To that end, I have created a repository on GitHub for the task with a detailed readme file:

• https://github.com/barryo/nagios-plugins

As a starting point, there are four plugins available now:

The RB750 and the RB750G are two identical looking routers intended for the SOHO environment:

The specifications for the RB750 (with differences for the RB750G in italics and parenthesis) are:

• five FastEthernet 100Mbps (Gigabit 1Gbps) ports;
• 32MB DDR SDRAM ;
• 64MB on board NAND storage;
• Atheros AR7240 400MHz (AR7161 680MHz) CPU;
• powered by PoE or power jack;
• up to 3W (6W) power consumption;
• ports 2-5 share dedicated switch chip allowing full 100Mbps (1Gbps) throughput;
• all ports can be individually configured.
• €31.73 (€54.61) from Wireless Connect.

Both routers come with an L4 license of Mikritik’s RouterOS which is built on the Linux kernel so anyone familiar with Linux networking will get up to speed on these boxes in no time.

As a disclaimer in case it is not clear, all routing tests are done using just two ports – one for the traffic generator and one for the receiver – with the device under testing routing the packets between two networks. As such, on the RB750, the maximum throughput we could achieve would be 100Mbps.

I ran tests for plain routing and also, in evaluating it for certain uses, over a VPN tunnel.

All results are presented below. Given the wealth of features, I think these are super boxes at a super price. So far I’ve put them on the end of an Imagine DSL line providing IPv4 and v6 over PPPoE and the end of a 30Mb UPC line taking its UPC IP via DHCP. They provide firewall, NAT, port forwarding, OpenVPN tunnels, QoS, DHCP, DNS caching and VLANs for phone / VoIP and managment networks.

Following the conference I picked up some RB750′s and RB750G’s and was very impressed. So much so, that I picked up a RB1100 also. The RB1100 specifications include:

• 13 individual 1Gbps ports;
• 2 x 5 port switch groups;
• 800MHz Power PC MPC8544E processor;
• SODIMM RAM slot with up to 1.5GB RAM;
• 1 x microSD card slot;
• 1U rack mount case.

I decided to benchmark this to see at just what rate it could route packets.

Benchmark Methodology and Tests

I used two PCs running Linux with iperf to measure TCP throughout with different packet sizes. To establish a baseline, I ran the same tests with the two PCs directly connected (this is the Direct Connection results below). The maximum achievable result with this is 1Gbps.

An example command line for the test which runs for 10 secs by default and for a packet size of 64 bytes is:

iperf -f m -i 1 -c 10.0.0.1 -l 64

Then I ran four test sets routing traffic between two networks as follows:

1. No c/t, no f/w: connection tracking disabled and firewall set to allow all;
2. No c/t, f/w: connection tracking disabled but with some simple firewall rules;
3. C/t, no f/w: connection tracking enabled but firewall set to allow all;
4. C/t, f/w: connection tracking enabled and stateful firewall rules.

In addition, I ran the above four tests with the RB1100 configured as a OpenVPN server:

/interface ovpn-server serverset auth=sha1,md5 certificate=cert1 \
cipher=blowfish128,aes128,aes192,aes256                          \
default-profile=your_profile enabled=yes                         \
keepalive-timeout=disabled mac-address=FE:50:A7:D5:FE:B7         \
max-mtu=1500 mode=ip netmask=24 port=1194                        \
require-client-certificate=no

One of the PCs was connected to the RB1100 as a VPN client pushing traffic to the other server on a non-VPN connect with all traffic routed through the RB1100. I also did a baseline test by running the VPN server with the same encryption on one of the PCs with a direct connect to the other and then pushing traffic over the VPN link.

Results:

The results can be seen in the following graph:

Without connection tracking and firewall, full line rate is achievable for packet sizes of 256bytes and higher – all in all, an excellent result. That said, no connection tracking and no firewall would be an unusual configuration and with these, the box maxes out at around 525Mbps – still an excellent result for less than €400.

The VPN tests yielded:

VPN throughput primarily relies on CPU horse power and the PCs used for the Direct Connection baseline test are pretty modern.

This project is called IPv6 Ready and it is essential a certification program for websites that are IPv6 ready to one of two standards:

Gold: The website has a AAAA (IPv6) DNS record; and

Platinum: At least one of the websites DNS name servers is additionally IPv6 enabled.

For those websites that are not IPv6 enabled (and in many cases this is dependent on a third party hosting company), we also have a very cool IPv6 Pending badge which you can use to let your customers know that you are IPv6 aware.

The badges shown here are the large versions but we also have an extra large, medium and small so you’ll find an appropriate one for your site.

