TechSpot:
Can my
SmartNodes do Enterprise Class IP Routing?
In the landscape
of VoIP gateways, the SmartNode is a venerable leader with a
proven track record of deployments across the world. So you
already bought a SmartNode. With your IP telephony needs
planned, you ask yourself, do I really need another router
at the Enterprise Edge? Would my SmartNode not work as an
Enterprise IP Router instead? Of course it can. Even though
Cisco and other high end routers are ideal Carrier Backbone
devices the costs don’t justify deploying these in small to
medium sized deployments. SmartNode is your one stop
Integrated Access Device.
But don’t take
my word for it. Lets take a look at a scenario, where an
Enterprise needs features like IP routing (static or
dynamic), VRRP (optionally to connect to multiple ISP’s) and
of course advanced features like Policy Based Routing,
Access lists, Nat etc. As you can see the basic setup below,
adding a router doesn’t lend you any additional benefits.
The SmartNode can function as your Router and fulfill all
your Enterprise Routing requirements. Let’s take a look:
IP Routing – RIP v1 and v2
The cornerstone of Enterprise
Routing features is the IP routing protocol itself.
SmartNode enables IP routing with not just static routing
but also allowing a full implementation of RIP (both V1 and
V2). Routing can further be extended using Policy Based
Routing (PBR).
For small, homogeneous
networks, RIP proves to be highly robust and a compact
routing protocol. SmartNodes allows you to configure
interfaces to send and receive either v1 or v2 or both
updates.
VRRP
The Virtual Router Redundancy
Protocol (VRRP) aims to provide a router fallback in
environments, where routing redundancy is a must. Two or
more physical units build together one virtual router. This
virtual router provides the routing functionality as long as
at least one of the physical units is up and running.
Let us look at two scenarios
where your enterprise could leverage VRRP
Basic
Setup:
The basic
virtual router setup consists of one node as the master and
a second node as the backup. The master is always the node
that has the same physical IP address as the virtual router
IP address. The master node sends VRRP advertisement
messages to the VRRP multicast IP address, where all backup
nodes listen. If a backup node does not receive an
advertisement message for 4 advertisement intervals, it
becomes the master node.
Advanced VRRP
- Redundancy and Load Sharing
With the basic
router setup you can get redundancy. However the back up
node is always idle. This could be remedied if you used a
load sharing scheme. To enable load sharing however you will
have to create two VRRP profiles. This can be shown as below
In this scenario two ISP’s
are used (one primary, one secondary) for redundancy. Your
mission critical connections could be connected to the
primary ISP, while the less important ones could be
connected to ISP2. This allows load balancing and failover
to be implemented using VRRP.
Access Lists
Access list are a critical part
of today’s routed environment. There are many reasons to
configure access lists. But the most important reason is to
provide security for your network. If you do not configure
access lists on your router, all packets passing through the
router could be allowed onto all parts of your network.
Access lists filter network
traffic by controlling whether routed packets are forwarded
dropped or blocked at the SmartNode interfaces. Your
SmartNode examines each packet to determine whether to
forward or drop the packet, based on the criteria you
specified, like the destination address or an upper layer
protocol or other information within the access lists.
NAT
NAT – Network
Address Translation is a technique that hides an entire
address space, usually consisting of Private Network
addresses, behind a single IP address in another, often
public address space. This mechanism is implemented using
translation tables to map the "hidden" addresses into a
single address and then rewrite the outgoing IP packets on
exit so that they appear to originate from the router. In
the reverse communications path, responses are mapped back
to the originating IP address using the rules stored in the
translation tables.
Although not a
serious security solution in itself, the lack of full
bidirectional connectivity prevents malicious activity
initiated by outside hosts from reaching those local hosts.
When combined
with Access Lists SmartWare provides a strong security
solution for your Enterprise needs.
PBR and QoS
Policy based Routing is based on
setting up rules similar to an Access list. Packets are
routed based on the criteria they meet set in these lists.
PBR can ensure packets are optimally routed over the
network. In addition, profiles can be given to various
classes of user generated traffic and bandwidth shared
between these can be finely configured to ensure highest
Quality of Service.
Advanced
Features:
There are certain Enterprise
features that go hand in hand with IP routing. These are
critical for many Enterprise Deployments. Below we see a
list of some of the important features SmartNode supports:
-
IGMPv2
-
SNMP and SSH
for secure management
-
Radius
-
DHCP Client/
Server and DNS Relay
-
IPSec VPN's
-
PPPoE, IPoA
-
Access
Technologies like ADSL, G.SHDSL, V.35, X.21, T1/E1 etc
·
Conclusion:
SmartNode is your one stop
Integrated Access Device which resolves both Telephony and
Data Routing requirements and thus provides greater savings
compared to the Ciscos and Junipers of the world in both
CAPEX and OPEX for your Enterprise.
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