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Part 3: Setting Up a Demo Network Environment

Acknowledgement

These instructions are heavily based on the excellent blog posts and FreeRTR Docs written by Fréderic Loui and the RARE team.

If there are existing network elements ready to be monitored by NMaaS applications, then this part can be completely skipped.

Configuring VirtualBox

This tutorial will assume that VirtualBox is used, even though the discussion should be applicable to other virtualization software as well, with minor modifications.

The virtual machine where FreeRTR will be installed requires at least two network interfaces, one primary and one additional for each FreeRTR process.

The addition of new interfaces can be easily accomplished from the VirtualBox VM settings screen, using the Network section. Each new interface is represented by a new tab, named Adapter 1, Adapter 2... For the new interface, choose Attached to: NAT and make sure to select the NAT network created in Part 1 and that Promiscuous Mode is set to Allow All in the Advanced section. If Promiscuous Mode is not enabled, unfortunately pcapInt will not be able to work properly.

Installing FreeRTR

  1. To run a local installation of FreeRTR we must first install a Java distribution. Fortunately, this can be accomplished with a single command:

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    apt update
apt install default-jre-headless ethtool

    FreeRTR requires at least Java 8 and works with newer versions as well.

  2. We are now ready to download FreeRTR:

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    mkdir /opt/rtr
cd /opt/rtr
wget http://www.freertr.net/rtr.jar

  3. To make our virtual router accessible from the local network we must install the FreeRTR net-tools as well. They come precompiled for convenience. Please refer to RARE/FreeRouter-101 [ #002 ] - "Let me get out !" for instructions on building these from source.

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    wget freerouter.nop.hu/rtr-$(uname -m).tar
mkdir /opt/rtr/bin
tar -xvf rtr-$(uname -m).tar -C /opt/rtr/bin

  4. As discussed in http://docs.freertr.net/guides/getting-started/001-hello-world/, to enable basic functionality we need to create two TXT files: a hardware specification file and a software specification file.

    r1-hw.txt
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    int eth1 eth 0000.1111.0001 127.0.0.1 1001 127.0.0.1 2001
tcp2vrf 1123 v1 23

    The hardware specification file given above is used to declare the interfaces that we would like our router to have. The syntax is: int <int_name> <int_type> <int_mac_addr> <ip_addr_socket_src> <ip_addr_udp_port_src> <ip_addr_socket_dest> <ip_addr_udp_port_dest>.

    Note that by using the second line in the hardware specification file we have enabled remote reachability of port 23 (Telnet) by forwarding any TCP connection established towards VM_IP:1123 toward VRF_V1:23. More information about VRFs will be given in the next steps. This allows easy remote configuration of our router even before we have bound it to a specific network interface of our VM.

    r1-sw.txt
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    hostname r1
buggy
!
vrf def v1
rd 1:1
exit
!
prefix-list p4
sequence 10 permit 0.0.0.0/0 ge 0 le 0
exit
!
server telnet tel
security protocol tel
vrf v1
exit
!
ipv4 route v1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1
!
int eth1
desc r1@eth1 -> enp0s8
lldp ena
vrf for v1
ipv4 addr 192.168.1.17 255.255.255.0
ipv4 gateway-prefix p4
no shutdown
exit
!
!
!
sensor ifaces-hw
path interfaces-hw/interface/counter
prefix freertr-ifaces
prepend iface_hw_byte_
command sho inter hwsumm
name 0 ifc=
key name interfaces-hw/interface
replace \. _
column 1 name st
column 1 replace admin -1
column 1 replace down 0
column 1 replace up 1
column 2 name tx
column 3 name rx
column 4 name dr
exit
!
sensor ifaces-hwp
path interfaces-hwp/interface/counter
prefix freertr-ifaces
prepend iface_hw_pack_
command sho inter hwpsumm
name 0 ifc=
key name interfaces-hwp/interface
replace \. _
column 1 name st
column 1 replace admin -1
column 1 replace down 0
column 1 replace up 1
column 2 name tx
column 3 name rx
column 4 name dr
exit
!
sensor ifaces-sw
path interfaces-sw/interface/counter
prefix freertr-ifaces
prepend iface_sw_byte_
command sho inter swsumm
name 0 ifc=
key name interfaces-sw/interface
replace \. _
column 1 name st
column 1 replace admin -1
column 1 replace down 0
column 1 replace up 1
column 2 name tx
column 3 name rx
column 4 name dr
exit
!
sensor ifaces-swp
path interfaces-swp/interface/counter
prefix freertr-ifaces
prepend iface_sw_pack_
command sho inter swpsumm
name 0 ifc=
key name interfaces-swp/interface
replace \. _
column 1 name st
column 1 replace admin -1
column 1 replace down 0
column 1 replace up 1
column 2 name tx
column 3 name rx
column 4 name dr
exit
!
server prometheus r1
sensor ifaces-hw
sensor ifaces-hwp
sensor ifaces-sw
sensor ifaces-swp
vrf v1
exit

