GSP161

Overview

When you have a virtual private network (VPN), your virtual machines (VMs) and subnetworks can be anywhere! Having a multi-region, multi-zone VPN provides a highly available, scalable, and secure network solution for organizations with a global presence. For this lab, network connectivity and speed will be the main focus, to demonstrate the following:

• If one region or zone experiences an outage or disruption, traffic can be seamlessly rerouted to another available region or zone, ensuring continuous connectivity.
• When there are endpoints in regions close to where the user is located, the network path is shortened, which reduces latency and improves overall performance.
• Multi-region VPNs can intelligently route traffic based on network conditions and user location, ensuring the fastest and most efficient path.

In this lab you will use the gcloud CLI to add VMs to your existing network, and then test the connectivity and latency between the VMs.

Prerequisites

Although not required, to understand how to create a network and apply firewall rules, take the Create a Custom Network and Apply Firewall Rules lab. For this lab it is presumed that you understand these concepts.

What you'll learn

• Add VMs to an existing VPN subnet
• Confirm connectivity between VMs
• Measure latency between zones

Setup and requirements

Before you click the Start Lab button

Read these instructions. Labs are timed and you cannot pause them. The timer, which starts when you click Start Lab, shows how long Google Cloud resources will be made available to you.

This hands-on lab lets you do the lab activities yourself in a real cloud environment, not in a simulation or demo environment. It does so by giving you new, temporary credentials that you use to sign in and access Google Cloud for the duration of the lab.

To complete this lab, you need:

• Access to a standard internet browser (Chrome browser recommended).

Note: Use an Incognito or private browser window to run this lab. This prevents any conflicts between your personal account and the Student account, which may cause extra charges incurred to your personal account.

• Time to complete the lab---remember, once you start, you cannot pause a lab.

Note: If you already have your own personal Google Cloud account or project, do not use it for this lab to avoid extra charges to your account.

How to start your lab and sign in to the Google Cloud console

1. Click the Start Lab button. If you need to pay for the lab, a pop-up opens for you to select your payment method. On the left is the Lab Details panel with the following:

   • The Open Google Cloud console button
   • Time remaining
   • The temporary credentials that you must use for this lab
   • Other information, if needed, to step through this lab

2. Click Open Google Cloud console (or right-click and select Open Link in Incognito Window if you are running the Chrome browser).

   The lab spins up resources, and then opens another tab that shows the Sign in page.

   Tip: Arrange the tabs in separate windows, side-by-side.

   Note: If you see the Choose an account dialog, click Use Another Account.

3. If necessary, copy the Username below and paste it into the Sign in dialog.

   {{{user_0.username | "Username"}}}

   You can also find the Username in the Lab Details panel.

4. Click Next.

5. Copy the Password below and paste it into the Welcome dialog.

   {{{user_0.password | "Password"}}}

   You can also find the Password in the Lab Details panel.

6. Click Next.

   Important: You must use the credentials the lab provides you. Do not use your Google Cloud account credentials. Note: Using your own Google Cloud account for this lab may incur extra charges.

7. Click through the subsequent pages:

   • Accept the terms and conditions.
   • Do not add recovery options or two-factor authentication (because this is a temporary account).
   • Do not sign up for free trials.

After a few moments, the Google Cloud console opens in this tab.

Note: To view a menu with a list of Google Cloud products and services, click the Navigation menu at the top-left.

Activate Cloud Shell

Cloud Shell is a virtual machine that is loaded with development tools. It offers a persistent 5GB home directory and runs on the Google Cloud. Cloud Shell provides command-line access to your Google Cloud resources.

1. Click Activate Cloud Shell at the top of the Google Cloud console.

When you are connected, you are already authenticated, and the project is set to your Project_ID, . The output contains a line that declares the Project_ID for this session:

Your Cloud Platform project in this session is set to {{{project_0.project_id | "PROJECT_ID"}}}

gcloud is the command-line tool for Google Cloud. It comes pre-installed on Cloud Shell and supports tab-completion.

2. (Optional) You can list the active account name with this command:

gcloud auth list

3. Click Authorize.

Output:

ACTIVE: * ACCOUNT: {{{user_0.username | "ACCOUNT"}}} To set the active account, run: $ gcloud config set account `ACCOUNT`

4. (Optional) You can list the project ID with this command:

gcloud config list project

Output:

[core] project = {{{project_0.project_id | "PROJECT_ID"}}} Note: For full documentation of gcloud, in Google Cloud, refer to the gcloud CLI overview guide.

Set your region and zone

Certain Compute Engine resources live in regions and zones. A region is a specific geographical location where you can run your resources. Each region has one or more zones.

Run the following gcloud commands in Cloud Shell to set the default region and zone for your lab:

gcloud config set compute/zone "{{{project_0.default_zone | Zone}}}" export ZONE=$(gcloud config get compute/zone) gcloud config set compute/region "{{{project_0.default_region | Region}}}" export REGION=$(gcloud config get compute/region)

Click on VPC networks in the left menu to see your entire network. The taw-custom-network has three subnetworks with firewalls rules applied.

