educonf: Global Dialling Scheme System Analysis

Transcription

1 educonf: Global Dialling Scheme System Analysis Activity: SA3 Dissemination Level: PU (Public), Document Code: Authors: Bartlomiej Idzikowski (PSNC), Maciej Glowiak (PSNC) DANTE on behalf of the GÉANT project. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community s Seventh Framework Programme (FP ) under Grant Agreement No (GÉANT). 1/24

2 Table of Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Methodology Contacts Test Numbers Surveys 5 3 Results Global s National s 8 4 Findings IPv Identified Problems Vendors 10 5 Recommendations Solutions to Identified Problems GÉANT Short Dialling Scheme (GSD) Certification Policy NREN Requirements Requirements Other Equipment Requirements 14 6 Summary 15 Appendix A National s 16 Appendix B GDS Reachability 20 Appendix C Global s 22 References 23 Glossary 23 2/24

3 1 Introduction This document presents an analysis of the current status of the Global Dialling Scheme (GDS), an international H.323 numbering plan for global video and voice over IP (VoIP) networks, developed by ViDeNet. GDS is provisioned through a hierarchy of H.323 gatekeepers to route call setup information between participating national deployments, thus interconnecting them in a large network of national networks. GDS was first created by an association of National Research and Education Network (NREN) organisations, to serve the international collaboration demands of higher education and research. GDS policy also makes it possible for commercial organisations to join by establishing an H.323 GDS gatekeeper and to benefit from the advantages of a large video network. The structure of the Global Dialling Scheme service is shown in Figure 1.1. Figure 1.1: GDS system structure The main aim of GDS system analysis was to document the current status and administration of the Global Dialling Scheme and its infrastructure, and to identify and understand problems as well as propose system improvements. 3/24

4 2 Methodology In order to carry out a well-prepared survey and achieve reliable results, the team gathered contacts, collected and pre-tested test numbers, and prepared and distributed two questionnaires within the videoconferencing community. 2.1 Contacts Based on previously gathered data and established mailing lists, a contact list, consisting of administrators of world and national gatekeepers, was prepared. This data set comprised the most important information about the gatekeepers and administrators: Country Organisation Allocated prefix IP address and Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) test (for IP and FQDN) Participation in GÉANT Contact details (person, address, phone number, IP contact data, title). 2.2 Test Numbers A set of H.323-based test numbers were identified in order to perform the connectivity tests between the allocated prefixes. An appropriate set of connections were then registered with different gatekeepers and pretested in order to avoid using test endpoints that were not fully efficient or publicly available. Ten GDSaccessible test numbers were chosen in the following countries: Croatia ( ) Czech Republic ( ) Germany ( ) Greece ( ) Hungary ( ) Poland ( ) Portugal ( ) Slovenia ( ) Spain ( ) USA ( ). 4/24

5 2.3 Surveys After the connectivity testing, two survey questionnaires, GDS System diagnosis world gatekeepers and GDS System diagnosis national gatekeepers, were delivered online, with a link to the surveys published on the following mailing lists: educonf@geant.net educonf-admins@geant.net educonf-tickets@geant2.net. Links were also sent out to people responsible for and involved with videoconferencing services in NRENs. The main aims of the surveys were to: Activate the NREN VC managers community Increase the VC community and educonf team s awareness of problems Gather or confirm information about: IP addresses of gatekeepers (at both global (world) and national levels) Allocated prefixes Vendor and version of gatekeepers Network / infrastructure or service upgrade plans, (especially re: IPv6 development / deployment) Basic configuration (for hierarchy recognition) Identified problems General helpdesk contact for service assistance. 5/24

