[CentOS] Routing setup questions

James B. Byrne

byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca
Wed Apr 15 18:48:23 UTC 2015


I am experimenting with routing tables to obtain a little
understanding of how things work.

I have a kvm hypervisor host (KVM1) with two physical Ethernet nics
configured as bridges (br0 and br1).  KVM1 br0 is configured with a
public ipv4 address [x.y.z.42/24] and br1 is configured with a private
ipv4 address [192.168.216.42/24]. A second kvm hypervisor, KVM2, is
similarly configured albeit with different IPv4 addresses of course.
Packet forwarding is enabled on both hypervisor hosts and both have
IPTABLES configured, albeit not for masquerading.

Guest systems on each of the two kvm hosts are also configured with two
virtual nics, eth0 and eth1, mapped to br0 and br1 respectively.
Guests on KVM2 usually have eth0 downed and eth1 configured with a
private ipv4 address in this address space, [192.168.216.0/24]. 
Guests on KVM1 usually have eth0 configured with a public ipv4 and
always have eth1 configured with a private address also belonging to
[192.168.216.0/24].

The KVM1 hypervisor host has its br1 connected via x-over cable to the
br1 port of the KVM2 hypervisor host. The reason for the X-over is to
allow matching guests on the different KVM systems to conduct large
network transfers between themselves without hitting the LAN.

We have a gateway router whose eth1 faces the LAN with the public
address [x.y.z.1/24] and the WAN with an address in the form
[x.y.A.0/30].  The ASCII diagram below represents the situation.
You will need to view this part with a monospaced font.

<pre>

                                                              ~
   ISP ethx[x.y.A.2/30] >-----< eth0[x.y.A.3/30]              |
              ISP                      GWAY                   |
                                eth1[x.y.z.1/24] >----------< |
                                       GWAY                   |
                                                              |
         br0[x.y.z.42/24] >---------------------------------< |
               KVM2                                           |
                                     br0[x.y.z.42/24] >-----< |
                                             KVM1             ~
      br1[192.168.216.43/24] >--X--< br1[192.168.216.42/24]
               KVM2                          KVM1        |
          |                                              |
          | >-----< eth1[192.168.216.21/24]              |
          | >-----< eth1[192.168.216.25/24]              |
                                                         |
                        eth1[192.168.216.221/24] >-----< |
                        eth1[192.168.216.223/24] >-----< |
</pre>

This setup works as intended.  However, it is sufficiently oddball
that I consider it a good candidate to discover for myself the
practical issues surrounding network routing, a field of knowledge of
which I readily admit profound ignorance.

My trial is to allow a ping from eth1[192.168.216.221/24] to reach any
other public addressed [x.y.z.0/24]i/f on the LAN and successfully be
returned.

The questions are:

1. What additional (virtual) network i/f(s) needsbe configured to get
this to happen?

2. Do any systems require static routes to be preconfigured? If so,
which systems and what is that configuration?

3. Is masquerading required or not?


My thoughts so far:

The default gateway for all of the public hosts on our LAN is
eth1[x.y.z.1/24]  so it seems necessary that eth1 on GWAY must have
some interface that recognizes [192.168.216.0/24] and a route that
will send the ping back to the public i/f from which it originates,
br0[x.y.z.42/24].

The KVM1 host must have a route to allow [192.168.216.221/24] out onto
the LAN via br0[x.y.z.42/24] for all destinations other than
[192.168.216.0/24] and route that netblock via br1[192.168.216.42/24].

If this is anywhere near the actual requirements then I think
something like this is required on GWAY  eth1[x.y.z.1/24]:

ifcfg-eth1:192168
BOOTPROTO=none
BROADCAST=192.168.255.255
DEVICE=eth1:192168
IPADDR=192.168.0.1
IPV6INIT=no
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
NETWORK=192.168.0.0
#ONBOOT=yes
ONPARENT=yes

route-eth1
192.168.216.0/24 via x.y.z.42 dev eth1

And on KVM1 I would need:

ifcfg-br0
BOOTPROTO="none"
DEFROUTE="yes"
DEVICE="br0"
GATEWAY="x.y.z.1"
IPADDR="x.y.z.42"
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL="no"
IPV6INIT="no"
NAME="System br0"
NETMASK="255.255.255.0"
NETWORK="x.y.z.0"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
TYPE="Bridge"
USERCTL="no

ifcfg-br1
BOOTPROTO="none"
DEVICE="br1"
GATEWAY="x.w.z.42"
IPADDR="192.168.216.42"
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL="no"
IPV6INIT="no"
NAME="System br1"
NM_CONTROLLED="no"
ONBOOT="yes"
PREFIX="24"
TYPE="Bridge"
USERCTL="no"


How far off am I in these musings?  I would like to have some clue of
the trouble I am in for before I go and break something.  Your
comments and suggestions are welcome.

-- 
***          E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel          ***
James B. Byrne                mailto:ByrneJB at Harte-Lyne.ca
Harte & Lyne Limited          http://www.harte-lyne.ca
9 Brockley Drive              vox: +1 905 561 1241
Hamilton, Ontario             fax: +1 905 561 0757
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