CREID: Development of Reliable and Scalable DHCP System for Carrier IP Networks
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CREID: Development of reliable and scalable DHCP system for carrier IP networks Katsuhiro Naito Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mie University, 1577 Kurimamachiya, Tsu, 514-8507, Japan Email: [email protected] Makoto Nishide Net Step Inc. 213 Obatachomiyamae, Ise, 519-0504, Japan Email: [email protected] Eiji Miyazoe OSS BroadNet Inc. 3-5-7 Hisamoto, Takatsuku, Kawasaki, 213-0011, Japan Email: [email protected] Abstract— Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) is of ISC-DHCP is distributed over various kinds of UNIX OS. essential service to configure information about networks at Therefore, many users use the software in local networks. On user terminals in Internet service providers (ISPs). Therefore, the contrary, the transaction performance of ISC-DHCP is not many DHCP programs are released in Internet. However, few free software DHCP programs can achieve required reliability high comparing to the requirement in commercial large ISPs. and scalability in ISP’s usage. In this paper, we develop the Additionally, the fail-over mechanisms of ISC-DHCP are not reliable and scalable DHCP system called CNR Emulator on enough to achieve a stable DHCP service in commercial ISPs ISC-DHCP (CREID) based on free software such as ISC-DHCP, [9], [10], [11]. Duplicated Replicated Block Device (DRBD), and Pacemaker. In this paper, we develop the reliable and scalable DHCP ISC-DHCP supports Internet Protocol (IP) v4 and IPv6 that are required in commercial ISP services. DRBD and Pacemaker system called CNR Emulator on ISC-DHCP (CREID) based can construct clustering systems over some physical computers. on free software such as ISC-DHCP, Duplicated Replicated From the numerical results, we can find that the developed DHCP Block Device (DRBD) [12], and Pacemaker [13]. ISC-DHCP system can achieve enough DHCP transaction performance which supports Internet Protocol (IP) v4 and IPv6 that are required in is required in commercial ISPs, and high service availability over commercial ISP services. DRBD and Pacemaker can construct 99.999%. clustering systems over some physical computers. Therefore, Keywords— DHCP, Carrier IP networks, ISC-DHCP, DRBD, the CREID can provide required functions in commercial Pacemaker ISPs, and can achieve reliability by using cluster fail-over mechanisms. From the evaluation experiments, we can find I. INTRODUCTION that the developed DHCP system can achieve enough DHCP Dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) [1], [2] be- transaction performance which is required in commercial ISPs, comes more important functions to setup network configura- and high service availability over 99.999%. tion automatically according to the development of computer networks. Especially, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) require II. FUNDAMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF ISC-DHCP the DHCP function to manage user terminals and assign The developed DHCP system employs ISC-DHCP as the IP addresses [3], [4], [5], [6]. Therefore, they require more fundamental DHCP software. Therefore, it is important to reliable and scalable DHCP systems to provide stable network evaluate the fundamental performance of ISC-DHCP to design services. As the results, high-end DHCP systems for commer- the developed system. Table I shows the hardware specifica- cial ISPs have achieved high reliability and scalability [7]. In tions in fundamental evaluation of ISC-DHCP. these systems, they can achieve high transaction performance Generally, IP address ranges are registered in a DHCP of DHCP requests and support fail-over mechanisms against server beforehand. Transaction performance of assigning an server troubles. On the contrary, the price of these systems IP address deteriorates due to increase of IP address range. becomes expensive due to the lack of competitors. Therefore, In this evaluation, we use dhcperf [14], which is an evalu- it is difficult to employ them in small ISPs due to lack of ation software for DHCP services. In the measurements, we capital-investment spending even if they have a better and measure the DHCP discover transaction performance including stable performance. Discover, Offer Request, Ack, and Release. ISC-DHCP [8] is the well known free DHCP software Fig. 1 shows the DHCP transaction performance versus provided by Internet Systems Consortium. The implementation the IP address range. From the results, we can find that the TABLE I 2 HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS IN FUNDAMENTAL EVALUATION 1.5 DHCP Server DHCP Client CPU Intel Xeon(R) Intel Celeron E5620 2.40GHz G1101 2.26GHz 1 Memory 8GB 1GB HDD 300GB 250GB 6G SAS 15000rpm SATA2 7200rpm 0.5 Network 1Gbps OS Scientific Linux 6.1 Boot time of DHCP process[s] DHCP ICS-DHCP 4.1-ESV-R2 0 1000 10000 100000 Number of registered MAC addresses 100 Fig. 2. Boot time of DHCPD process with registered MAC address. 