Review the settings that your network and subnets have.

The next steps are to create a VM in each subnet and make sure you can connect to them.

Task 1. Connect VMs and check latency

For this task you will create a virtual machine in each zone. Each machine will use network tags that the firewall rules need to allow network traffic.

1. Run this commands to create an instance named us-test-01 in the subnet- subnet:

gcloud compute instances create us-test-01 \ --subnet subnet-{{{project_0.default_region | Region}}} \ --zone {{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}} \ --machine-type e2-standard-2 \ --tags ssh,http,rules

Be sure to note the external IP for later use in this lab.

Output:

Created [https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/cloud-network-module-101/zones/{{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}}/instances/us-test-01]. NAME ZONE MACHINE_TYPE PREEMPTIBLE INTERNAL_IP EXTERNAL_IP STATUS us-test-01 {{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}} e2-standard-2 10.0.0.2 104.198.230.22 RUNNING

2. Now make the us-test-02 and us-test-03 VMs in their correlated subnets:

gcloud compute instances create us-test-02 \ --subnet subnet-{{{project_0.default_region_2 | REGION}}} \ --zone {{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}} \ --machine-type e2-standard-2 \ --tags ssh,http,rules gcloud compute instances create us-test-03 \ --subnet subnet-{{{project_0.default_region_3 | REGION}}} \ --zone {{{project_0.default_zone_3 | ZONE}}} \ --machine-type e2-standard-2 \ --tags ssh,http,rules

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Create three instances in specified zones for Traceroute and performance testing.

Verify you can connect your VM

Now do a few exercises to test the connection to your VMs. Use ping to test the reachability of a host and measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to the destination computer.

1. Switch back to the Console and navigate to Compute Engine.

2. Click the SSH button corresponding to the us-test-01 instance. This opens an SSH connection to the instance in a new window.

3. In the SSH window of us-test-01, type the following command to use an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) echo against us-test-02, adding the external IP address for the VM in-line:

ping -c 3 <us-test-02-external-ip-address>

You can locate the external IP of your virtual machines in the Compute Engine browser tab under the External IP field.

Note:Your IP addresses will differ from the picture.

4. Run this command to use an ICMP echo against us-test-03, adding the external IP address for the VM in-line:

ping -c 3 <us-test-03-external-ip-address>

Example output:

PING 35.187.149.67 (35.187.149.67) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from 35.187.149.67: icmp_seq=1 ttl=76 time=152 ms 64 bytes from 35.187.149.67: icmp_seq=2 ttl=76 time=152 ms 64 bytes from 35.187.149.67: icmp_seq=3 ttl=76 time=152 ms

5. Now check that SSH also works for instances us-test-02 and us-test-03. Try an ICMP echo against us-test-01.

Use ping to measure latency

Latency refers to the time it takes for a data packet to travel from its source to its destination and back. It's typically measured in milliseconds (ms).

• Use ping to measure the latency between these regions - run the following command after opening an SSH window on the us-test-01:

ping -c 3 us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}}

Command output:

PING us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}}.c.cloud-network-module-101.internal (10.2.0.2) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}}.c.cloud-network-module-101.internal (10.2.0.2): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=105 ms 64 bytes from us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}}.c.cloud-network-module-101.internal (10.2.0.2): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=104 ms 64 bytes from us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}}.c.cloud-network-module-101.internal (10.2.0.2): icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=104 ms

The latency you get back is the "Round Trip Time" (RTT) - the time the packet takes to get from us-test-01 to us-test-02.

To test connectivity, ping uses the ICMP Echo Request and Echo Reply Messages.

Note: Things to think about

What is the latency you see between regions? What is special about the connection from `us-test-02` to `us-test-03`? Note: Internal DNS: How is DNS provided for VM instances?

Each instance has a metadata server that also acts as a DNS resolver for that instance. DNS lookups are performed for instance names. The metadata server itself stores all DNS information for the local network and queries Google's public DNS servers for any addresses outside of the local network.

An internal fully qualified domain name (FQDN) for an instance looks like this: hostName.[ZONE].c.[PROJECT_ID].internal .

You can always connect from one instance to another using this FQDN. If you want to connect to an instance using, for example, just `hostName`, you need information from the internal DNS resolver that is provided as part of Compute Engine.

Task 2. Traceroute and Performance testing

Traceroute is a tool to trace the path between two hosts. A traceroute can be a helpful first step to uncovering many different types of network problems. Support or network engineers often ask for a traceroute when diagnosing network issues.

Note: Functionality

Traceroute shows all Layer 3 (routing layer) hops between the hosts. This is achieved by sending packets to the remote destination with increasing TTL (Time To Live) value (starting at 1). The TTL field is a field in the IP packet which gets decreased by one at every router. Once the TTL hits zero, the packet gets discarded and a "TTL exceeded" ICMP message is returned to the sender. This approach is used to avoid routing loops; packets cannot loop continuously because the TTL field will eventually decrement to 0. By default the OS sets the TTL value to a high value (64, 128, 255 or similar), so this should only ever be reached in abnormal situations.