    Even though the software specification file is large, the most important parts that need to be adapted to the local environment are:

    • Adding a default route: ipv4 route v1 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1
    • Configuring a static IP: ipv4 addr 192.168.1.17 255.255.255.0
    • The sensor directives need to be left as they are, since they configure the Prometheus Exporter which will be scrapped using an NMaaS hosted Prometheus instance which we will deploy in the next part.

  5. As a last step before starting the FreeRTR process, we need to bring up our second interface and disable hardware offloading:

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    INT_NAME=enp0s8
ip link set $INT_NAME up promisc on
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME rx off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME tx off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME sg off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME tso off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME ufo off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME gso off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME gro off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME lro off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME rxvlan off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME txvlan off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME ntuple off
/sbin/ethtool -K $INT_NAME rxhash off

    As before, please make sure that the correct interface name is used.

  6. Once the necessary changes are made to the hardware and software specification files, we are ready to start our first router:

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    java -jar rtr.jar routersc r1-hw.txt r1-sw.txt

    This will open an interactive session from where we can further alter the running configuration of the router. Of course, access to the local network is still not possible. To enable two-way communication with the "outside" world, we need to bind the UDP socket to the network interface that we have configured in the previous section using the pcapInit.bin tool:

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    ./pcapInt.bin enp0s8 2001 127.0.0.1 1001 127.0.0.1

    Please note that in the above command enp0s8 needs to be replaced with the name of the additional network interface connected to the virtual machine. If reusing the hardware file posted above, the port numbers can remain unchanged.

  7. Once started, you can try pinging your default gateway from FreeRTR itself:

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    ping <GATEWAY_IP> /vrf v1

    It should work without any issues.

The same steps can be repeated for another instance of the virtual router, this time choosing different socket ports in step 4, and adjusting the IP address in the software configuration file.

Creating a SystemD Service

If automatic startup of the virtual devices is desired, a SystemD service unit can be created.

  • Create a new file called [email protected] in /etc/systemd/system.

    [email protected]
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    [Unit]
Description=Start a freeRTR instance for %I
After=network.target

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/freertr@%i
ExecStartPre=/opt/rtr/interface-config.sh ${INT_NAME}
ExecStart=java -jar /opt/rtr/rtr.jar routers ${HW_PATH} ${SW_PATH}
User=root 
# Restart every >2 seconds to avoid StartLimitInterval failure
RestartSec=5 
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

  • To enable automatic startup of the pcapInt tool as well, the following service unit needs to be created for each router instance, adjusting the After= parameter and the EnvironmentFile accordingly:

    pcap-freertr-r1.service
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    [Unit]
Description=Start a PCAP freeRTR instance for %I
After=[email protected]

[Service]
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/pcap-freertr-r1
ExecStart=/opt/rtr/bin/pcapInt.bin ${INT_NAME} ${PORT1} 127.0.0.1 ${PORT2} 127.0.0.1
User=root 
# Restart every >2 seconds to avoid StartLimitInterval failure
RestartSec=5 
Restart=always
StandardInput=tty
TTYPath=/dev/tty2
TTYReset=yes
TTYVHangup=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

    Please note that if multiple instances of pcapInit need to be started (e.g. for different virtual routers), then the TTYPath parameter will need to be incremented accordingly.

  • The necessary environment variables that are referenced in these unit files can be created in /etc/default. An example is given below:

    /etc/default/freertr@r1
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    INT_NAME=enp0s8
HW_PATH=/opt/rtr/r1-hw.txt
SW_PATH=/opt/rtr/r1-sw.txt
PORT1=2001
PORT2=1001
    /etc/default/pcap-freertr-r1
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    INT_NAME=enp0s8
PORT1=2001
PORT2=1001

  • Finally the newly created services can be enabled and started:

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    systemctl enable --now freertr@r1
systemctl enable --now pcap-freertr-r1

We are now ready to configure monitoring and configuration backup of our virtual router using tools from the NMaaS catalog.