80 2 60 40 1.5 20 1 0 Transaction performance [Transactions/s] 10000 100000 100000 Number of IP address range 0.5 Boot time of DHCP process [s] Fig. 1. DHCP transaction performance of ISC-DHCP. 0 100 1000 10000 50000 Number of leased IP addresses transaction performance deteriorates drastically according to Fig. 3. Boot time of DHCPD process with leased records. the increase of the IP address range. For example, Common Antenna TeleVision (CATV) provides 50,000 Cable Modems (CMs) with one Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS). Therefore, the IP address range should be set as twice number increases when the number of leased IP address increases. of CMs. As the results, the transaction performance of ISC- However, the maximum boot time is short, and does not effect DHCP in large networks is not enough in commercial ISPs. the availability of DHCP service when the retrial mechanisms Some ISPs register subscriber’s MAC address information are implemented at DHCP clients. into DHCP systems to provide adequate services. ISC-DHCP Fig. 4 shows the boot time of DHCPD process with timeout always read the MAC address information when DHCPD pro- records. From the results, the boot time increases drastically cesses boot up. Therefore, boot time depends on the number of according to the number of timeout records. Fig. 5 shows registered MAC addresses. ISC-DHCP cannot provide DHCP the boot time of DHCPD process with renewed records. service during booting of a DHCPD process. Therefore, boot From the results, we can find that the boot time increases time is an important factor to achieve high service availability. when the number of renewed records increase. During the Fig. 2 shows the boot time of DHCPD process with reg- boot time of the DHCPD process, the DHCP service is not istered MAC address. The results shows that the boot time available. Therefore, the reduction of boot time is important increases up to a few second when the number of MAC address in commercial usages. increases. DHCP client software generally implements retry III. SERVICE AVAILABILITY mechanisms when DHCP service is temporally unavailable. Therefore, the short boot time does not effect the availability Generally, system managers of DHCP services edit con- of DHCP service. figuration files according to user contracts and maintenance ISC-DHCP servers add lease information of IP addresses of networks. DHCPD processes should be restarted to reload into lease files when DHCP clients request a new IP address the latest configuration files when the configuration files are or renew an assigned IP address. Therefore, the size of the edited. During the restating process, DHCP services are down. lease files increases according to the service period. In ISC- Additionally, DHCP services are also down when the DHCP DHCP, DHCPD processes optimizes the lease files when they system switches a main server to a backup server due to main boot up. server troubles. Therefore, the service availability of DHCP Fig. 3 shows the boot time of DHCPD process with leased services is an important factor in commercial usages. In this records. From the results, we can find that the boot time section, we consider the service availability ratio for DHCP 35 when the lease files include timeout or renewed records. 30 Therefore, system managers should restart DHCP pro- 25 cesses to reduce the size of the lease files periodically. We define the periodical restart frequency as Popt, and 20 required boot time of DHCPD processes as Topt. 15 The optimization process is performed when the DHCPD process is restarted. Therefore, we redefine the required time 10 0 0 0 including optimization process as Tshort;Tlong, and Tfail. Boot time of DHCP process [s] 5 DHCP clients renew an assigned IP address when the lease 0 time is end, and try to renew several times when it cannot 100 1000 10000 50000 receive DHCP messages from DHCP servers. During retrial Number of lease timeout terminals period, it continues to use the assigned IP address. Therefore, Fig. 4. Boot time of DHCPD process with timeout records of ISC-DHCP. we should consider the timeout period for the DHCP renew process. We define the timeout period at DHCP client as Ttimeout. The actual service down period depends on each 35 period and the timeout period. For example, the actual service 00 30 down period due to the short maintenance T is ( short 25 0 (T 0 ≤ T ) T 00 = short timeout (1) short 0 − 0 20 Tshort Ttimeout (Tshort > Ttimeout): 15 Then, we can calculate the total service down period per 10 day as Boot time of DHCP process[s] 5 00 00 Tdown = PshortTshort + PlongTlong 0 00 00 100000 1000000 +PfailTfail + PoptTopt: (2) Number of records When we assume that each user terminal boots up indepen- Fig. 5. Boot time of DHCPD process with renewed records of ISC-DHCP. dently, the number of DHCP clients that request to renew an assigned IP address is Nlease = Ncm=Tlease; (3) services. At first, we classify reasons of restart process into four where Ncm is the number of user terminals and Tlease is the categories: short-term maintenance, long-term maintenance, lease period of DHCP services.