6 3 Results The surveys were available online for three weeks from 18 July 2011 until 8 August The timeframe was extended because of the summer vacation period and direct requests from respondents to extend the survey deadline. The national gatekeepers survey was very successful, and yielded a significant number of responses. 3.1 Global s There were three responses for the GDS System diagnosis world gatekeepers survey. Unfortunately, two of the responses were identified as concerning national gatekeepers instead of global gatekeepers and were moved to the national gatekeepers survey. The only valid world gatekeeper response concerned the Internet2 gatekeeper responsible for serving North America. Despite the response rate being below expectations, important information was gathered: a new gatekeeper has been implemented (Cisco Video Communication Server (VCS), IPv6 is already supported, a full list of cooperating national gatekeepers provided, and problem areas were identified. The full set of answers gathered from the GDS System diagnosis world gatekeepers survey is provided in Appendix A. Within the results of the national gatekeeper survey (Appendix A), it is possible to identify nine, world gatekeepers with different national gatekeeper configurations. Some of the gatekeepers seem to be inactive or unavailable, whereby the prefix does not work and the terminals on the network behind those gatekeepers cannot be reached. The full list is shown in Table /24

7 IP Address Description Number of Occurrences Ping Response US 3 yes Ireland Dublin, IRL1 10 yes JANET Primary, JANET 1, JANET 2, UK, UK1 8 yes UK Edinburgh, JANET, UKRE 5 no JANET 2, JANET Backup, UK 7 yes JANET, UKLE 3 no Australia 2 yes Australia 5 no North America, North America II, US0, US 5 yes Table 3.1: World gatekeepers identified in national gatekeeper configurations Some other unique records were found (especially in AMRES and RedIRIS configurations) of unknown gatekeepers not present in any other configuration (see Table 3.2). It seems the records are incorrect, as both institutions AMRES and RedIRIS indicated problems with international calls. IP Address Description Configuration Ping Response UK1 AMRES (Serbia) yes UK2 AMRES (Serbia) no IRL2 AMRES (Serbia) no USA AMRES (Serbia) yes JANET RedIRIS (Spain) yes Table 3.2: Incorrect records in national gatekeeper configuration 7/24

8 3.2 National s There were a total of 18 responses for the GDS System diagnosis national gatekeepers survey. Of these responses, 14 of the surveys were u answered in full and the rest were incomplete. In addition, two responses from the GDS System diagnosis world gatekeepers survey were reclassified as national. The resulting set of 16 full and valuable responses must be considered a satisfactory result. Important information was gathered, such as the equipment used, future plans and gatekeeper contact details. The problems identified by the respondents are presented in Section 4.2. Many respondents answered the second part of the survey, which concerned test connections. Out of 135 test calls, 116 were successful, which represents a success rate of 85.93%. Moreover, the reason for 10 of the negative answers was caused by local gatekeeper not interconnected (roedu.net). Despite the good result, there is a need for an update to solve the remaining issues and strengthen the overall configuration. The full set of answers gathered from the GDS System diagnosis national gatekeepers survey is provided in Appendix A. 8/24

9 4 Findings This section summarises overall combined findings from both the national and world surveys with regard to IPv6, problems, and gatekeeper vendors and upgrade plans, with some suggestions and comments. 4.1 IPv6 More than half of respondents want to enable IPv6 on their gatekeepers as soon as free software, for example, the GNU (GnuGk) [GnuGk] will support it. Moreover, the North American respondents have already enabled IPv6 on their national and global gatekeepers (three Cisco VCSs). This should be treated as a clear indication that IPv6 should be supported as soon as possible, by free and open-source solutions. Some specific suggestions from the survey results should be forwarded to the development community in order to strongly emphasise the need for IPv6 implementation, which is still on the list of respondents requested features. A significant percentage of respondents are waiting for the GDS IPv6 initiative, and only a minority is not interested in enabling IPv6 or has no opinion in this area. The responses regarding the enabling of IPv6 on national gatekeepers is depicted in Figure 4.1 below. Figure 4.1: Summary of answers to Do you plan to enable IPv6 on your national gatekeepers? 4.2 Identified Problems The problems with GDS-based connectivity identified by the survey confirmed assumptions and earlier observations. Although some of the responses indicated few GDS problems (or did not specify the nature of the issue), there is no doubt that problems with connectivity exist and are complex. The most frequently identified issues identified by the survey were: Connectivity some respondents were unable to connect with areas served by a subset of national gatekeepers, and some respondents were not able to make international calls at all, even when 9/24

