Wan Optimization Support
Technical => Deployment => : ceo@tehilahbase.com August 25, 2014, 06:20:13 AM
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Ours is a simple deployment to save up on bandwidth and improve latency from our satellite WAN provider backbone. Now it's practically impossible to deploy a core at their NOC (ie provider's end) but for us at first, we deployed data and video cache solution which to an extent, has save up on the bandwidth and latency but then we came across wanos. So my question is:
1. Where do you think is the best location to deploy wanos, before or after the cache server?
2. Since wanos is a bridge, we are thinking of simply cabling the edge directly into the core so from our wan to core to edge to our LAN.
3. Any particular thing to note?
Our Current Topology is: WAN backbone - Main Router((load balancing) - Cache Server - Local LAN
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Hi there,
The best location would be to have the cache on the user side of the wanos. Where possible, but not essential.
Having the Core and Edge back to back will not provide any benefits. Two devices are required because they need to be at two locations (either side of the slow or congested link). In this scenario it would be required to have a device at the ISP side.
Does the ISP not offer any hosted services?
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That is sad to hear, as with all satellite providers its almost impossible to place a core at their location except they initiate that sort of deployment themselves.
I have read somewhere on this forum(though can't find it right now) a WAN - core - switch - edge - LAN deployment?
We are a local rural ISP, reselling the dedicated service from the Satellite providers. Given our current situation how can we take advantage of wanos?
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Hi,
It is not always a problem for the providers since they are familiar with Riverbed and Silver-peak who have been providing this option for a long time.
What others are doing where the provider aren't willing to help, is to create a VPN from a hosting platform to the remote site e.g.
Internet/Intranet -> Wanos -> VPN--SAT--VPN -> Wanos -> Users
Update: I notice the resell model late: Could it work in your favor by providing Wanos as a service?
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I guess so...
However to revisit the initial question, I have attach a sample of our topology. 'Diagram A' is without WANOS and 'Diagram b' shows wanos edge sitting before each client.
I am guessing the effect will be the same as sitting besides each other as the it is still within the same LAN network on a point to multipoint network. Just thinking...
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Hi,
Ok, I understand the topology better now.
In this scenario with a Wanos device at the client site it would work to improve throughput from the central site to the remote sites. For example if the effective throughput of the ptp wifi links are 1-2 Mbps (due to signal or contention), then throughput could increase to 10-20 Mbps under good conditions. If the internet throughput is 1 Mbps and the ptp wifi links are 20 Mbps with no congestion on the base station, then the clients are unlikely to see any benefit. What we can also do is enable transparent web caching at each remote client side.
The Sat link would normally be the best location though, but understand that it is a bit of a challenge.
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It's encouraging to hear and thanks again for the email. However let me take it further, using 'diagram B', what if wanos edge sits just before the bridge radios at the basestation, the effect I guess would be the same as sitting at the client premises as the P2P I guess is just one 'long LAN cable made wireless' and save up alot on deployment to client.
I have ordered PC devices(ssds, rams, barebones) and would be testing soon. I plan placing the wanos core and edge at various point and documenting the results. Well, we'll see how it goes.
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@ahenning
In the forum created at http://community.ubnt.com/t5/The-Lounge/WAN-Optimization-anyone-tried-this/m-p/988795#M34322 there are some school of though suggesting WAN optimization such as WANOS are not very relevant in an ISP arena, but I disagree thus this ambiguous question below:
In rural Africa where I operate in, the maximum bandwidth from our backbone at each base station is 45mb via satellite serving between 500 to 800 customer for up to 2mb/s per month. Now people in the West might cringe over the speed but trust me, its heaven here on our network simply because we are investing more in wan optimization such as caches,etc and most recently wanos(wan optimization). Now my question to you is would you totally rule out the possibility of using wanos by an WISP in cases where its not possible to deploy an edge at clients side? if no, then as the developer, would you be willing to simulate or at least theoretically, explain the outcome and best config for an optimization within same Lan environment.
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Hi,
To accurately answer this, it depends on where the 2 mbps limit is applied?
1) If configured on the last mile base station then no. The 2 mbps bottleneck is between the client radio and the base station.
2) If the rate limit is applied at the central site, but the client radio syncs at say 10 mbps, the yes. You can then provide that client with 2 mbps, upto 10 mbps.
A quick check, if two users connected to the same base station share a file, what throughput do they get? If radio speed, then yes, if 2 mbps, then no.
Are inter-client traffic tunneled/routed via a central server?
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Question 2 is difficult to answer generally as most WISP deploy in different Topology. But for me, Clients CPE is open and can actually pull up to 90mb/s if allowed, however a bandwidth router mikrotik is place just before the basestation that regulate how much maximum bandwidth a client can pull.
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Hi,
Ok, best case examples:
If wanos is placed between the mikrotik and the base station:
1) The max backhaul traffic one user can consume is 2 Mbps. One user will never use more than 2 mbps on the backhaul.
2) Wanos at the BS will convert the 2 Mbps to 20 Mbps, send it on to the client radio. Cache/Internet at the HO needs to be able to send at 20 Mbps.
If wanos is placed on the ISP side of the mikrotik at the BS:
1) The max traffic one user can use over the backhaul is 2 mbps. When traffic is optimized well, the user receives 2 Mbps, but the traffic on the backhaul will be reduced to 200 kbps.
2) The end user never sees more than 2 Mbps, but the backhaul load is reduced.
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Hmm, very interesting information. I want to thank you for your simplicity and response to all the questions. My gears should arrive this weekend or early next week then I can draw up a conclusion, until then, thanks and much appreciated.
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After several thoughts, I feel the best way to test is to place a WANOS device at my main basestation and place another WANOS device at my second base via PTP radio link. The problem is peering statues shows down. Although traffic passes through and I can access the internet over at second base, I can't see any optimization. I left the default setting and just changed to high on both side and also changed the WANOS IP to 192.168.1.200 and second to 192.168.1.201. I have attached a sketch. Am I missing something?
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If the TCP traffic is definitely flowing through both devices:
Then the most common reason would be if the lan0/wan0 are swapped. Any 'peer detected on lan0' in the log?
Sometimes a default bypass rule is created during install which could be the cause.
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During cabling, I made sure WAN0 was connected to the LAN router and LAN0 was connected to the PTP radio at BTS1 and also WAN0 connected to the PTP radio and LAN0 connected to the test PC at BTS2 using the Network interface on WANOS as guide. Just Checked the log and no peer detected on lan0 in the log? But traffic is definitely flowing in. Any suggestions? Can't wait to test...
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WAN0 was connected to the LAN router and LAN0 was connected to the PTP radio at BTS1
The two wan0 interfaces need to point to each other. In other words wan0 needs to connect to the PTP radio. This is most likely the reason the peers are down. At least this side needs to be switched (its possible from the GUI to make it easier), then after the change, also check the remote side log for new messages.
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Thanks, peer staues is up. I though as much that the WAN interface for optimization should be sidewards facing...
Now that we've established connectivity, may I ask 3 questions for best practice for WISP.
1. What is the best recommended setting Between BTS for WISP? high - high, high - low, low - high or low - low. (Main interest is throughput speed).
2. After testing and hopefully migrating to WANOS plus, what raw bandwidth should we look at theoretically to conservatively achieve a throughput of between 100 - 200mb with WANOS. Hardware are INTEL ATOM PROCESSOR C2750 (8 core) 32Gb ram, 1TB samsung evo pro SSD on each WANOS device
3. Any special config, routes settings etc that may be specifically helpful for PTP link on same subnet?
Thanks for the great work in WANOS
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First it should be noted that wanos is designed for a WAN where its expected to see a few remote sites. That said, there are a couple low level configurations that we can change to optimize the configuration for high speed point to point links, that we can discuss at a later stage.
The RAM is ample, on express it will be limited to 4GB, with plus we could possibly even load the datastore in the 32GB RAM for ultimate throughput. SSD's are also good for 100 Mbps throughput.
The atom cpu is however not going to make the 100-200 Mbps in High (25-40 Mbps max throughput in ptp). It should however work very well in a WAN with a couple remote branch sites. Even after some low level configuration changes to assign more CPU resources to the single ptp link, we would be lucky to get 100 Mbps out.
In low the Atom should reach at least 150 Mbps. But low is not ideal of internet type of traffic. It can produce 3X more bandwidth on some specific applications, but since internet traffic has a lot of already compressed data the results will be low (possibly 20% reduction on generic internet traffic).
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I do understand the WAN optimization as a site to multiple site and perharps the limitations applicable to a WISP environment, all the same if any kind of bandwidth savings can be achieved here, its worth it.
Moving forward, I take it that a high high config is better for my kind of deployment but when switching to plus, a better CPU say i7 or xenon will be better? Right, got that.
At the moment, I am only testing with an E1 (1mbps), however on migrating to Plus, I'll be using a DS3(45mbps). I guess I'll be contacting then for the low level setting and all...
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Ok, sure the current specs is more than adequate for the E1 (1-2 Mbps), but might struggle a bit in default settings on the 45 Mbps.
It would be interesting to see your ptp throughput results on this CPU.
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Thanks. I'll be dedicating a day next week to extensively test, I'll send in the results.
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Spent all day testing today. Nothing was changed and all config was left in default except IP address for the WANOS device. The only output testing was result was obtain from speedtest.net. Setup was exactly as show in the diagram tittled 'setup'and test was done in high - high, high-low, low - high, and low - low.
