Internet

So, if you are reading this page, it is being delivered with the magic of Anycast. Well, technically, it was before, since i used Cloudflare, and it still is because of Cloudflare, but also because of my own ASN (As204994), some servers in different locations, and some magic, which i will explain a bit of in this post.

This all started late last year when i got my hands on an ASN and a /48 block of IPv6 addresses. I had been reading stuff about BGP, routing, etc, and decided to go all in. it was quite cheap with the help of HostUS. All in, it was about $50 for the year. As part of the process, i needed 2 upstream providers to say they would accept my announcement. They were Hurricane Electric though their Tunnel Broker service, and Vultr using a few of their VPSs.

So, after many (MANY) years messing with dual cable modems, struggling to get them working together, to get websites to even allow me in, having to use hacks and kluges to get it to work at all… I have given up. It has been a struggle getting two modems working properly. Load blanching kind of works… but it’s messy at best. Some sites kick you out every now and again because your IP changes. Some sites wont let you login at all… Mind you, some sites work grand and don’t ask questions…

[NOTE] This part 8 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

At the end of my last post I asked the question about routing traffic to different servers based on thier distances, etc… Well, after a bit of messing, i can say it kind of works! here is a quick over view:

• server in the house has now got multiple OpenVPN connections (2 to Hetzner, 1 to OVH (with a plan to double), 1 to Digital Ocean (again, to be doubled) and i am planning 2 to Azure as well).
• Quagga/Zebra has static routes (currently static, planing on dynamic soon… more eventually) to different servers depending on where they are. for example, all traffic to the hetzner network (including their Storage Boxes) go though the hetzner link. Hubic traffic goes though OVH, Azure (currently) and AWS traffic, aswell as some CDNs go direct over either WAN1 or WAN2 in the house, and some other stuff (CrashPlan currently) goes though Digital Ocean. Everything that has no static route goes though Hetzner…
• Ideally, the static side of things should be removed, and a more dynamic setup done. How that works, i have no idea… Spotify have 2 posts about their SDN Internet Router (part 1 and part 2) which is an interesting idea… More digging and research is required.

So, there you have it. Everything currently seems to be working, mostly, and tweaks can be made easily… I have a couple posts i have in my head, including something to do with automating bringing up new machines (probably with Ansible or something like it), more monitoring, and some other stuff too… Any questions, leave a comment, and i will get back.

[NOTE] This part 7 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

In the last post I mentioned I am now using Hetzner for hosting a dedicated box. Thats still live, and going well. I have a /29 IP range (6 usable) and also 2 other IPs. So far, so good… But because i was using a Socks Server, I was not fully able to use the /29 ips… I use something like as follows:

[NOTE] This part 6 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

Its been a while, since I posted, and there are some, well, pretty major changes since the last time… Lets start are the beginning.

Last time I was using Digital Ocean for my hosting provider. I was using their $20 a month server (2 cores, 2GB RAM, 40GB SSD, 3TB transfer), and it was all good… But I noticed that every now and again I would need to reboot the box. I also noticed that when transferring large files or using higher bandwidth (400mb/s+) the 100% of both cores were being used. So, I wanted to move to something with more power…

[NOTE] This part 5 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

This post is going to be an update and theoretical post. probably very little “new” stuff going on here, mostly updates, and what I am planning on doing later on.

This week, I have been OOF sick, so I have not done much work, but I have been surfing the web, watching videos, downloading stuff, etc., so I have an idea of how things are going. First, as mentioned in the previous post I have MPTCP, Squid, Socks Servers, OpenVPN and IPTables doing their magic. 2 OpenVPN tunnels between the house and Digital Ocean. All TCP Traffic (bar port 80) is sent over socks to the box in the cloud using RedSocks. All UDP traffic is sent direct over OpenVPN. Since MPTCP is in the mix, all socks traffic is actually split over the 2 connections. All port 80 traffic, and 443 (if the client is using local Squid as their proxy) is sent round-robin between the 2 upstream IPs to Squid (2 OpenVPN end points).

[NOTE] This part 4 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

So, this week I went in a completely different direction that I have been thinking recently.

So, the basic theory is as follows:

• I am still using MPTCP kernels on both upstream and local machine
• now have 2 P2P UDP OpenVPN tunnels between house and cloud. Example config is here
• all TCP traffic (bar port 80) that hits the router in house is redirected to RedSocks
• RedSocks uses a socks server, Dante, as an upstream server on the cloud box
• since the socks traffic is over TCP (inside the UDP OpenVPN tunnel) it uses MPTCP
• having socks running, gives me quite the download speed, turning it off does not, hence the following tweet

• I am also noticing that I am starting to hit the limits of my upstream VM. If downloading or uploading at speed, the processor cores (2 in the case of the box I am currently running) are pegged at pretty much 100% full. Well, 80ish, but that because the other 20% is being used by Dante. I am noticing I can hit a full 72Mbit/s up, but the max currently downloading is about 400, maybe 450. Need a faster box now.
• I mentioned port 80 not being set over socks. That’s because its redirected to Squid. Squid (in house) then uses Squid (in cloud) as a parent. There are 2 round-robin parents for squid, one on each OpenVPN connection IP address.
• all other traffic (UDP, ICMP, etc.) are sent over the OpenVPN connection. currently only one is picked, but I have a cunning plan.

The cunning plan? Well, if I am reading the internet correctly, and I would like to think I am, I think ECMP, or Equal Cost Multi-Path Routing, could help. Again, it’s a fledgling idea currently, and I am still reading the documentation, but if it works. Well. I not sure. let’s see.

[NOTE] This part 3 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

In Part 1 of this series I explained the why and what I wanted to do for this “project”. In Part 2 I did some basic testing of both MPTCP and MLVPN. I also mentioned trying MMPPP using vtund but it has been a while since I did that testing, and it had not been on bare metal. So, this post is a follow up, where I am using bare metal.

[NOTE] This part 2 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

In my previous post I explained what i was trying to do… This post explains what i have been working on recently, and performance results…
So, first, what have i tried… There are 3 different things i have tried, and here are some of their details. Some will need to be updated (other parts of this series), and others i will try get back to eventually.

[NOTE] This part 1 in a series of posts. The rest can be found here.

First, a bit of background, and then I will explain what I am currently running in Part 2…

For the last 15 or so years, I have had at least 2 internet connections in to the house… 2 of them have always been Cable Modems from NTL, which became UPC, and now is Virgin Media. When I started, i think the modems where 150/50kbit/s and 600/150kb/s, and have steadily increased in speed, currently at 360/36Mbit/s each… But they have always been somewhat separate, and single thread downloads have always been limited to 1 of the connections… I have been looking for ways around this for years…