VLANs, routing, multicast and HP switches, oh my...

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2010-Jun-14 13:17:06 -0700, Kurt Buff <kurt.buff at gmail.com> wrote:
>We'll be simulating installations of our software and hardware for
>customer installations that have WANs between sites, with several
>complementary applications, including a multicast app that is critical
>to the whole effort. While it's a bit much to expect us to be able to
>simulate a WAN at this point, I want to be able to simulate at least
>two subnets with routed multicast between them.

I have been running FreeBSD-based WAN simulators at work for more than
a decade.  As with you, the driver has been to replicate customer
configurations for testing purposes.  My current system provides about
60 different subnets (using VLANs) and about 12 simulated WANs.  It
uses two FreeBSD boxes providing NAT between the corporate intranet
and various test LANs, as well as routing and WAN simulation between
LANs.  Each box runs VLANs over LACP (via lagg(4)) through dual NICs
to redundant switches.  The boxes provide automatic failover via
carp(4).  The WAN simulation is done using dummynet(4) and the NAT and
CARP via pf(4).  By default, pf and dummynet don't work together but
Ermal Luçi wrote some patches that I'm using together with some local
adaption.

Whilst I have run into some rough edges, the system has been very
successful overall.

>take your point about the packets traveling over the same wire. It
>would be best if I could get a multiport router - perhaps a layer3
>switch (I'd love to get them an HP 3400cl) - but that costs much money
>that I don't have to spend at the moment.

My recommendation is that you just use managed switches that support
VLANs and push all the traffic into the FreeBSD box via a trunk, then
let the FreeBSD box handle all the routing.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
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