10 officially connected to the GDS system. These failures were not consistent across the network, however, which indicates a lack of all-to-all global reachability. Interoperability some reachability problems may be related to incorrect configuration entries of world gatekeeper servers in local configurations. There is a lack of publicly available information about gatekeeper addresses and configuration details, which is another indicator of the identified problems. The same is also true of changes to gatekeepers' addresses and configuration details without communicating the new information to the administrators community. There were other problems cited, including: Firewall-related issues these were present in everyday conferencing. s configuration issues lack of clear instructions and preconfigured installation images to assist with the configuration of services. High levels of network traffic one institute cited 30,000 requests in a five-minute period to and from their gatekeeper. The resolution of GDS numbers worked satisfactorily, however, so this was probably indicative of an error in local configuration. (The problem can be analysed in more detail from the mailing list.). Lack of take-up incentives. All of the problems identified by the users make the GDS service unstable, unreliable and provide no incentive for take-up by users. The educonf task should, without any doubt, address these problems and make the service as user-friendly as possible. The service should be as reliable as the public switched telephone network (PSTN). 4.3 Vendors The most popular gatekeepers are based on GnuGk and Tandberg/Cisco VCS solutions. Some institutions use Cisco Multimedia Conference Manager (MCM), based on Cisco Internetwork Operating System (IOS). The percentage use of the various gatekeeper vendors is shown in Figure 4.2. There is a visible trend among those respondents who have recently upgraded or who plan to upgrade in the near future to switch to a Tandberg (now Cisco) VCS solution. This trend will help with the enabling of IPv6, although from a programming point of view, this will make the system more closed (even taking the availability of API into account). There are also some upgrades from old Cisco devices to GnuGk-based gatekeepers. However, updating GnuGk to newer versions, or keeping the currently deployed device, seem to be predominant. There are also other approaches, such as virtualising the gatekeeper within a high-availability Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) cluster. The number of respondents indicating an upgrade to the gatekeeper, but without specifying a vendor, shows that support and an indication of the development path would be very helpful. This issue should definitely be addressed by educonf. 10/24

11 Figure 4.2: Summary of answers to What gatekeeper do you use (vendor)? A summary of respondents plans for upgrading their national gatekeepers is shown in Figure 4.3. Plan to upgrade gatekeeper Do not know 6% No 44% 50% Figure 4.3: Summary of answers to Do you plan to upgrade your national gatekeeper system (hardware or software)? 11/24

12 5 Recommendations 5.1 Solutions to Identified Problems Although the GDS in NRENs works quite well, there are many identified problems that are sometimes very difficult to resolve. The connectivity problems related to world gatekeeper configuration are crucial. As a result, there are a number of important recommendations that should be considered as part of future educonf task: Provide list of active world gatekeepers All national gatekeepers should use a standard list of active and operational world gatekeepers. Such a list should be available on a well-known web page (such as the educonf service page), and information about any changes to the world or national gatekeeper configuration should be communicated to videoconference service administrators. Provide recommendations for videoconference firewall configuration (for gatekeepers, terminals, etc.) Guidance or sample configurations for enabling H.323 videoconferencing services using the most popular firewalls should be provided. Provide IPv6 migration recommendations for Tandberg VCS, Cisco IOS and GnuGk If there is no such functionality (e.g. GnuGk), this should be clearly indicated. Provide pre-configured National guidelines, configuration templates, and distribution images for new gatekeeper installations (using open source GnuGk). Provide GnuGk configuration and upgrade support Some institutions are interested in migrating to or upgrading GnuGk. The educonf team could investigate whether there are any particular problems that stop them from upgrading. If so, perhaps some hints or additional documentation should be written and published on the educonf web page. 5.2 GÉANT Short Dialling Scheme (GSD) In addition to resolving the problems identified in Section 4.2, there is also an issue with the complex numbering used in the GDS system. In order to solve this problem, the creation of the GÉANT Short Dialling scheme (GSD) should be considered. GSD would be a specific GÉANT numbering scheme that would be used within the GÉANT VC Network. A GSD identifier consists of 6 digits (non-repeated digits) and is sequentially allocated to each room upon registration. GSD will be fully compatible with GDS, as it will not override the E- 164 standard. GDS-only terminals will be able to reach GSD terminals by using the prefix 000. All GSDcompliant terminals and gatekeepers will route calls to the GSD-based network. 5.3 Certification Policy As the goal of rebuilding and enhancing the GDS infrastructure is to obtain a reliable and consistent service that is fully compliant with the educonf Certification Service, a certification policy is required. The following 12/24

