routing

How to Add a Static Route on the ASUS RT-AC66U

/ Christopher Paquin / 26 Comments

ASUS_RT-AC66U_newsBased on the popularity of my previous ASUS RT-AC66U post regarding SNMP, I have decided to put together a simple post on how to configure static routing on the home router known as the Dark Knight.

In my humble abode, the RT-AC66U is the core of my home network, providing DHCP and Wireless to a plethora of devices. However, I am also running a small home lab which I need to be able to access from my home desktop. Hence the need for static routes.

Specifically, my home lab hosts the following networks; 10.1.0.0/24, 10.2.0.0/24, 10.3.0.0/24. The IP address of my ASUS RT-AC66U is the default one of 192.168.0.1. My desktop is on the 192.168.0.0/24 network.

In order for me to access my lab from my desktop (and from the rest of my home network), I need to tell my ASUS how to route traffic destined for my 10. networks.

In order to accomplish this, we first need to navigate to LAN on the left pane, and then selecting the Route tab.

static_routes_asus_rt-AC66u

As shown in the screenshot above, we first need to select the “YES” radio button to “Enable Static Routes”. Next we enter a network ip (or static ip — if that’s what we are up to) into the “Network/Host IP “field. Then we enter our netmask into the field that is not surprisingly labeled “Netmask”. In my case my netmask is 255.255.255.0.

Now we move on to the field labeled “Gateway”. Here we need to enter what the next network hop for that a packet that is needs to route to our lab network. In my environment, this is 192.168.0.11, which is another router.

Then select “LAN” from the drop down as all our traffic will route to the internal LAN only, and not out to the internet or WAN. Now click the plus sign to add your new route.

Now when a packet destined for one of my lab networks outlined above hits my ASUS router, it will be forwarded to 192.168.0.11, which is my lab router.

Note that you can also add static routes via the busybox command line, however I am not going to go into that today. Its simple enough to add them in the WebUI.

HomeLab: Simple Cisco EIGRP Setup

/ Christopher Paquin / Leave a comment

Sugar_skull_by_nickgo79EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol), is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol (until recently). When a router runs EIGRP, it keeps a copy of its neighbors routing table. If I router cannot find a route it its, or its neighbor's routing table, it will query its neighbors who in turn query their neighbors.

Exactly how routing protocols work is serious business, but dont worry we are not going to go into that here. Below is the process that I used to setup EIGRP on a Cisco 2811.

Before we do anything, lets get into Configuration mode (conf t).

r-2811-1#conf t

 

Your first step is going to be to enable IP Routing on your device. But before you do so, make sure that you have configured a Gateway of Last Restort. I did not and had to hook up the old console cable.

The IP of this router is 10.1.0.2, and its directly connected to 10.1.0.1, which is its last resort first hop, so lets configure that .

r-2811-1(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.1.0.1

 

Ok so now lets enable IP Routing

r-2811-1(config)#ip routing

 

Now lets start EIGRP and chose an AS number. Note that I used 10 on the other three routers in my setup so thats what we are going to use here.

r-2811-1(config)#router eigrp 10

 

Now we need to tell the router what networks are connected to it (or in this case, will be connected to it). This is the information that the router will share with its neighbors.

r-2811-1(config-router)#network 10.3.0.0

 

In this instance my ourside interface is on 10.1.0.0/16, and its inside interface will serve up 10.3.0.0./16.

Dont forget to save your work

r-2811-1#copy run start

 

Related articles

HomeLab: Simple SSH Setup on a Cisco Router
HomeLab: Cisco 2621 Router Password Recovery/Factory Reset
Hour 40: OSPF the new advanced link-state protocol
Route Redistribution: Protocol Rules + EIGRP Redistribution
Eigrp
Hour 31: IGP Review EIGRP

How to Create A Dedicated Storage NIC in XenServer

/ Christopher Paquin / Leave a comment

Wickenburg-networkIn Vmware ESX, when using NFS storage, you are required to create a separate and additional vmkernel portgroup to access your NFS storage. This way ESX Management traffic travels over one port group and NFS traffic travels over another.

In Xenserver the concept is similar; however executed much differently.

First and foremost you need to be aware of a few limitations in XenServer. While XenServer does allow you to create a dedicated nic (or bond) for NFS traffic, this nic must remain unmanaged by Xenserver. In contrast, a XenServer's management traffic travels over its "Management interface", which obviously has to be an interface that is managed via XenServer.

Allow me sum this up. You cannot share a nic or nics between management traffic and NFS traffic. This means that you are going want to create a bond for management traffic and a bond for NFS traffic you are going to need 4 free interfaces on your Xenserver box.

Now it is possible to use VLAN tagging and route your Management traffic and virtual machine traffic over the same physical interfaces. However its important to know that XenServer does not support VLAN tagging on the Management interface, so whatever VLAN you use for management, it must be the native vlan on the ports configuration.

The information below is from the Admin Guide for XenServer 5.5

Switch ports configured to perform 802.1Q VLAN tagging/untagging, commonly referred to as ports with a native VLAN or as access mode ports, can be used with XenServer management interfaces to place managementtraffic on a desired VLAN. In this case the XenServer host is unaware of any VLAN configuration.

XenServer management interfaces cannot be assigned to a XenServer VLAN via a trunk port.

Bottom line; its probably best to have seperate physical connections for your management traffic and NFS traffic.

Also, according to the Admin Guide, your NFS network should not be routed. See the words below and read them thusly.

"Before dedicating a network interface as a storage interface for use with iSCSI or NFS SRs, you must ensure that the dedicated interface uses a separate IP subnet which is not routable from the main management interface. If this is not enforced, then storage traffic may be directed via the main management interface after a host reboot, due to the order in which network interfaces are initialized."

Ok now that we got all that out of the way, lets actually create our dedicated storage nic.

First we need to get the uuid of the pif (physical interface) that we want to use. Note that this is just an example using a standalone interface.

#xe pif-list host-name-label=<"your_hostname>

Next we reconfigure our pif

#xe pif-reconfigure-ip mode=statc IP=<your-ip-on-nfs-vlan> netmask=<your-mask> uuid=<pif-uuid>

#xe pif-param-set disallow-unplug=true uuid=<pif-uuid>

#xe pif-param-set other-config:ManagementPurpose="Storage" uuid=<pif-uuid>

Alternatively you can use xe pif-forget to remote the interface from Xencenter database and configure it manually via the XenServer Kernel like you would any other interface in Linux, however this could be more confusing in the long run.