VyOS is quite interesting OS. It’s a open source Linux based network operating system based on Vyatta. It’s config style seems bit like JunOS in terms of hierarchy and set/edit/delete options while editing configuration.

 

Can one use it in a small ISP or a Corporate LAN setup? 

Someone asked me recently if we can have complete open source based router in smaller network doing basic stuff. Not with not-so-streamlined Linux shell but networking OS where network engineers favorite tool “?” works in CLI with options.

Let’s take a possible case with bunch of routers, a server with speedtest-mini running on it and end desktop with Ubuntu-desktop on it along with VyOS based router. Goal here is to have basic features to work (to start with!). I am conducting this test and setup on the VM infrastructure at home but that should have zero impact/configuration of network devices and hence not going to focus on that part. All devices including server, desktop and router are pretty much running on virtual machines or KVM containers.

 

 

To configure and test:

1. Configuration of interfaces and basic static routing with reachability
2. Source-NAT on RTR01 for LAN side connectivity with DHCP
3. Traffic shaping on RTR01 on per user basis
4. IPv6 autoconfig
5. Basic firewalling to protect server01

 

Note: I am treating 10.x.x.x range here as public IP wan range in demo while 192.168.1.0/24 as LAN IPs which would be NATted behind WAN IP.

 

1.Static routing with reachability

Configuring VyOS is very much like that of JunOS – basic edit to go inside to hierarchal levels and set to add to config, delete to delete from config.

 

Configuration on transit router’s interface

 

Configuration on RTR01 interfaces

 

Transit router is without any default route, while server01 & RTR01 have default towards transit and as usual end user desktops have default towards RTR01.

 

This gives basic connectivity from RTR01 all way up to the server01.

 

Connectivity test

 

2.Source-NAT on RTR01 for LAN side connectivity

So we have eth1 on the transit router facing on LAN side. Just like all other LANs, it would need a combination of DHCP + NAT of private against WAN IP for outgoing packets.

 

Configuration DHCP

 

Note: Here subnet and default router IP belongs to IP used on eth1 interface. Now we have 192.168.1.0/24 as LAN pool, and we need to NAT it against WAN IP which is on eth0 – 10.10.10.6.

NAT configuration

This ensures that all packets with source IP from pool 192.168.1.0/24 going to outside world via eth0 – WAN would be “re-written” to  source IP address of WAN.

Once this is done, Ubuntu-desktop shows IP 192.168.1.2 which it learnt from RTR01.

 

 

Testing it’s connectivity to end destination server01 which is on WAN IP 10.10.10.2

 

Quick check on NAT table on RTR01

 

3. Traffic shaping on RTR01 on per user basis

All works well. Now, I am running speedtest-mini script on the server01. So browsing http://10.10.10.2/speedtest on end desktop to test speeds.

(Note: As I said this is virtualized environment and hence extremely likely I am going to hit resource limit much before actual theoretical speeds of port. Aim of this test is just sample and to assist in bandwidth shaping.)

 

Speedtest on Desktop

 

 

 

This shows quite decent speeds. Now coming to traffic shaping, let’s shape everyone on LAN to 10Mbps symmetric. Here we can make use of “traffic shaper“. One key thing with traffic shaper is that it works only in OUT direction and hence it can shape packets going in out direction from port. Thus to have symmetric effect, we can apply it on both eth0 – WAN (for capping uploads) and eth1 – LAN (for capping downloads).

 

Next, we need to call appropriate shaper on interfaces. Calling “User-Upload-Cap” on eth0-WAN in outbound direction and “User-Download-Cap” in  outbound in eth1-LAN direction.

 

Speedtest after cap

 

And capping works! One can more fine tune it as per requirement like capping just specific traffic for specific set of users etc.

 

4. IPv6 autoconfig

So next goes is to have full IPv6 auto configuration. I would also dual stack interfaces of server01 to make IPv6 work end to end between server01 to desktop.

Following RFC 3849, I will use 2001:DB8::/32 for this sample configuration / documentation purpose.

2001:DB8::/32 – Main allocation

2001:DB8:1::/48 – Transit Router Pool
2001:DB8:1:1::/64 – Connectivity with server01
2001:DB8:1:2::/64 – Connectivity between Transit Router and RTR01
2001:DB8:2::/48 – IPv6 pool for RTR01 routed to it
2001:DB8:2:a::/64 – LAN pool for allocation to end customers

 

Dual stacking eth0 interface of Transit-Router which is facing server01 & eth1 facing RTR01

 

Next, routing 2001:DB8:2::/48 behind RTR01 (2001:DB8:1:2::2)

 

 

Configuration RTR01 interfaces with IPv6

 

Setting up router advertisements

Checking now on end user desktop

(This shows IPv6 getting automatically configured on the end user’s desktop)

 

 

 

Speedtest over IPv6 is also capped since cap was based on interfaces and traffic flow and hence works on both IPv4 and IPv6 world.

 

5.Basic firewalling to protect server01

In current configuration, server01 has all open ports. Let’s try to allow only and only tcp port 80 traffic and drop everything else. Out ports from server01 to outside should work.

 

Step 1 – Create firewall rule to drop all traffic by default and just allow tcp port 80 and established + related connections so that return traffic (initiated from server) could work.

 

Step 2 – Next, apply this policy on the “out” direction on the interface connecting the server01 so packet going towards the server can be filtered.

 

And finally testing and looking at firewall statistics

 

 

All works pretty well. We can surely use such box in a small network.

 

Next logical step – using it for more cool features like full redundancy using VRRP, OpenVPN tunnels, BGP with route-maps etc.

 

 

Note: I would presenting a paper on “Disconnected Network Islands” at SANOG 27 on 25th. Meet and greet if you are around! 🙂