13 aspects should be taken into account in order for NRENs and gatekeepers to meet the certification requirements NREN Requirements There are a number of requirements for NRENs to ensure compatibility with the educonf service: NRENs should provide national gatekeepers to allow terminal registration and call routing for the terminals within their network. National gatekeepers should configure world gatekeepers as neighbours. As recommended in Section 5.1 above, Appropriate, pre-configured installation images for the most commonly used gatekeepers would also be available An NREN may decide not to build its own gatekeeper infrastructure and delegate registration to the educonf Terminal Registration Service. Every endpoint (VC terminal or H.323 equipment such as MCU, gateway, recorder) should be registered in a gatekeeper within the appropriate NREN hierarchy (either its own or delegated). Endpoints should be registered with full GDS number. s must refuse registration of terminals that do not comply with the GDS prefix of the gatekeeper. In addition, authentication of terminals can be performed by the gatekeeper (not mandatory). Each NREN must be able to provide the following information about the national gatekeeper: IP Name IPv4 address IPv6 address Network Gateway IPv4 address Network Gateway IPv6 address DNS Name. Each NREN must provide two different GDS numbers for testing and monitoring purposes; An NREN may provide a Free Registration Zone to allow external terminals to register (national prefix must be applied in this case) Requirements There are several basic requirements for gatekeepers that have to be met: A gatekeeper must be able to resolve the GDS number scheme: Each organisational gatekeeper must point to its national gatekeeper with a 00 prefix. 13/24

14 Each national gatekeeper must point to the global gatekeepers with a 00 prefix. Each national gatekeeper must use the prefix appropriate to its country. A national gatekeeper must be able to resolve the GSD number scheme: The prefix 000 must point to the educonf GSD Call Routing gatekeeper. All 6-digit numbers should be routed to the educonf GSD Call Routing gatekeeper. s serving the Free Registration Zone must ensure use of the national prefix. s should provide the following registration metrics to their managers and to the educonf Monitoring service (retrieved by SNMP at five-minute intervals from the central node): Service status. Number of registered terminals. Number of active calls Other Equipment Requirements There are also requirements for other equipment: All rooms within the MCU service must be accessible by GDS and GSD (GÉANT Short Dialling scheme). All IPVCR recordings must be accessible by GDS. The Gateway Service (if any is provided by NREN) must comply with the requirement of ability to access GDS locations via specific connections (i.e. dial-in). 14/24

15 6 Summary The aim of the research and analysis described in this document was to confirm the need to improve the operation and reliability of handling the GDS numbering scheme. Although the information obtained and the results of the tests that were carried out are not critical to the plan s operations, the user feedback is important. There is a definite need to improve the scheme s reliability and make the infrastructure consistent. This document identifies the most important problems and makes several recommendations that could be considered and discussed by the GDS administrators. 15/24

16 Appendix A National s This appendix consists presents a complete list of the answers to the GDS System diagnosis national gatekeepers survey. N o Country National prefix IP domain Organisation vendor version Upgrade gatekeeper Parent s Identified problems? GDS Contact list IPv6 upgrade plan 1 Poland PSNC gk.man.poznan.pl Tandberg VCS X5.0 VCS X6.1 2 Portugal FCCN gk.fccn.pt GNU GK No 3 Croatia CARNet carnet.hr CISCO IOS Switzerland SWITCH gatekeeper.switch.ch GNU GK No 5 Germany DFN vc.dfn.de GNU GK /24 Do know not We plan to virtualize (Ireland) (JANET) (JANET) Connectivity problems, videoconfpcss@lists.man.po (Australia) firewall related troubles znan.pl (US) k requests per 5 minutes (Australia) sometimes... don't know (Ireland) what it is, don't know how servicovideoconferencia@ (UKRE) to solve. No major issues, (UKLE) GDS works. fccn.pt IRL1 IRL2 AUS UK1 UK2 USA JANET No tcr@carnet.hr (USA) (Australia) (Ireland) (JANET) (JANET2) No pointsupport@switch.ch (Ireland) gs@vc.dfn.de (Janet 1) No actual problems. hotline@vc.dfn.de Waiting for IPv6 GDS initiative, as soon as I get a GNU GK supporting IPv6. Waiting for IPv6 GDS initiative No Waiting for IPv6 GDS

