[AusNOG] Looking for someone who has experience with Nextgen VPLS

Tue Apr 5 20:27:11 EST 2011

Thanks again to the members of the Ausnog community the speed issue is now
resolved! :-)

Thanks to everyone who replied,

Greg

From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Greg M
Sent: Tuesday, 5 April 2011 6:09 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Looking for someone who has experience with Nextgen
VPLS

Hi All,

On the TCP Window size of things. Is there a way for the border
routers/switches on each end of the VPLS to be able to handle this so that
manually setting TCP Window and TCP Window scaling on every single Windows
Desktop PC/server isn't required? 

I just did some further tests, and from a Centos/Linux virtual machine in
Sydney, I can get 100Mbps to the iiNet FTP, and to both Perth sites.

--2011-04-05 20:03:02--  ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/test500MB.dat

           => `test500MB.dat'

Resolving ftp.iinet.net.au... 203.0.178.32

Connecting to ftp.iinet.net.au|203.0.178.32|:21... connected.

Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!

==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.

==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD not needed.

==> SIZE test500MB.dat ... 500000000

==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR test500MB.dat ... done.

Length: 500000000 (477M)

100%[=======================================================================
============================================================================
================================================>] 500,000,000 10.1M/s   in
46s

2011-04-05 20:03:48 (10.3 MB/s) - `test500MB.dat' saved [500000000]

>From a Windows server on the same subnet/switch, I get 4.5MB/s.. So it seems
like the link itself is fine, and it is indeed TCP Window related. Why this
behaviour is so radically different between Windows and Linux is quite
suprising.

Thanks,

Greg

From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Greg M
Sent: Tuesday, 5 April 2011 4:45 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Looking for someone who has experience with Nextgen
VPLS

Thanks for everyone's replies - I was able to do extensive troubleshooting
today thanks to the excellent replies on and off-list, and it turns out that
there may be multiple issues at play, including too many MAC's on the
circuit, et al.

It also seems that Telstra has not enabled 802.1q-in-q on their end so we
are seeing a lot of encapsulation errors, and can only push traffic across
VLAN1 from the Sydney side. They are now telling Nextgen that they cant
enable Q-in-q, which could point to Nextgen provisioning the wrong type of
Telstra service for us:

The order from LOLO states "Telstra Wholesale Business Grade Ethernet
Service N275XXXXX for Nextgen Networks"

Is this a L3 only service?

Since this morning, we have only been able to push 10Mbps through this VPLS
circuit as well, so there definitely seems to be some faults on the
Nextgen/Telstra side of the circuit, even though they claim everything is
configured correctly.

Cheers,

Greg

From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Greg M
Sent: Monday, 4 April 2011 7:07 PM
To: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: [AusNOG] Looking for someone who has experience with Nextgen VPLS

Hi Noggers,

I am looking for someone who is able to consult/provide support to a large
organisation which has recently deployed a 100M Nextgen VPLS link between an
office in Perth & Sydney,  and is experiencing the most bizzare throughput
issues.

This link has Nextgen fiber in Perth, with Telstra fiber hand off in Sydney,
resold via Nextgen as an end-to-end VPLS circuit.

The issue we face is relating to speed.

-          From Switch A In Sydney to Switch B in Perth, we can do a non-df
ping of 1500 bytes for 24 hours without a single dropped packet  - so there
are no MTU issues. Latency is also always stable, even when maxing the link
at 100Mbps.

-          Each server in Sydney connected to Switch A, can push the full
VPLS line speed of 100Mbps to servers connected to Switch B in Perth (two
endpoints of the VPLS tails)

-          There is a 3rd site in Perth that has a 1Gbps Amcom fiber link
directly between Switch C in this site, and Switch B in the other Perth
site.

-          Some systems on Switch A in Sydney, can push 100Mbps to some
servers on Switch C in Perth site #2, yet others can only push 10Mbp, while
some can only push 1-3Mbps. There are no speed issues between the two Perth
sites, however as they can happily pump a full 1Gbps to each other.

-          There is a 100Mbps link to WAIX connecting into Switch B in
Perth. Perth site #2 can do full 100mbps to a test FTP download (lets say
iiNet's 500MB test file on their FTP), yet Sydney can only get 45Mbps.

Basically only the directly connected Sydney Switch and Perth switch are
able to max out the 100Mbps VPLS circuit. As soon as traffic goes beyond
this switch, speed seems to degrade - however it doesn't degrade to all
locations, as some systems/servers can obtain a full 100Mbps transfer speed
both inbound and outbound via the Sydney to Perth VPLS. In Perth sites #1
and #2, there are no speed issues at all, to any site (there are other
remote VPLS and other connected endpoints), it is only this specific site
that is having issues.

There are no errors on any of the interfaces in any of the Perth sites,
however the Sydney site reports a lot of Outbound Discards on the switch
port that connects to the Telstra/nextgen VPLS link in Sydney.

Happy to receive responses on or off-list, and we are happy to pay for
someone either locally in Sydney or in Perth to help diagnose this - as a
lot of money is being burnt on this circuit that is not providing consistent
speeds. We have raised these issues to both Nextgen and Telstra and they are
pointing the finger at our internal network.

Thanks!

Greg

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