 "Irevna Networks For Availability With Cisco Solution")
How many times have you got stuck in a traffic jam and missed out on some important information? No, I am not referring to a road traffic jam here but an Internet traffic jam. Many a times, when immediate access to business or personal information is needed, we find ourselves stuck as the server of the Internet Service Provider (ISP) is overloaded.
In order to help its customers escape this problem, Irevna, a financial research and analytics outsourcing company, has implemented Cisco’s BGP-based WAN architecture and Performance Routing (PfR) technology. A division of CRISIL, a rating, research, and risk and policy advisory company, Irevna’s client list includes financial institutions with investment banking operations, insurance companies, asset management firms, and other corporates.
Need for Change
In order to meet the distinct business needs of its clients, Irevna required high Internet availability. With offices and delivery centres at varied locations, where Net connection is provided by different ISPs, it was difficult to ensure high Internet and mail server availability as well as VPN tunnels uptime. It already had a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)-based network architecture that used a Cisco solution to ensure Internet availability; however, the company wanted to enable Performance Routing (PfR) across locations, which involved routing Internet traffic along the best-performing ISP link across locations.
Bringing in the new Network Solution
“Cisco’s ability to deliver a complete solution fabric, encompassing the data centre, corporate LAN, Intranet and network edge that addressed highly available, flexible, secure and scalable solutions for network infrastructure was the key driver for Irevna choosing Cisco,” says Natarajan Kumarasamy, IT head, Crisil Group.
“On the basis of the requirement, a draft solution was designed with multiple options. The main requirement was on-point products in security. After discussing the entire Cisco security portfolio, Irvena decided to have security on a single infrastructure, which is robust, scalable and easy to manage,” says R Karthikeyan, sales manager, Cisco India.
The BGP Factor
Cisco deployed a BGP-based wide area network (WAN) architecture, which involved using Metro Ethernet links to form a ring that connects the WAN edge of all locations. Further, steps to tackle Internet redundancy were undertaken to address ISP, hardware and media failure. An enhanced object tracking mechanism was used with Hot Standby Routing Protocol (HSRP) functionality to address issues associated with Ethernet-based termination from ISP. In addition, Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) was used as an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) in the WAN edge across locations and fully-meshed iBGP architecture was adopted across all Internet routers. The Cisco 2800 series routers were used for the entire architecture.
Performance Routing (PfR)
Keeping Irevna’s existing BGP network architecture in mind, Cisco deployed its PfR technology to route Internet traffic along the best-performing ISP link across locations. As the BGP architecture involved multiple geographic locations and ISPs, Cisco upgraded WAN components to meet the PfR requirements.
Irevna’s network architecture was analysed to come up with a PfR design, which included positioning the following PfR components: Master Controller (MC) and Border Routers (BRs). MC availability was addressed by using HSRP on edge routers. PfR policies were applied globally in the BGP network to enable all Internet-based applications to utilise the best-performing Internet path based on defined PfR parameters such as delay, utilisation, etc.
Implementation Challenges
“The real challenge faced was to enable PfR over BGP that was suitable to Irevna as the PBR was conflicting. New products had no problem in enabling PfR, while the existing (old) products needed IOS upgrade to support PfR,” says Kumarasamy.
“The initial design had problems in policy pushing, which was corrected by re-designing the MC and the back-up MC. IOS upgrade was also done. Further, understanding the latency and jitter of multiple ISP links across multiple locations over short intervals and enabling the best path to multiple designations was also cracked as the PBR was conflicting with PfR.”
Business Outcome
“After observing the PfR behavior in the BGP network, Irevna saw a significant difference from the plain BGP environment in terms of load distribution and the applications that got routed through the best-performing ISP path. As a corollary, Irevna was also able to offer a much higher SLA and secure environment to customers and employees,” says Kumarasamy.
“Further, by using PfR over BGP, Internet utilisation was evened out across all ISP links and hence, there was a room to cut close to 30 percent of the overall internet bandwidth, which resulted in quick RoI realisation apart from other benefits.”
In addition, the solution enabled enhanced resource utilisation, transfer of knowledge to staff with an enhanced skill set, and increased stability and availability of the network.
“At a time when companies strive to lower the cost of running their networks and increase the productivity of their end users with network applications, Irevna was able to use the network to handle all business needs related to Internet availability. We invested approximately Rs 9 lakh for deploying the entire solution,” concludes Kumarasamy.