In a recently published article, Paul Vixie, past author and architect of BIND , one of the most popular internet domain server, explains why DNS servers should use anycast for increased reliability and faster answers. The main argument against unicast is that some resolvers may not be smart enough to select the best server to query and therefore, they may select a server on the other side of the planet. Since, you cannot go faster than light, you get a penalty of about 100 milliseconds in this case.

Unicast & anycast#

Most addresses that you handle are unicast addresses, i.e. the address of a single receiver. Any time you send a packet to an unicast address, it will be forwarded to this single receiver. Another common network addressing system is multicast (which happens to include broadcast). When you send a packet to a multicast address, several receivers may get it. The packet is copied as needed by some nodes.

Anycast addresses allow you to send a packet to a set of receivers but only one of them will receive it. The packet will not be copied. Usually, the idea behind anycast is that the packet is sent to the nearest receiver.

There is no universal way to determine if an IP address is a unicast address or an anycast address just by looking at it. For example 192.5.5.241 is an anycast address while 78.47.78.132 is a unicast address.

ISC , which maintains BIND , operates the “F” root domain server, one of the 13 Internet root name servers. This server is queried by using 192.5.5.241 IPv4 anycast address or 2001:500:2f::f IPv6 anycast address. ISC has published a document explaining how anycast works. Several nodes around the globe announces the same subnet using BGP . When one router running BGP has to forward a query to the anycast address, it will have several choices in its routing table. It will usually select the shortest path and route the query to the corresponding router.

Some nodes may choose to restrict the announcement about the subnet containing the anycast address. They are called local nodes (by opposition to other global nodes). This allows them to serve query only from their clients and use cheaper connectivity and hardware.

Let’s play with anycast by setting up a lab to experiment with it. We want to setup an IPv6 anycast DNS service using two global nodes, G1 and G2 , and one local node, L1 . We build some kind of mini-Internet. See:

Topology for anycast DNS lab

Setting up the lab#

This lab will use UML guests for all nodes. For more details on how this works, look at my previous article about network labs with User Mode Linux. You first need to grab the lab:

$ git clone https://github.com/vincentbernat/network-lab.git $ cd network-lab/lab-anycast-dns $ ./setup

You will need to install the dependencies needed by the script on your host system. The script was tested on Debian unstable. If some of the dependencies do not exist in your distribution, if they don’t behave as in Debian or if you don’t want to install them on your host system, you can use debootstrap to create a working system:

$ sudo debootstrap sid ./sid-chroot http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ [...] $ sudo chroot ./sid-chroot /bin/bash # apt-get install iproute zsh aufs-tools [...] # apt-get install bird6 [...] # exit $ sudo mkdir -p ./sid-chroot/ $HOME $ sudo chown $( whoami ) ./sid-chroot/ $HOME $ ROOT = ./sid-chroot ./setup

We are running a lot of UML guests in this lab. We assign 64 MiB to each host. UML guests do not use host memory until they need it but because of cache subsystem, you can expect that each guest will use 64 MiB of memory. This means that you need about 2 GiB of RAM to run this lab. Moreover, each guest will create a file representing its memory. Therefore, you need about 2 GiB of free space in /tmp too.

Routers are named after their AS number. The router of AS 64652 is just 64652 . Paris , NewYork and Tokyo are the exception.

The lab will use only one switch but we will use VLAN to create several L2 networks. Each link in our schema is an L2 network. Each link will get its own L3 network. These networks are prefixed with 2001:db8:ffff: . Leaf AS have their own L3 network 2001:db8:X::/48 where X is the AS number minus 60000. Look at /etc/hosts on each host to get the IP of all hosts.

AS 64600 is some kind of Tier-1 transit network (like Level 3 Communications). It has three points of presence: Paris, New York and Tokyo. AS 64650 is a European regional transit network, AS 64640 is an East Asian regional transit network and AS 64610, 64620 and 64630 are North American regional transit network which are peering each other. Other leaf AS are local ISP.

This is not really what Internet looks like but shaping our lab like a tree allows us to not deal with a lot of BGP stuff: we ensure that the shortest path (in number of BGP hops) from one client to one server is the best path. Each BGP router will get a basic BGP configuration containing only the list of peers. Since Paris , Tokyo and NewYork are in the same AS , they will use iBGP. They are fully meshed for this purpose but this does not provide redundancy because iBGP routes are not redistributed inside iBGP. A more complex setup would be needed to provide redundancy inside AS 64600. We don’t use an IGP inside leaf AS as we should: for the sake of simplicity, we redistribute directly connected routes into BGP .