How do you get your badges? Easy, just head over to IPv6Ready.ie and register your site. Once you complete the simple process, you’ll be emailed all four personalised badges!

Help us make this a success! Please repost, blog, tweet and spread the word any way you can to help us raise awareness and push IPv6 forward – even just a little. If nothing else, please register and display a badge! You’ll also get a link such as this to your own certificate!

It’s nice to know I’m not the only anorak!

$ /usr/bin/whois opensolutions.ie
<snip>
nserver:     dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.1.40 2a01:268:4::40
nserver:     dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.1.41 2a01:268:4::41
nserver:     dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie 87.232.16.61 2a01:268:3002::61

However, in this case, I will need to do it many times on many domains and do not need to have to worry about whois servers limiting the queries or parsing the output from different whois servers.

After some digging, it looks like the nameservers of TLDs return glue records in the additional section. Let’s look by example on opensolutions.ie. First, find the TLD servers for .ie:

$ dig NS ie
<snip>
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      gns1.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      uucp-gw-1.pa.dec.com.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      uucp-gw-2.pa.dec.com.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ns3.ns.esat.net.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      banba.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ice.netsource.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      gns2.domainregistry.ie.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      ns-ie.nic.fr.
ie.                     172800  IN      NS      b.iedr.ie.

Now query one of these for the nameservers for opensolutions.ie:

$ dig NS opensolutions.ie @banba.domainregistry.ie.
<snip>
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie.
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie.
opensolutions.ie.       172800  IN      NS      dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.1.40
dns1.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:4::40
dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.1.41
dns2.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:4::41
dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    A       87.232.16.61
dns3.dns.opensolutions.ie. 172800 IN    AAAA    2a01:268:3002::61

As you can see, the authority section contains the nameservers for opensolutions.ie which are all on the opensolutions.ie domain. We then find the glue records for these nameservers in the additional section.

Head over to my article on the company blog for the tips.

$ host www.barryodonovan.com
www.barryodonovan.com has address 87.232.16.35
www.barryodonovan.com has IPv6 address 2a01:268:3002::35

I spend a lot of my working hours doing a lot with IPv6 and, as any sys admin knows, it’s quite often the case that you get around to doing these things for yourself last. In our case, there was a bit of work involved as we had to first get our ISP’s core network dual stacked with IPv6 – luckily they’re a customer of ours

Stay tuned here and over on the company blog for upcoming IPv6 posts and announcements.

In the meantime, if your ISP isn’t offering IPv6 to end users yet, head on over to SixXS where you can get an IPv6 tunnel for free. If you’re based in Ireland be sure to chose HEAnet or Airwire as your PoP as they’re both based in Ireland and members of INEX so your latency will be as low as possible.

UPDATE: Much more on this an why over on the company blog: We’re IPv6 Ready – Finally!

Most people’s first impression of 8.10 will be based on the upgrade process and post install issues. To date, I’ve always had to fix a lot of problems with the system after an upgrade to make it work. Not this time – it was absolutely seamless.

I was also apprehensive about KDE 4.1 and, to be honest, I was really worried that in a crunch I’d have to fall back to Gnome before degrading back to 8.04. I just don’t have the time these days to follow KDE development as much as I used to and I briefly installed KDE 4 a few months ago and thought it was far from finished.

I’m delighted to report KDE 4.1 is very slick and very polished. I’ve only had it for just over 24 but I have no complaints yet.

However, my main motivation for the upgrade was mobile broadband. Like most people, I use my laptop when on the move and my desktop when in the office. My laptop has an Ethernet port and a wi-fi card which both worked great with KNetworkManager but not mobile broadband. I got O2′s broadband dongle (the small USB stick) about four months ago and rely on it heavily.

I’ve been using Vodafone’s Mobile Connect Client to great effect but there were some issues:

• setting up the connection was a manual process (change X window access control; su to root; export the DISPLAY setting; and start the application);
• if I suspended the laptop then I needed to reboot the system to use the dongle again.

While both of the above could be solved, it’s just not plug and play. 8.10 is. With the dongle plugged into the USB port, KNetworkManager discovered the tty port. Configuring it was as easy as right clicking on the KNetworkManager icon and selecting New Connection… icon for the tty port.

The next step requires knowledge of the O2 / provider settings but this is readily available online. For O2:

KNetworkManager - Settings for O2 Ireland

After the above, I just accepted the defaults for the rest of the options. And – to my delight – it just worked. And it worked after suspended the laptop. And after popping the USB dongle in and out for the heck of it. By clicking the Auto Connect option as part of the process, it also just works when I pop the dongle in.