We’ll be back to regular postings tomorrow. Tuesday Tunes, then “Envy” and “Show Me Your Papers.”
In the best of all worlds, every server would have two interfaces (NIC) with two ports cross-connected to two switches.
Each switch would be cross-connected to their upstream switch and so forth until you reach your redundant gateways.
The problem with this setup is that you can end up with loops that will take that part of the network down.
This means that switches need to be smart enough to keep that from happening. And you have to configure your network to allow for all those cross connections.
This means that a room will have three subnets. Primary 1, Primary 2, and Management. The switch needs to have routing capability. Then you use a routing protocol like OSPF to make magic happen.
OSPF sends out routing information often. Timers are measured in seconds, not minutes. This allows every router/switch to pick the best path at that instant.
Last week I determined that there was a problem with uplink speeds to the network. I was getting maybe a hundredth of what I should have been observing. This became obvious when I was attempting some bandwidth tests of client configurations.
So we start the process of elimination. The first thing to eliminate is the provider network. They could not provide a remote speed test because I was using my router; therefore, it required a technician to be dispatched.
The goal was to eliminate any questions regarding their side of the “demarc,” or demarcation.
The demarc is the separation of responsibility between the provider and the customer. Everything on their side of the demarc is their responsibility; everything on my side is my responsibility.
In my installation the demarc is the Optical Network Terminator (ONT). The ONT is a fiber modem; it’s not really, but it works for our purposes.
The provider prefers to provide the ONT, the router/access point/switch/VoIP gizmo. If they provide that gizmo, they move the demarc to that gizmo.
My issue is that the gizmo in question is always home quality, never better. My router is just a router. It has two 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports and two 10 Gbit SFP ports. It has a 60 Gbit internal bus and provides DHCP, DNS, Proxy, port forwarding, and many other professional features. My access points are on a controller that monitors the power usage and adjusts the power of each access point to produce the best coverage. This allows me to have multiple Wireless Access Points (WAP) within the house and grounds that don’t interfere with each other.
Better yet, as you move from place to place, your device will seamlessly transfer to different WAPs as needed, without getting new IP addresses.
Regardless, my equipment is much better than what they provide.
We tested from the ONT and got good upload and download speeds. A step in the correct direction.
The next test was from the router. This gave me acceptable speeds, much better than 0.260 Gbit.
This left SFP modules, SFP sockets, and fiber. Being lazy, I start with SFP modules. Switching modules doesn’t help. Next I swapped the cables. Finally, I swapped the router ports.
Nothing fixed it. I currently believe that the SFP port/slot on the router has an issue.
Since I had a second switch, I could have used that; instead, I decided on a network upgrade.
The new switch was configured. It was attached to the second SFP port on the router. All the management networks and the DMZ network were attached to it. Removed from primary (router1). Then router2 was cross connected with router1 via a Direct Attach Connector (DAC). A DAC is a wire with module connectors on both ends. They are cheaper than fiber plus two modules and will run at very high speeds. They are the connector of choice for SFP to SFP within a meter or so with no sharp bends.
It took way too much time to get everything configured correctly. Mostly because I just didn’t have all the pieces correctly configured.
My network map was wrong. I had 192.168.99.x/24 allocated to P2P connections. It isn’t allocated to P2P. It is allocated to a remote subnet that is part of the local network via a VPN. Oops!
One that was taken care of, I had working connections between the gateway and both routers. But the routers would not talk to each other.
Turns out that I had the DAC plugged into the wrong slot. Once I had it in the correct slot with the correct media type, everything just started working.
I now have a cleaner network, with more options, and better bandwidth than ever before. It is working as I anticipated. It just took way too long to accomplish.