17 N o Country National prefix IP domain Organisation vendor version Upgrade gatekeeper Parent s Identified problems? GDS Contact list IPv6 upgrade plan 6 United States Internet internet2.edu Tandberg 7 Czech Republic CESNET gk1ext.cesnet.cz GNU GK Romania ARNIEC 9 Cyprus CYNET CISCO VCS X6.1 17/24 the gatekeeper within high availability KVM a cluster. The OS will be Debian stable. Upgrades were done in spring. Two National Roots running the Cisco VCS X6.1 and our Global Root is also running X6.1. new new hw, GNU GK version, this year (Janet 2) (North America) (Ireland) (JANET) (JANET) Not immediately. One of the testing nodes at Ohio State University was relocated and upon contacting the educonf list for re-creation resulted in no response. Currently the educonf monitoring node is reporting outbound from North America is down when it actually is not. Addresses changed without info commonstechsupport@intern et2.edu vidcon@cesnet.cz Agency nren.ro CISCO 12.4 No Local gatekeeper Not needed 10 Belgium BELNET belnet.be GNU GK GNU GK before end (JANET) (JANET Primary) (JANET Backup) Not really because low usage services@belnet.be videoconf@belnet. be initiative IPv6 is already running on all of our National and Global s., soon GNU as as GK will support it Do not know, some tests needed before

18 N o Country National prefix IP domain Organisation vendor version Upgrade gatekeeper Parent s Identified problems? GDS Contact list IPv6 upgrade plan 11 Hungary NIIF Institute hu-gk.vvc.niif.hu GNU GK No 12 United Kingdom JANET 0044* jvcs.ja.net Tandberg 13 Spain RedIRIS rediris.es CISCO 14 Slovenia ARNES arnes.si GNU GK 2.0.x 15 Italy CINECA 0039 (GARR) it-gk.cineca.it CISCO MCM 12.2 VCS control 18/24 No National GK CISCO GNUGK. August from to (UK Edinburgh) (Ireland Dublin) (North America II) No The parent gatekeepers and the national gatekeepers are the same. We also have organisational gatekeepers that and Tandberg Expressways latest GNU GK, the solution not still defined VCS (US) (US 0) (Australia) (Ireland) (UKRE) (UKLE) (UK1) (UK2) No (Australia) (Ireland) Various mainly firewall related, and some world gatekeeper problems. vidconf@jvcs.ja.net Interoperability with some countries problems Changes in world or national gatekeepers are difficult to propagate mmedia@rediris.es videoadmin@niif.hu videopodpora@arnes.si videoconfsupp@cineca.it vconf- Waiting IPv6 initiative, for GDS when IPv6 will be supported in GNU Our already support GK. MCUs native IPv6.

19 N o Country National prefix IP domain Organisation vendor version Upgrade gatekeeper Parent s Identified problems? GDS Contact list IPv6 upgrade plan (UK) service@garr.it (US) (UK) (IRL1) (IRL2) (USA) (UK1) (UK2) (JANET) (Australia) national , we can t make ognjenm@rcub.bg. 16 Serbia AMRES gk.amres.ac.rs GNU GK No (CARNET) international calls ac.rs No 19/24

