about how a WISP answers the question “Is your network secure?” There were many good answers and the notion of WEP vs WPA was brought up.

In today’s society, you need end-to-end encryption for data to be secure. An ISP has no control over where the customer traffic is going. Thus, by default, the ISP has no control over customer traffic being secure.  “But Justin, I run WPA on all my aps and backhauls, so my network is secure.”  Again, think about end-to-end connectivity. Every one of your access points can be encrypted, and every one of your backhauls can be encrypted, but what happens when an attacker breaks into your wiring closet and installs a sniffer on a router or switch port?What most people forget is that WPA key encryption is only going on between the router/ap and the user device.  “But I lock down all my ports.” you say.  Okay, what about your upstream? Who is to say your upstream provider doesn’t have a port mirror running that dumps all your customer traffic somewhere.  “Okay, I will just run encrypted tunnels across my entire network!. Ha! let’s see you tear down that argument!”. Again, what happens when it leaves your network?  The encryption stops at the endpoint, which is the edge of your network.

Another thing everyone hears about is hotspots. Every so often the news runs a fear piece on unsecured hotspots.  This is the same concept.  If you connect to an unsecured hotspot, it is not much different than connecting to a hotspot where the WPA2 key is on a sign behind the cashier at the local coffee shop. The only difference is the “hacker” has an easier time grabbing any unsecured traffic you are sending. Notice I said unsecured.  If you are using SSL to connect to a bank site that session is sent over an encrypted session.  No sniffing going on there.  If you have an encrypted VPN the possibility of traffic being sniffed is next to none. I say next to none because certain types of VPNs are more secure than others. Does that mean the ISP providing the Internet to feed that hotspot is insecure? There is no feasible way for the ISP to provide end to end security of user traffic on the open Internet.

These arguments are why things like SSL and VPNs exist. Google Chrome is now expecting all websites to be SSL enabled to be marked as secure. VPNs can ensure end-to-end security, but only between two points.  Eventually, you will have to leave the safety and venture out into the wild west of the internet.  Things like Intranets exist so users can have access to information but still be protected. Even most of that is over encrypted SSL these days so someone can’t install a sniffer in the basement.

So what is a WISP supposed to say about security? The WISP is no more secure than any other ISP, nor are then any less secure.  The real security comes from the customer. Things like making sure their devices are up-to-date on security patches.  This includes the often forgotten router. Things like secure passwords, paying attention to browser warnings, e-mail awareness, and other things are where the real user security lies. VPN connections to work. Using SSL ports on e-mail. Using SSH and Secure RDP for network admins. Firewalls can help, but they don’t encrypt the traffic. Does all traffic need encrypted? no.

Categories
Networking Security Wireless WISP WISPA

Everything you wanted to know about NTP

Network Time Protocol (NTP) is a service that can be used to synchronize time on network connected devices.   Before we dive into what NTP is, we need to understand why we need accurate time.

The obvious thing is network devices need an accurate clock.  Things like log files with the proper time stamp are important in troubleshooting.  Accurate timing also helps with security prevention measures.  Some attacks use vulnerabilities in time stamps to add in bad payloads or manipulate data. Some companies require accurate time stamps on files and transactions as well for compliance purposes.

So what are these Stratum levels I hear about?
NTP has several levels divided into stratum. All this is the distance from the reference clock source.  A clock which relays UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) that has little to no delay (we are talking nanoseconds) are Stratum-0 servers. These are not used on the network. These are usually atomic and GPS clocks.  A Stratum-0 server is connected to time servers or stratum-1 via GPS or a national time and frequency transmission.  A Stratum 1 device is a very accurate device and is not connected to a Stratum-0 clock over a network.  A Stratum-2 clock receives NTP packets from a Stratum-1 server, a Stratum-3 receives packets from a Stratum-2 server, and so on.  It’s all relative of where the NTP is in relationship to Stratum-1 servers.

Why are there levels?
The further you get away from Stratum-0 the more delay there is.  Things like jitter and network delays affect accuracy.  Most of us network engineers are concerned with milliseconds (ms) of latency.  Time servers are concerned with nanoseconds (ns). Even a server directly connected to a Stratum-0 reference will add 8-10 nanoseconds to UTC time.

My Mikrotik has an NTP server built in? Is that good enough?
This depends on what level of accuracy you want. Do you just need to make sure all of your routers have the same time? then synchronizing with an upstream time server is probably good enough. Having 5000 devices with the same time, AND not having to manually set them or keep them in sync manually is a huge deal.

Do you run a VOIP switch or need to be compliant when it comes to transactions on servers or need to be compliant with various things like Sox compliance you may need a more accurate time source.

What can I do for more accurate time?
Usually, a dedicated appliance is what many networks use.  These are purpose built hardware that receives a signal from GPS. the more accurate you need the time, the more expensive it will become.  Devices that need to be accurate to the nanosecond are usually more expensive than ones accurate to a microsecond.

If you google NTP Appliance you will get a bunch of results.  If you want to setp up from what you are doing currently you can look into these links:

http://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/Raspberry-Pi-NTP.html

How to Build a Stratum 1 NTP Server Using A Raspberry Pi

 

Building a Stratum 1 NTP Server with a Raspberry Pi