TowardEX has been selected to provide guest WiFi coverage to the Markley Data Center Summit 2013 event this coming Thursday.
We've been busy in the past couple weeks, scrambling to upgrade our wireless network infrastructure to fully cover the guest areas where event activities will be held. Being a large facility, 1 Summer Street can be challenging to sufficiently cover wireless access for 400+ people attending the event. Moreover, being a 24/7 busy data center, you can expect lot of interference from tons of EM sources.
Punching through lot of interference..
We needed to find ways deliver at least 10-20 Mbps+ bandwidth to every smartphone attending the event and we needed it fast. We also had to make sure that main event areas can simultaneously handle up to 200 devices at any given moment.
Given the short time we have to prepare, we've once again turned to Ruckus Wireless for help. We are deploying two ZoneFlex AP7982, four AP7962 and two AP7363 antennas throughout areas where the event activities will be held. These antennas are dual-band, so they'll automatically detect and support both 802.11b/g and 802.11n clients simultaneously.
But perhaps the most important aspect of Ruckus hardware is not the speed, but their ability to counter signal interference through use of adaptive beam steering. Unlike traditional WiFi access points, Ruckus devices use an array of directional antennas that dynamically generate "beams" on a per-station, per-packet basis. Known as BeamFlex, we've found that the technology is able to virtually triple the coverage area of another vendor's access point.
Building a Carrier-Class WiFi in 2 Days.
We've quickly come up with a new network design which will provide transport for the event's wireless network. The network consists of a Mobile Transport Core (MTC) with Subscriber Management (SM) capability. Ruckus' ZoneDirector controller and associated accounting servers are located inside the SM network layer. The MTC layer is designed to support LTE/3G smart cells in the future (though not provided for the event).
The challenge however came from the short amount of time we have to get all the connections hooked up and configured. Further complicating the situation is that Subscriber Management systems and accounting servers are all located inside the colocation data center floor, far away from the areas where event activities are being held.
To solve this time-constraint challenge, we've turned to our new Switched Digital Interconnect (SDI) platform. Being a scalable MPLS based Layer-2 Ethernet network, SDI allows us to quickly dispatch connections between the wireless MTC network and the colocation data center floor. In just 10 minutes, all of the necessary transport links have been built on the SDI cloud, connecting all of our wireless equipment, antennas and subscriber management system together into a holistic cloud.
FreeBSD operating system is used to provide Admission Control for wireless clients. Transport VLANs are dynamically assigned and pushed through the SDI cloud for each individual wifi network, with full support for roaming.
One /24 and /26 IPv4 space were quickly assigned to expand the DHCP scope to 314 addresses for event wireless coverage-- every guest device will be assigned with its own globally unique, public IP address during the event. IPv6 may also be enabled as final details are being wrapped up in advance for coming Thursday.
A Juniper Networks EX3200 switch is providing VLAN transport and terminations necessary for the wireless network, while an upstream Juniper MX80 router is providing flexible-ethernet service interface to handle all of SDI MPLS interfaces carrying wireless & admission control traffic across the building. The MX80 has once again proved quite versatile in its ability to deliver various network services at the edge, while taking up only 2U rack space!
Let us see how it all works out!
We built a heavily over-engineered carrier-grade wireless network, that was designed not just for WiFi, but also for running LTE/3G smartcells. It may be quite an overkill, but this is what happens when you select a wholesale IP provider that has too much time on their hands :)
Many special thanks goes out to Markley Group and their Meet Me Room personnel for invaluable assistance and professionalism while working under short deadlines. This has truly been a great team effort!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Let's make internet in Boston great again!
Recently, the Markley Group (owner of 1 Summer Street carrier hotel) started the Boston Internet Exchange (BostonIX) to help promote the growth of internet traffic in Boston.
Through its humble beginnings, BostonIX is starting to attract major content players (like Akamai and two unnamed $large_providers) and numerous local access ISPs, all of which are currently working to join the IX to peer.
In cooperation with the Markley Group, TowardEX recently presented to the local BostonIX community to give basic primer into carrier BGP for networks that are new to internet exchange points. If more people are interested, we're more than happy to make additional presentations! :)
To join the cause and help promote the growth of internet traffic in Boston, TowardEX is donating 10Gig waves to the BostonIX on our metro optical fiber ring, spanning through downtown Boston and Somerville. ISPs and networks in Boston are encouraged to join the BostonIX -- let's make internet great in Boston again!