So traceroute sends packets first with TTL value of 1, then TTL value of 2, etc., causing these packets to expire at the first/second/etc. router in the path. It then takes the source IP/host of the ICMP TTL exceeded message returned to show the name/IP of the intermediate hop. Once the TTL is high enough, the packet reaches the destination, and the destination responds.

The type of packet sent varies by implementation. Under Linux, UDP packets are sent to a high, unused port. So the final destination responds with an ICMP Port Unreachable. Windows and the mtr tool by default use ICMP echo requests (like ping), so the final destination answers with an ICMP echo reply.

Try it out by setting up a traceroute on one of your virtual machines.

1. For this step, use the us-test-01 VM and us-test-02 VM and SSH into both of them.

2. Install these performance tools in the SSH window for us-test-01:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y install traceroute mtr tcpdump iperf whois host dnsutils siege

3. Now use traceroute with www.icann.org and see how it works:

traceroute www.icann.org

In your output, each line represents a hop.

• first column: shows the hop number.
• second column: shows the IP address (or hostname, if available) of the hop.
• remaining columns: show the RTT for additional packets sent to that hop.

3. Now try a few other destinations and also from other sources:

   • VMs in the same region or another region (eu1-vm, asia1-vm, w2-vm)
   • www.wikipedia.org
   • www.adcash.com
   • bad.horse (works best if you increase max TTL, so run traceroute -m 255 bad.horse)
   • Anything else you can think of

4. To stop traceroute, Ctrl+c in the SSH window and return to the command line.

Note: Things to think about

What do you notice with the different traceroutes? Traceroute and Performance testing.

Task 3. Use iperf to test performance

iperf measures network throughput and latency. When you use iperf to test the performance between two hosts, one side needs to be set up as the iperf server to accept connections.

Note: The following commands transfer Gigabytes of traffic between regions, which is charged at Internet egress rates. Be mindful of this when using them. If you are not on a allowlisted project, or in the free trial, you might want to skip, or only skim, this section. (Costs should be less than $1 USD.)

1. SSH into us-test-02 and install the performance tools:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y install traceroute mtr tcpdump iperf whois host dnsutils siege

2. SSH into us-test-01 and run:

iperf -s #run in server mode

3. On us-test-02 SSH run this iperf:

iperf -c us-test-01.{{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}} #run in client mode

You will see some output like this:

Client connecting to eu-vm, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 45.0 KByte (default) [ 3] local 10.20.0.2 port 35923 connected with 10.30.0.2 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 298 MBytes 249 Mbits/sec

4. On us-test-01 use Ctrl + c to exit the server side when you're done.

Between VMs within a region

Now you'll deploy another instance (us-test-04)in a different zone than us-test-01. You will see that within a region, the bandwidth is limited by the 2 Gbit/s per core egress cap.

1. In Cloud Shell, create us-test-04:

gcloud compute instances create us-test-04 \ --subnet subnet-{{{project_0.default_region | REGION}}} \ --zone {{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}} \ --tags ssh,http

2. SSH to us-test-04 and install performance tools:

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get -y install traceroute mtr tcpdump iperf whois host dnsutils siege

Between regions you reach much lower limits, mostly due to limits on TCP window size and single stream performance. You can increase bandwidth between hosts by using other parameters, like UDP.

3. On us-test-02 SSH run:

iperf -s -u #iperf server side

4. On us-test-01 SSH run:

iperf -c us-test-02.{{{project_0.default_zone_2 | ZONE}}} -u -b 2G #iperf client side - send 2 Gbits/s

This should be able to achieve a higher speed between EU and US. Even higher speeds can be achieved by running a bunch of TCP iperfs in parallel. Let's test this.

5. In the SSH window for us-test-01 run:

iperf -s

6. In the SSH window for us-test-02 run:

iperf -c us-test-01.{{{project_0.default_zone | ZONE}}} -P 20

The combined bandwidth should be really close to the maximum achievable bandwidth.

Click Check my progress to verify the objective.

Test the performance.

7. Test a few more combinations. If you use Linux on your laptop you can test against your laptop as well. (You can also try iperf3 which is available for many OSes, but this is not part of the lab.)

As you can see, to reach the maximum bandwidth, just running a single TCP stream (for example, file copy) is not sufficient; you need to have several TCP sessions in parallel. Reasons are: TCP parameters such as Window Size; and functions such as Slow Start.

For more information on this and all other TCP/IP topics, refer to TCP/IP Illustrated.

Tools like bbcp can help to copy files as fast as possible by parallelizing transfers and using configurable window size.

End your lab

When you have completed your lab, click End Lab. Your account and the resources you've used are removed from the lab platform.

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You can close the dialog box if you don't want to provide feedback.

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Congratulations

You have learned how use gcloud to build virtual machines on an existing network and then used a variety of tools to test the connectivity and latency on the network.

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Manual last updated August 23, 2024

Lab last tested August 23, 2024

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