Example Guide

Edge Network Appliance Example Guide:

ActiveDNS

v 4.01
 Edge Network Appliance Example Guide:

ActiveDNS

©2007 XRoads Networks

17165 Von Karman, Suite 112

888-9-XROADS

v 4.01 updated 09/24/07

 Table of Contents

4 Introduction

Solution

5 DNS Overview

6 Example Network

Step-By-Step

7 Domain Creation

8 Mail Server Setup

11 Web Server Setup

15 Verify DNS Functionality

16 DNS Failover Mode

17 Setting Up Load Balancing

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Edge Configuration Series

ActiveDNS

Use this guide as a step-by-step manual for configuring your Edge

router ActiveDNS server. The dynamic DNS configuration is designed
to enable inbound failover and load balancing for internal network
servers and other inbound service requirements.

About the “Screen Shots”

The included screen shots were taken from a working example configuration in
the XRoads Networks lab. This configuration was running on XOS 3.4 Some screen
shots may be different depending on your version of XOS code.

Step-By-Step Method

Use this guide to assist in configuring your own Edge device. The examples pro-
vided herein are designed as a template which can translate to your organizations
network environment. The three primary configuration steps are outlined below:

Domain Configuration
This is the actual creation of the domain name with the Edge router. This process
automatically creates the primary and secondary NS servers (pointed to WAN1 and
WAN2) for the domain.

Mail Server Configuration

In order to receive mail for the domain, MX records need to be created along with
their associated A records.

Web & Other Server Configuration

The final step is configuring other server A records, i.e. web servers, ftp servers,
etc. These servers, similar to the mail servers, can have load balancing preferences
applied to them which directs a certain percentage of traffic through each WAN
interface, or the traffic can be equally load balanced between the WAN interfaces.

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 DNS Overview

DNS (Domain Name Service) is how the Internet translates the names that people
use, i.e. www.yahoo.com into the IP addresses that computers use, i.e. 66.94.230.49.
To accomplish this task, DNS employs the largest connected database in the world.
The following diagram show the standard process used to translate a name into
an IP address, and the Edge unit uses this same process to redirect inbound traffic
from the WAN1 IP address or the WAN2 IP address, etc. Additional information
about the Domain Name Service can be obtained by purchasing DNS & BIND by
O’Reilly publishing.

Figure 1.0 demonstrates how the Domain Name Service works.

An initial request (A) is sent from a web browser to the root servers. The root servers
respond (B) with the authoritative DNS servers for the requested domain. The web
browser sends a request (C) to the authoritative DNS servers, which responds (D) with the
web server address. The web browser then sends a web request (E) to the web servers IP
address.

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Example Network

This example network is provided as a template which can be used to determine

how to best configure your Edge unit. In the example network environment, the
Edge device is connected to two WAN interfaces. The WAN1 interface is being
proxy’d by the Edge router, while the WAN2 interface is being NAT’d to the LAN
network. The LAN network contains several workstations and a single web and
email server.

Figure 2.0 demonstrates how the Edge device could be configured

in a Proxy/NAT Load Balancing scenario.

Network Overview

This network has one WAN network on the 172.16.168.0/24 network and one WAN interface
on the 172.16.2.0/29 network. The LAN network is also using the 172.16.168.0/24 space. The
WAN2 interface is being NAT’d to the LAN network. A single server on 172.16.168.131 (with
a secondary network address assigned 10.100.100.2 is configured with both web and email
services. Inbound web services will be load balanced 70% on WAN2 and 30% on WAN1.
The Edge unit is only using NAT to firewall inbound traffic in this example. Best Path Rout-
ing is also configured with the 4.2.2.0/24 network being setup as critical with monitoring
enabled. A single email alert has also been configured in this example.

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 ActiveDNS Step-By-Step
The following pages show a step-by-step example of how to
configure the Edge router based on the network environment
in the example configuration on page six.

Step One

NOTE: To begin the configuration, click the RETURN button.

Step Two

NOTE: Select the Domain Settings to create the initial domain name.

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Three

NOTE: Enter the domain name and click the Add/Update button, this
will create the domain within the Edge routers DNS server and gener-
ate the initial NS records.

Step Four

NOTE: Once the domain has been created, select the Host Records
menu option to begin creating server name records, i.e. mail, www, etc.

Step Five

NOTE: Notice that the NS records initially have no IP address informa-

tion. This will be obtained from the ACTIVE interfaces once the first
server record is added, or upon a link update. Click the Add button to
begin entering server information for this domain.

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Six

NOTE: The first server to be added is the MAIL server. To do this, an MX

record must first be created. Notice that no IP address information is
entered. Also notice that the Host Type must be set to MX.

