FreeBSD, Network Architecture, Server and OS

FRR Patched And Working

This entry will be another fairly quick one.  In the previous entry regarding the server, routing, etc, I described how I had to work around the fact that FRR didn’t honor FreeBSD’s assigning and deletion of IP addresses from interfaces.  Specifically: I had the line redistribute connected in the server’s BGP configuration.  That means any of the server’s interfaces with…

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FreeBSD, Network Architecture, Server and OS

Server Merge, ZFS Fun, and BGP Routing For Jails

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Introduction About five years ago, I built two new servers in my basement, as outlined here and here.  One server was my general login/mail/web/DNS/etc server, and the other my home NAS.  This entry will document and detail my merging of the two servers into one, and the associated challenges that brought with it.  I also took this opportunity to…

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FreeBSD, Network Architecture, Server and OS

Adding More ECMP and Health Checking To Anycast Lab

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Introduction In yesterday’s Load Balancers Be Damned post, I demonstrated how adding Free Range Routing to servers could provide a way to do anycast load balancing without the need for expensive load balancers in some cases.  What I didn’t really demonstrate well was the ECMP capabilities of the leaf nodes.  I also punted on the required local health checking…

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FreeBSD, Network Architecture, Server and OS

Load Balancers Be Damned: Routing On The Server

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Introduction Companies such as F5, A10, and Netscaler (owned by Citrix) have built their respective businesses on the need for load balancing devices in the data center and other parts of the network.  While these devices can make the sharing of the load of incoming service connections (eg: HTTP, DNS, etc) very easy, they also come with a sometimes…

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