While in my previous lab, I used Quagga, I will use BIRD in this one. It is a more modern daemon with a clean design on how routing tables may interact. It also performs better. However, it lacks several features from Quagga. The configuration for BIRD is autogenerated from /etc/hosts . We use only one routing table inside BIRD. This table will be exported to the kernel and to any BGP instance. Some directly connected routes will be imported (ones representing client networks) as well as all routes from BGP instances. Here is an excerpt of AS 64610’s configuration:

protocol direct { description "Client networks"; import filter { if net ~ [ 2001:db8:4600::/40{40,48} ] then accept; reject; }; export none; } protocol kernel { persist; import none; export all; } protocol bgp { description "BGP with peer NewYork"; local as 64610; neighbor 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::1 as 64600; gateway direct; hold time 30; export all; import all; }

We do not export inter-router subnets to keep our routing tables small. This also means that these IP addresses are not routable in spite of the use of public IP addresses. Here is the routing table as seen by 64610 (use birdc6 to connect to BIRD):

bird> show route 2001:db8:4622::/48 via 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4620::2 on eth3 [bgp4 18:52] * (100) [AS64622i] via 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::1 on eth0 [bgp1 18:52] (100) [AS64622i] 2001:db8:4621::/48 via 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4620::2 on eth3 [bgp4 18:52] * (100) [AS64621i] via 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::1 on eth0 [bgp1 18:52] (100) [AS64621i] 2001:db8:4612::/48 via 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4612::2 on eth2 [bgp3 18:52] * (100) [AS64612i] 2001:db8:4611::/48 via 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4611::2 on eth1 [bgp2 18:52] * (100) [AS64611i]

As you can notice, it knows several paths to the same network, however, it only selects the best one (based on the length of the AS path):

bird> show route 2001:db8:4622::/48 all 2001:db8:4622::/48 via 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4620::2 on eth3 [bgp4 18:52] * (100) [AS64622i] Type: BGP unicast univ BGP.origin: IGP BGP.as_path: 64620 64622 BGP.next_hop: 2001:db8:ffff:4610:4620::2 fe80::e05f:a3ff:fef2:f4e0 BGP.local_pref: 100 via 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::1 on eth0 [bgp1 18:52] (100) [AS64622i] Type: BGP unicast univ BGP.origin: IGP BGP.as_path: 64600 64620 64622 BGP.next_hop: 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::1 fe80::3426:63ff:fe5e:afbd BGP.local_pref: 100

Let’s check that everything works with traceroute6 on C1 :

# traceroute6 G2.lab traceroute to G2.lab (2001:db8:4612::2:53), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets 1 64652-eth1.lab (2001:db8:4652::1) -338.277 ms -338.449 ms -338.502 ms 2 64650-eth2.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4650:4652::1) -338.324 ms -338.363 ms -338.384 ms 3 Paris-eth2.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4650::1) -338.191 ms -338.329 ms -338.282 ms 4 NewYork-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4600:1:0:2) -338.144 ms -338.182 ms -338.235 ms 5 64610-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4610::2) -338.078 ms -337.958 ms -337.944 ms 6 64612-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4610:4612::2) -337.778 ms -338.103 ms -338.041 ms 7 G2.lab (2001:db8:4612::2:53) -338.001 ms -338.045 ms -338.080 ms

Let’s see what happens if we shut the link between NewYork and 64610 . This link is VLAN 10. Since vde_switch does not allow us to shut a port, we will change the VLAN of port 9 to VLAN 4093. After at most 30 seconds, the BGP session between NewYork and 64610 will be torn down and packets from C1 to G2 will take a new path:

