Hey,

I’ve been working on an tc + ebpf -based load-balancer that I’ll soon talk about here in this blog, and one of the things I wanted to do was test such load-balancing feature.

In my line of thought, I wondered: if I’m going to redirect the traffic by changing the destination address of the packets, that means that I’ll need somehow to have a different internet set up in the machine where I could put processes listening on those addresses.

Having worked with Docker and implemented a tiny container runtime myself, it seemed clear that going with network namespaces, virtual interfaces and bridging would get the job done.

How these two relate to each other become clearer after looking at what jobs they do:

network namespaces, according to man 7 network_namespaces :

Network namespaces provide isolation of the system resources associated with networking: network devices, IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks, IP routing tables, firewall rules, the /proc/net directory, the /sys/class/net directory, various files under /proc/sys/net, port numbers (sockets), and so on.

virtual interfaces provide us with virtualized representations of physical network interfaces; and

the bridge gives us the virtual equivalent of a switch.

That said, we can combine these three virtual components and create a virtual network inside the host without the need of VMs. Very lightweight (and with a single dependency - iproute2 ).

Setting up

Assuming we want to simulate load-balancing across two different servers, that would mean that we’d set up the machine to have:

two network namespace (in this case, we can think of each network namespace as a different computer);

two veth pairs (we can think of each pair as two ethernet cards with a cable between them); and

a bridge device that provides the routing to these two namespaces (we can think of this device as a switch).

First, let’s start with the namespaces:

# Making use of the `ip` command from the `iproute2` # package we're able to create the namespaces. # # By convention, network namespace handles created by # iproute2 live under `/var/run/netns` (although they # could live somewhere, like `docker` does with its # namespaces - /var/run/docker/netns`). ip netns add namespace1 ip netns add namespace2 # Check that iproute2 indeed creates the files # under `/var/run/netns`. tree /var/run/netns/ /var/run/netns/ ├── namespace1 └── namespace2

Once the namespaces have been set up, we can confirm the isolation by taking advantage of ip netns exec and executing some commands there:

# List all the interfaces with their corresponding # configurations. # # We can verify that inside the namespace, only the # loopback interface has been set. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip address show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK> mtu 65536 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00

At this point, we can start creating the veth pairs and associating one of their sides to their respective namespaces.

# Create the two pairs. ip link add veth1 type veth peer name br-veth1 ip link add veth2 type veth peer name br-veth2 # Associate the non `br-` side # with the corresponding namespace ip link set veth1 netns namespace1 ip link set veth2 netns namespace2

These pairs act as tunnels between the namespaces (for instance, namespace1 and the default namespace).

Now that the namespaces have an additional interface, check out that they’re actually there:

# Differently from before, now we see the # extra interface (veth1) that we just added. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip address show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK> mtu 65536 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 30: veth1@if29: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/ether d2:92:25:3c:79:c5 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0

As we can see, the veth interface has no IPV4 address associated with it.

We can do so by making use of ip addr add from within the corresponding network namespaces:

# Assign the address 192.168.1.11 with netmask 255.255.255.0 # (see the `/24` mask there) to `veth1`. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip addr add 192.168.1.11/24 dev veth1 # Verify that the ip address has been set. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip address show 1: lo: <LOOPBACK> mtu 65536 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 30: veth1@if29: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN group default qlen 1000 link/ether d2:92:25:3c:79:c5 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff link-netnsid 0 inet 192.168.1.2/24 scope global veth1 valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever # Repeat the process, assigning the address 192.168.1.12 with # netmask 255.255.255.0 to `veth2`. ip netns exec namespace2 \ ip addr add 192.168.1.12/24 dev veth2

Although we have both IPs and interfaces set, we can’t establish communication with them.

That’s because there’s no interface in the default namespace that can send the traffic to those namespaces - we didn’t either configure addresses to the other side of the veth pairs or configured a bridge device.

With the creation of the bridge device, we’re then able to provide the necessary routing, properly forming the network:

# Create the bridge device naming it `br1` # and set it up: ip link add name br1 type bridge ip link set br1 up # Check that the device has been created. ip link | grep br1 33: br1: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000

With the bridge created, now it’s time to connect the bridge-side of the veth pair to the bridge device:

# Set the bridge veths from the default # namespace up. ip link set br-veth1 up ip link set br-veth2 up # Set the veths from the namespaces up too. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip link set veth1 up ip netns exec namespace2 \ ip link set veth2 up # Add the br-veth* interfaces to the bridge # by setting the bridge device as their master. ip link set br-veth1 master br1 ip link set br-veth2 master br1 # Check that the bridge is the master of the two # interfaces that we set (i.e., that the two interfaces # have been added to it). bridge link show br1 29: br-veth1@if30: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 master br1 state disabled priority 32 cost 2 31: br-veth2@if32: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 master br1 state disabled priority 32 cost 2

Now, it’s a matter of giving this bridge device an address so that we can target such IP in our machine’s routing table making it a target for connections to those interfaces that we added to it:

# Set the address of the `br1` interface (bridge device) # to 192.168.1.10/24 and also set the broadcast address # to 192.168.1.255 (the `+` symbol sets the host bits to # 255). ip addr add 192.168.1.10/24 brd + dev br1

Checking our routing table (from the default namespace), we can see that any requests with a destination to our namespaces ( 192.168.1.0/24 ) go through our bridge device:

default via 10.0.2.2 dev enp0s3 proto dhcp src 10.0.2.15 metric 100 10.0.2.0/24 dev enp0s3 proto kernel scope link src 10.0.2.15 10.0.2.2 dev enp0s3 proto dhcp scope link src 10.0.2.15 metric 100 192.168.1.0/24 dev br1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.10 # <<<<<<<<<

We can verify that we indeed have connectivity:

# Check the connectivity from the default namespace (host) ping 192.168.1.12 PING 192.168.1.12 ( 192.168.1.12 ) 56 ( 84 ) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 192.168.1.12: icmp_seq = 1 ttl = 64 time = 0.050 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.12: icmp_seq = 2 ttl = 64 time = 0.061 ms # We can also reach the interface of the other namespace # given that we have a route to it. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip route 192.168.1.0/24 dev veth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.11 # Let's reach the other then iface then. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ping 192.168.1.12

Given that the routing table from namespace1 doesn’t have a default gateway, it can’t reach any other machine from outside the 192.168.1.0/24 range.

# Try to reach Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8). # # Given that there's no route for something that doesn't # match the `192.168.1.0/24` range, 8.8.8.8 should be unreachable. ip netns exec namespace1 \ ping 8.8.8.8 connect: Network is unreachable

To fix that, the first step is giving the namespaces a default gateway route:

# Execute the command to add the default gateway in all # the network namespaces under `/var/run/netns`. # # The command is going to add a default gateway which should # be used for all connections that doesn't match the other # specific routes. # # 192.168.1.10 corresponds to the address assigned to the # bridge device - reachable from both namespaces, as well as # the host machine. ip -all netns exec \ ip route add default via 192.168.1.10 # Check how the routing table looks inside the namespace ip netns exec namespace1 \ ip route default via 192.168.1.10 dev veth1 192.168.1.0/24 dev veth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.11

Show we be able to reach the internet now? Not yet.

# Try to reach Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8). ip netns exec namespace1 \ ping 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 ( 8.8.8.8 ) 56 ( 84 ) bytes of data. ^C --- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 2043ms

Although the network is now reachable, there’s no way that we can have responses back - packets from external networks can’t be sent directly to our 192.168.1.0/24 network.

To get around that, we can make use of NAT (network address translation) by placing an iptables rule in the POSTROUTING chain of the nat table:

# -t specifies the table to which the commands # should be directed to. By default it's `filter`. # # -A specifies that we're appending a rule to the # chain the we tell the name after it; # # -s specifies a source address (with a mask in # this case). # # -j specifies the target to jump to (what action to # take). iptables \ -t nat \ -A POSTROUTING \ -s 192.168.1.0/24 \ -j MASQUERADE

Although NAT is set to work for the packets originating from 192.168.1.0/24 , there’s still (yet another) one more configuration to do: enable packet forwarding (maybe this is already active in your case):

# Enable ipv4 ip forwarding sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1 # Send some packets to 8.8.8.8 ip netns exec namespace1 ping 8.8.8.8 PING 8.8.8.8 ( 8.8.8.8 ) 56 ( 84 ) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq = 1 ttl = 61 time = 43 ms 64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq = 2 ttl = 61 time = 35 ms

Now (finally), we’re good! We have connectivity all the way:

the host can direct traffic to an application inside a namespace;

an application inside a namespace can direct traffic to an application in the host;

an application inside a namespace can direct traffic to another application in another namespace; and

an application inside a namespace can access the internet.

Closing thoughts

Did we need bridge at all? That depends.

If the intention was to have the communication going through the host to a namespace (or vice-versa) directly, just setting the pairs would be enough.

Just in case you spot any mistake, please let me know! I’m cirowrc on Twitter.

Have a good one!

finis