The results were pretty much the same with no visible increase in terms of internet throughput as all results pegged at same 1mb sort of. However, I notice considerable, and unusual smoother throughput any-time the optimization is on. It's so strong, I could swear I had a internet bandwidth increase, ping time was at anall time low, pages were loading like they were on steroids but there was no visible internet increase at least from speedtest.net
Test result are also attached. Do you think this is to be expected?
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The results are not expected if the Internet link is actually more than 1 Mbps. The two conditions that can cause this is if the internet connection is limited to 1 Mbps or the gateway device as in the diagram is limiting traffic to 1 Mbps. For example if the Internet link is capable of 10 Mbps and the gateway will send up to 10 Mbps of traffic, this would for example be compressed to 500 kbps between wanos devices, decompressed and the user receives 10 Mbps.
In the ISP / WISP this might not be the desired result, since you might still want to give the user the 1 Mbps he bought, but use the compression to get more bandwidth over the WISP backbone. In this case, the gateway could be limiting traffic to 1 Mbps, which is reduced to e.g. 50 Kbps and decompressed to 1 Mbps, which the user receives. Now the user still gets his 1 Mbps, but only 50 Kbps used over the backbone.
The wanos optimization stats will also indicate what the 1 Mbps traffic is reduce to between the wanos devices. This can also be verified by the equipment in the middle.
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The internet bandwidth capacity is really 5mb however I limited the bandwidth to 1mb from the gateway because well for one, the gateway is directly feeding the wanos 1 only one IP at 1/1mb, I guess I could as well be buying 1Mb from the provider to run the test and the provider will only limit to 1mb from their end which is pretty much the same 1/1mb coming from the gateway and their last mile delivery to my base is also via microwave radio.
The gateway feeds into wanos 1 directly and between the wanos device, the PTP bridge and the test PC, it's all gigabyte LAN speed all the way. The PTP radios has a phy rate of 1.7gb (about 800mb real throughput), there are no bandwidth limits nor shaping of any kind.
In the end, I intend to move WANOS 1 over to the provides data center and wanos 2 feed the gateway as the goal is to increase WISP backbone but the setup will pretty much be the same.
Could the result be because its on same LAN subnet?
Giving the current situation any advise on the way forward? I could change any setup to your advise.
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The results are expected with the 1 mbps limit on the gateway. Wanos 1 receives 1 mbps, compresses it to e.g. 50 kbps and then wanos-2 decompresses it back to 1 Mbps. In a WAN, the WAN links are the bottleneck and this allows a branch with say 64 Kbps links to get 1 Mbps throughput.
With a 5 Mbps provider link and 800 Mbps WISP backbone, the bottleneck is on the provider link side, so the most effective place to deploy Wanos would be over the 5 Mbps link. So I think your idea to move wanos-1 to the provider will produce the most useful benefits.
For temporary testing, what you could do is place the 1 Mbps rate limit to the test pc IP on the radio or if there is something like a Mikrotik router somewhere in the middle. If the radio link is say limited to 1 Mbps and the provider link is 5 Mbps, then you should see 5 Mbps throughput with the tests and 1 Mbps throughput with optimization disabled.
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Yes you're perfectly right. I retested by limiting the PTP link to 1mb and I could pull the exact 5mb at the other end and that very smoothly.
I was reflecting over the idea of moving wanos 1 to my provider but again I guess the result will be same as my initial test as they also place the bandwidth shaping on their router not on the high speed PTP radios.
Moving forward, I keep thinking on how people like me with high speed PTP can benefit from wanos and then I thought I should ask; are there some setting or tweaks that can be done to justify and take advantage of the platform even if throughput is not readily an immediate benefit? I am saying this because, I see a vast improvement in the network anytime both wanos are connected, no throughput increase as said but like I said from the beginning, any optimization would be a big plus to the network.
Lastly, knowing fully well that their might not be much visible throughput increase over high speed PTP (at least given my setup), so how do we move to plus so as not be limited by the 20mb and 64 GB limit on wanos free (hoping that optimization tweaks and all proves successful).
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Hi,
I am glad there is a vast improvement and suspect that perhaps the smaller compressed packets and minor TCP tweaks are having a positive affect over the radio links. I am reluctant to recommend moving to plus since the full benefits cannot be realized in this scenario. It would have been a much better value proposition if the tests showed 50 Mbps throughput over the 5 Mbps provider link.
Perhaps we should have a Skype call to chat about the network design and how we can make it work?
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Sure. Skype is fine, what day of the week would be convenient for you? May I suggest Monday? I'll live the time to you. You could suggest alternative days too, Saturdays and Sundays are equally fine.
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Thanks, Monday is good, I'll send an email with my skype details.
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Still waiting for the skype details...
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Email sent to ceo@tehilahbase.com