# traceroute6 G2.lab traceroute to G2.lab (2001:db8:4612::2:53), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets 1 64652-eth1.lab (2001:db8:4652::1) -338.382 ms -338.499 ms -338.503 ms 2 64650-eth2.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4650:4652::1) -338.284 ms -338.317 ms -338.151 ms 3 Paris-eth2.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4650::1) -337.954 ms -338.031 ms -337.924 ms 4 NewYork-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4600:1:0:2) -337.655 ms -337.751 ms -337.844 ms 5 64620-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4600:4620::2) -337.762 ms -337.507 ms -337.611 ms 6 64610-eth3.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4610:4620::1) -337.531 ms -338.024 ms -337.998 ms 7 64612-eth0.lab (2001:db8:ffff:4610:4612::2) -337.860 ms -337.931 ms -337.992 ms 8 G2.lab (2001:db8:4612::2:53) -337.863 ms -337.768 ms -337.808 ms

Setting up anycast DNS#

Our anycast DNS service has three nodes. Two global ones, located in Europe and North America and one local one targeted at customers of AS 64620 only. The IP address of this anycast DNS server is 2001:db8:aaaa::53/48 . We assign this address to G1 , G2 and L1 . We also assign 2001:db8:aaaa::1/48 to 64651 , 64612 and 64621 . BIRD configuration is adapted to advertise this network:

protocol direct { description "Client networks"; import filter { if net ~ [ 2001:db8:4600::/40{40,48} ] then accept; if net ~ [ 2001:db8:aaaa::/48 ] then accept; reject; }; export none; }

We use NSD as a name server. This is an authoritative-only name server. The configuration is pretty simple. We just ensure that it is bound to the IPv6 anycast address (otherwise, it may answer with the wrong address). The zone file is customized to answer the name of the server:

joe@C1$ host -t TXT example.com 2001 :db8:aaaa::53 Using domain server: Name: 2001:db8:aaaa::53 Address: 2001:db8:aaaa::53#53 example.com descriptive text "G1" joe@C5$ host -t TXT example.com 2001 :db8:aaaa::53 Using domain server: Name: 2001:db8:aaaa::53 Address: 2001:db8:aaaa::53#53 example.com descriptive text "G2"

If we try from C3 , we may be redirected to L1 while we are not a customer of AS 64620. A common way to handle this is to let 64621 tag the route with a special community that will let know 64620 that the route should not be exported.

protocol direct { description "Client networks"; import filter { if net ~ [ 2001:db8:4600::/40{40,48} ] then accept; if net ~ [ 2001:db8:aaaa::/48 ] then { bgp_community.add((65535,65281)); accept; } reject; }; export none; }

The community used is known as the no-export community. BIRD knows how to handle it. However, we hit here some limitations of BIRD:

The correct way to let 64622 knows about this route is to build a BGP confederation for AS 64620 and let AS 64622 and AS 64621 be part of it. This means these three AS will be seen as AS 64200 from outside of the confederation. Moreover, the no-export community would allow us to export the route only within the confederation. This is exactly what we need but BIRD does not support confederations. BIRD first selects the best route to export then apply filtering. This means that even if 64620 knows non-filtered route to 2001:db8:aaaa::/48 , it will select the route to L1 , filter it out and export nothing to 64622 .

Therefore, we need to fallback to ask BIRD to not export the route to AS 64600, 64610 and 64630 on 64620 . We could use a special community to filter out the route but we keep it simple and just filter the route directly.

filter keep_local_dns { if net ~ [ 2001:db8:aaaa::/48 ] then reject; accept; } protocol bgp { description "BGP with peer NewYork"; local as 64620; neighbor 2001:db8:ffff:4600:4620::1 as 64600; gateway direct; hold time 30; export filter keep_local_dns; import all; }

Voilà. Only C4 will be able to query L1 . If AS 64621 is missing, it will query G2 instead. One major point about anycast is to know that redundancy is done at the AS level only. If the name server on L1 does not work correctly, requests will still be routed to it. Therefore, with anycast, you still need to provide redundancy inside each AS (or stop advertising the anycast network as soon as there is a failure).

Beyond DNS#

Anycast can be used to serve HTTP requests too. This is less commonly used because your connection may be rerouted to another node while it is still running. This is not a problem with DNS because there is no connection (you send a query, you receive an answer). There are at least two CDN (MaxCDN and CacheFly) which uses anycast to ensure low roundtrip time and very high reliability.

Setting up an HTTP server with an anycast address is no different than setting up a DNS server. However, you need to ensure maximum stability of the routing path to avoid the connection to be dropped while running. I suppose that this is done by hiring some high-level BGP expert. You can also mix unicast and anycast: