Category: Networking

It is always nice to fly. I took two flights, the first one with a little stop at Aeroparque (AEP), and then a short one to Paraná city (PRA). The skies were just beautiful.

My current company is establishing operations on Entre Rios province, where a we are initiating a brand-new ISP service for the towns of Crespo, Libertador San Martin, and Paraná City. This was the main task among another small consulting and assistance.

Connecting People

Service is provided with two providers, and BGP sessions must be established with both to announce a /24 prefix of our AS, and probably receive just a default route from the upstream. There is no need to use the full table- yet. Both providers has approximately the same AS-PATH.

We’ll use a MikroTik CCR1036-8G-2S+ as the border router. Although it has SFP+ ports to allow 10 Gbps operation, at the moment the links will be negotiated using SFP modules at 1000 Mbps.

Main customer will be directly connected to this router using copper at 1 Gbps. They are using a MikroTik CRS326-24G-2S+ for their edge router, which will be enough for their 100 Mbps service. They provide us co-location too, so I installed the core router on their shelter, which is backed up by dual A/C systems and dual UPS-rectifier systems.

Once the upstream was go, I was able to see they were in fact sending us the full BGP table, which we don’t need yet, so a couple route filters were configured to use put only a default gateway on the main routing table. As the default route was configured as a static one, the route filter policy was as easy as discard all BGP inputs.

[[email protected]] > routing filter export 
# jun/18/2019 16:24:37 by RouterOS 6.42.6
#
/routing filter
add action=discard chain=dynamic-in protocol=bgp

On this site there was also an Ubiquiti AirFiber 11X wireless link to reach Libertador San Martín town. Both radios were previously installed but not configured, so I connected to the radio and the site and configured it as Master. We traveled to the remote end, configured the radio as Slave and it worked just fine. Ubiquiti is getting up to date with their firmwares and UI, and it has became pretty straight forward to get a link working, even for someone with little or none networking skills.

¿Do you think this ease-of-use is making the job easier for us, or is it the start point of a madness of wireless spectrum usage?

From this node at Libertador, we installed two single-mode fiber lines, one to connect the town Hospital and another for the town University. MikroTik CRS326-24G-2S+ switches were installed at each site to be used as CPEs.

All monitoring, reporting and backup systems were previously configured at our NOC, so that was ll for us on the site.

Watching cars go by

I also assisted a brand new urban surveillance camera installation on the entrance of the Raúl Uranga – Carlos Sylvestre Begnis Subfluvial Tunnel. The objective was to read license plates on this strategic points, which is one of the few exits outside the Paraná river, and the one which has the most vehicle traffic.

Previously we had selected a Hikvision DS-2CD4A26FWD-IZHS8/P (yep, that’s the model name) camera which was already installed by Policía of Entre Ríos technician. This camera was specifically designed for licence-plate recognition (LPR). It supports OCR on hardware and works in very low light conditions, as low as 0.0027 lux.

Traces of Paraná City

I stayed at Hotel Howard Johnson Plaza Resort & Casino Mayorazgo, and I encourage you to visit it. The rooms are lovely and the staff is excellent.

Be sure to schedule time to walk on the Paraná river borders, visit the Martiniano Leguizamón historic town museum and enjoy yourself. This is a beautiful city.

The Dude network monitor is RouterOS package intended to manage a network environment. It automatically scan all devices within specified subnets, draw and layout a network maps, monitor services, and alert you in case of problems.

Previous versions of The Dude were developed as Windows x86 software, but later versions went through a full rebuild, and now it is distributed as a RouterOS package. This comes handy as the same RouterOS instance can be linked to the network, eliminating the the need for additional VPNs on servers or gateways. Instead, all tunneling can be done inside the CHR instance.

The Windows versions also had a web GUI which was, awful. For all the new editions, you’ll need a software client available on https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/6.43.14/dude-install-6.43.14.exe

It will update itself whenever you connect to a newer RouterOS version. Just be sure to run it as administrator on W10.

Installing

Get the CHR package from https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/6.43.14/dude-6.43.14.npk.

Once downloaded, upload it to the CHR instance via Winbox drag-and-drop, FTP client, or just download it from inside chr:

Reboot the CHR instance, and you will find the new Dude menu inside Winbox.

Head to Dude > Settings and tick Enabled to enable the server. A few folders will be created on the filesystem, and the server will be ready to accept connections on port 8291. The previous x86 based versions of Dude used port TCP/2210 or TCP/2211, but on this new integrated RouterOS package, all the management is handled on the same port as Winbox.

If you still don’t have the client, get it on https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/6.43.14/dude-install-6.43.14.exe.

One you connect, the following window should appear by default. You can run a discover for multiple networks and let Dude map your network for you, but it will only disconver layer 3 adyancencies. In order to have complete control over the monitoring, I suggest to build your backbone manually and let the autodiscovery handle your management VLANs/VRFs.