[AusNOG] Mikrotik routers and "VLAN trunking over WAN"

Wed Jun 18 14:04:54 EST 2014

We proposed the same solution at a customer site about 18 months ago using the EoIP tunnelling capabilities of the Mikrotik platform.

Basically our proposal was to aggregate multiple DSL tails because they are in a rural area where the benchmark price for any other wireline connectivity was > $1k/month/Mbps, so it seemed like a cheap way to get decent downstream with VLAN transparency.

Although we got it to ‘work’ I’d classify it as a failure. This is not to say it can’t be made to work, and YMMV, but it was a bit of a nightmare. It may have had something to do with the firewalls we were using as well. I couldn’t find anyone the was using it successfully in the manner we intended.

I would say the main problem is troubleshooting – you’re mashing the OSI and it gets very confusing – any time you have an issue it needs a very capable network engineer to look at it because it can go awry on so many levels.

Personally wouldn’t recommend it.

Cheers,

Jacob

From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of John Gavrilita
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2014 1:45 PM
To: Matt Ayre
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Mikrotik routers and "VLAN trunking over WAN"

Can’t disagree with you, Matt, however it’ll come at an expense of a slightly increased CPU usage. And we all know just how easily that mips CPU can be overwhelmed. It depends how many pps, of course.
Other “effects” out there, Ross, may be PMTU discovery, MTU/MRU/MSS issues, latency, imo will change rapidly, especially when used across 3G links.
If the user will throw privacy over the links, then expect the aforementioned effects amplify many folds.
As with which Mikrotik device will achieve this then the answer is any of them, as long as:

1.      The license is correct

2.      The device is budgeted to suit the pps number.
Cheers ☺

From: Matt Ayre [mailto:matt.ayre at bigair.net.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2014 1:30 PM
To: John Gavrilita
Cc: Ross Wheeler; ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Mikrotik routers and "VLAN trunking over WAN"

Re "out of order segments", that is why pretty much all modern platforms include L3/L4 data points for flow hashing, whether routing/forwarding or bundle load balancing.

Even eeek MikroTik ;)

Cheers,
Matt

On 18 June 2014 11:50, John Gavrilita <jgavrilita at thesummitgroup.com.au<mailto:jgavrilita at thesummitgroup.com.au>> wrote:
Hi Ross,
The first thing that crossed my mind is the inevitable situation when packets will arrive out of order because the designed solution uses bandwidth aggregation / load balancing. For TCP it's ok, but for UDP it'll be a nightmare and the users will literally hear it.
Mikrotik is a nifty platform, and as with any other device, one has to know how to cook it.
Cheers :)

John Gavrilita
Network Engineer

Summit IT Management | Summit Internet | Summit Creative - ‘reach your peak’
Divisions of The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd

Phone (Australia):    1300 049 749
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Postal:      P.O. Box 3225, Doncaster East  VIC  3109

John Gavrilita
Network Engineer

Summit IT Management<http://www.thesummitgroup.com.au> | Summit Internet<http://www.summitinternet.com.au> | Summit Creative<http://www.summitcreative.com.au> - ‘reach your peak’
Divisions of The Summit Group (Australia) Pty Ltd

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Phone (US & Canada): (321) 216 3844
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-----Original Message-----
From: AusNOG [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net>] On Behalf Of Ross Wheeler
Sent: Wednesday, 18 June 2014 11:04 AM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Subject: [AusNOG] Mikrotik routers and "VLAN trunking over WAN"

Looking for someone with Mikrotik experience to confirm which devices (any? all?) might achieve the desired outcome here.

Basically there are a number of sites of varying sizes, but for the purposes of argument, lets say 20 sites.

Most sites are proposed to have at least two diverse paths. These could be ADSL, Microwave, 3G/4G/LTE etc. The point is, different providers, different paths.

Each site has it's (n) paths connected to interfaces on a Mikrotik router which can aggregate bandwidth across (n) links (and reduce latency
somewhat) while providing an ability to withstand (n-1) link failures.

The user further intends making extensive use of VLANs to "isolate"
services (eg, phones, computers, security devices, "public" devices etc).
Thus it would be entirely likely that there could be 40 switches at 20 sites, each with 10.10.8.0/22<http://10.10.8.0/22> for "phones" all on VLAN8.

Not withstanding how YOU might do it, is there an intrinsic problem with the design (or Mikrotik as the each sites 'edge device') as it stands?

Thanks in advance,
RossW
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