Currently, following members have joined or are in the process of joining the BostonIX:
Through its humble beginnings, BostonIX is starting to attract major content players (like Akamai and two unnamed $large_providers) and numerous local access ISPs, all of which are currently working to join the IX to peer.
In cooperation with the Markley Group, TowardEX recently presented to the local BostonIX community to give basic primer into carrier BGP for networks that are new to internet exchange points. If more people are interested, we're more than happy to make additional presentations! :)
To join the cause and help promote the growth of internet traffic in Boston, TowardEX is donating 10Gig waves to the BostonIX on our metro optical fiber ring, spanning through downtown Boston and Somerville. ISPs and networks in Boston are encouraged to join the BostonIX -- let's make internet great in Boston again!
Currently, following members have joined or are in the process of joining the BostonIX:
| TOWARDEX Carrier Services | 206.108.236.1 | 27552 |
|---|---|---|
| Akamai Technologies, Inc. | 206.108.236.2 | 20940 |
| RCN | 206.108.236.4 | 6079 |
| OCCAID | 206.108.236.5 | 30071 |
| Free Software Foundation (GNU) | 206.108.236.6 | 22989 |
| Packet Clearing House | 206.108.236.7; 206.108.236.8 | 3856 |
| Cambridge Bandwidth Consortium | 206.108.236.9 | 10255 |
| Vermont Telephone | 206.108.236.11 | 17356 |
| DSCI Corporation | 206.108.236.12 | 33748 |
| Studsvik Scandpower, Inc. | 206.108.236.13 | 53389 |
| Eze Castle Integration, Inc. | 206.108.236.15 | 14717 |
| Intelligent Technology Solutions | 206.108.236.16 | 54611 |
| USAi.net | 206.108.236.17 | 10653 |
| Outscale, Inc. | 206.108.236.18 | 53306 |
| RGTS-USA, Inc. | 206.108.236.19 | 14669 |
| Routed.org | 206.108.236.20 | 61126 |
JUNOS software patches - Phase 1 Complete
You may be wondering about our recent maintenance notification to address security vulnerability on numerous routers. There are also rumors about number of large backbone providers patching routers everywhere recently in the past several weeks. You may have also heard about this, this and this.
This is the infamous PSN-2013-01-823 security vulnerability announcement by Juniper Networks (#PR 839412). The announcement outlines a potentially serious security flaw where a specially crafted TCP packet (which, could also be spoofed to bypass a fair amount of perimeter packet filters) which will crash the Routing Engine on a Juniper device, causing it to reboot.
While no known exploits currently exist and many provider networks (including ourselves) utilize techniques to protect routers (best practices such as loopback/control-plane filtering, backbone perimeter protection and BCP38), network providers are not taking any chances -- and we're not taking chances either.
We have now completed patching roughly 70% of all Juniper-based devices on our network. The remaining Juniper devices will be patched next Saturday (March 2, 2013) from 3:00 to 6:59 AM eastern time as noted in our scheduled maintenance notification.
The new software code was regression tested in the lab for a couple of weeks, and the patches have gone accordingly to plan so far. We expect the remaining upgrades next weekend to be painless. If you have any particular concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at anytime.
We will update you on this as work continues next weekend.
This is the infamous PSN-2013-01-823 security vulnerability announcement by Juniper Networks (#PR 839412). The announcement outlines a potentially serious security flaw where a specially crafted TCP packet (which, could also be spoofed to bypass a fair amount of perimeter packet filters) which will crash the Routing Engine on a Juniper device, causing it to reboot.
While no known exploits currently exist and many provider networks (including ourselves) utilize techniques to protect routers (best practices such as loopback/control-plane filtering, backbone perimeter protection and BCP38), network providers are not taking any chances -- and we're not taking chances either.
We have now completed patching roughly 70% of all Juniper-based devices on our network. The remaining Juniper devices will be patched next Saturday (March 2, 2013) from 3:00 to 6:59 AM eastern time as noted in our scheduled maintenance notification.
The new software code was regression tested in the lab for a couple of weeks, and the patches have gone accordingly to plan so far. We expect the remaining upgrades next weekend to be painless. If you have any particular concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at anytime.
We will update you on this as work continues next weekend.
Friday, February 22, 2013
Welcome to our blog!
Welcome to our blog!
Going forward, we will post information about improvements and upgrades taking place on our network here. Updates will also be posted on Twitter, with extended information being provided here at the blog.
-TWDX Network Team
Going forward, we will post information about improvements and upgrades taking place on our network here. Updates will also be posted on Twitter, with extended information being provided here at the blog.
-TWDX Network Team
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