Step Seven

NOTE: Upon adding the MX record, the DNS Host List will appear with
the latest addition. Now that the MX record has been added, an A
record must also be added. < Add

 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Eight

NOTE: To add the A record for the MAIL record, simply use the same
name as used to create the MX record, and enter the IP address for the
actual mail server (as seen from the WAN network), finally for the Host
Type select the A record.

Step Nine

NOTE: Again the DNS Host List will appear, which now includes the
MX and A records for the MAIL server. Now, in order for failover and/or
load balancing to work, a secondary MX record must be created. <Add

SCREEN shot taken from Edge unit showing the DNS Host List.

10 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Ten

NOTE: To create the secondary MX record, repeat the same steps as the
primary, except change the interface from WAN1 to WAN2. If this is a
failover record, set the load balancing field equal to ‘0’ to ensure that
the secondary record is only used during an outage.

Step Eleven

NOTE: The DNS Host List now shows the secondary MX record, how-
ever an A record still needs to be created. <Add

11 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Twelve

NOTE: Following the same pattern as before, the associated A record is

created. The difference being that the interface is changed from WAN1
to WAN2.

IMPORTANT: Notice that in this case the IP address is not the internal
mail servers address, but the One-To-One NAT address from WAN2, i.e.
the address of the mail server as seen from the WAN.

Step Thirteen

NOTE: Upon adding the secondary MAIL servers A record, the DNS
Host List is again displayed, now with all of the MAIL server informa-
tion added. The next step is to add the web and other server name
information. <Add

12 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Fourteen

NOTE: The only other server in the example network is the web server.
This server is added using the ‘www’ reference name. The IP address
used is the internal address of the web server as seen from WAN1.

Step Fifteen

NOTE: The DNS Host List now show the web server added as ‘www’.

13 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Step Sixteen

NOTE: Using the same steps as before, the secondary name is added
for the web server to ensure inbound connectivity in the event of a
failover or load balancing situation. Again, notice that the interface
selected is WAN2, and that the IP address entered is the One-To-One
address.

Step Seventeen

NOTE: This screen shows the final DNS configuration as outlines in the
example network shown on page five. This includes the NS, MX and A
records for the network as well as the secondary WAN2 record configu-
ration which ensures failover and load balancing will work correctly.

14 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 Verify DNS Functionality

NOTE: To confirm that the DNS server is working correctly based on

the configuration information entered, click the VERIFY button. This
button will make sure that the DNS server within the Edge router is
operating correctly, and that the information entered was within the
required parameters.

DNS TESTING: The easiest method to test the DNS information provided by the Edge
router is to use a program found in the DOS prompt of any Window95,NT,XP system. This
program is called NSLOOKUP and is commonly used to check the information provided by
DNS server.

To direct NSLOOKUP towards the Edge router, use the command ‘server xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx’
where the x’s represent the IP address of the Edge routers LAN interface.

Use the command ‘set type=any’ or ‘set type=mx’ to verify the host records.

Then type in either the domain name (i.e. ‘xyz.com’) or the URL (i.e. ‘www.xyz.com’).

For more information on NSLOOKUP please review the following:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/default.
asp?url=/windowsxp/home/using/productdoc/en/nslookup_set.asp

15 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 DNS Failover Mode

NOTE: When configuring the ActiveDNS for failover mode, always set
Host Status to BACKUP. If the WAN port being configured is not cur-
rently active, this Host Status will automatically be set to BACKUP. This
ensures that the record information will always be provided as a last
resort record. Meaning the remote client will only use it if the primary
record is unavailable.

DNS Time-To-Live

ActiveDNS uses the DNS TTL parameter to ensure that all new DNS queries are prop-
erly forwarded to the Edge appliance for real-time response. The default value of 30 is
provided to ensure that DNS caches only hold queries for 30 seconds. Typically any value
lower than 30 seconds are not used by caches thus this is the default value.

NOTE: While it is possible to increase or decrease this value, generally it is not recommended.

16 Example Guide – ActiveDNS

 DNS Load Balancing

NOTE: In the example network the web services are balanced 30% on
WAN1 and 70% on WAN2. This is configured via the ActiveDNS load
balancing field. Each record can be load balanced based on percent-
age, or based on round-robin (or equal load balancing). To setup the
example configuration, the load balancing field for the WAN2 ‘www’
record is set to ‘70’, while the WAN1 record is set to ‘30’.

NOTE: Shows the DNS Host List with percentage load balancing en-
abled on the ‘www’ record.

The diagram below demonstrates how inbound sessions

are balanced based on these administrative weights.

17 Example Guide – ActiveDNS