20 Appendix B GDS Reachability This appendix contains the GDS reachability test results from the GDS System diagnosis national gatekeepers survey. Country Organisation National Croatia Czech German Greece Hungary Poland Portugal Slovenia Spain US prefix Rep. y Poland PSNC 48 No Video and No video, Video and No video. Video and Video and Video and Video and Video and Tried twice, Portugal FCCN 351 audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. audio ok. no answer. Croatia CARNet 385 Switzerland SWITCH 41 No Image No Unreachable No Video Germany DFN 49 United States Internet2 1 Got a video test screen with a sound tone. Was able to connect. Connected to a Codian MCU.. Sound heard: "Hello. Cisco Unity Messaging System." Empty Room., Audio only, usual is not reachable 20/24 No System response of Unavailable No LCF from one world received but setup was Cisco 2220 VCR. Arnes C60. Codian 4505 MCU. Polycom RMX 2000 No LCF from one world received but setup was not successful Within No Ringing Czech own but not not Republic CESNET 420 country answered successful Not tested ARNIEC Romania Agency 9 No No No No No No No No No Cyprus CYNET Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested

21 Country Organisation National prefix Croatia Czech Rep. German y Greece Hungary Poland Portugal Slovenia Spain US A voice Belgium BELNET 32 mail This endpoint is used for Hungary NIIF Institute 36 No these call out tests United Kingdom JANET 44 No No Not tested Spain RedIRIS 34 No Request in progress, location reject Not tested Not tested Not tested Connected to Connected to MCU menu MCU menu Slovenia ARNES 386 page page Italy CINECA 0039 (GARR) Audio only 21/24

22 IPv6 Upgrade Plan Contact List Identified GDS Problem? Neighbour s Upgrade Version Vendor Domain IP World Area Organisation Maintainer Address Maintainer Country No Appendix C Global s This appendix presents a complete list of the answers to the GDS System diagnosis world gatekeepers survey. National s: SWITCH, UK, DE, NL, CZ, PE, IT, IE, DK, GR, 1 US Nicholas Thompson nick@internet2. edu Internet2 North America Internet2.edu Cisco VCS X6.1 No HU, RU, NO, CY, ES, BR, AU, PL, SE, HU, LT, LV, SR, NZ, FR, FI, BE According to the VCS, unresponsive via H.323 from the following: UK, RU, NO, CY, BR, PL, SE, LV, NZ commonstechsuppo rt@interne t2.edu IPV6 is enabled on our National and Global Gatekeep ers 22/24

23 References [educonf Web page] [GDS] [GnuGk] [ViDeNet] Glossary API Application Programming Interface FQDN Fully Qualified Domain Name GDS Global Dialling Scheme. The Global Dialling Scheme is an international numbering scheme, often used for videoconference H.323 calls, developed by ViDeNet (Video Development initiative). GDS has been widely adopted by many European NRENs and institutions for H.323 inter-zone dialling. H.323 terminals can register with a service called an H.323 gatekeeper, which provides H.323 name and/or E.164 number resolution to a specific IP address. In order to facilitate GDS functionality, the global hierarchy of H.323 gatekeepers was established for making inter-zone calls. GDS TEST The GDS number is to be used for testing and monitoring purposes. Each NREN must provide two different numbers for the educonf monitoring systems. GK GSD GÉANT Short Dialling Scheme. The GÉANT Short Dialling Scheme is a specific GÉANT numbering scheme that is used within the GÉANT VC Network. All the educonf-certified rooms will comply with GSD. The GSD identifier is attributed sequentially to each room upon registration. GSD numbers have six digits and do not repeat digits. GSD is fully compatible with GDS as it will not override the E-164 standard. GDS- only terminals will be able to reach GSD terminals using the 000 prefix. All the GSD-compliant terminals and gatekeepers will route the calls to the GSD-based network to all dialled 6-digit numbers. H.323 A standard approved by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to promote multimedia communication (VoIP and VC) over packet switched networks. ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol 23/24

24 IOS IPv6 IPVCR ITU KVM MCM MCU NREN PSTN VC VCS VoIP Internetwork Operating System Version 6 of the Internet Protocol (StB IETF) The successor to IPv4, employing a 128 bit IPaddress. IP-based Videoconference Recording, playback and streaming system International Telecommunications Union Kernel-based Virtual Machine Multimedia Conference Manager Multipoint Control Unit National Research and Education Public Switched Telephone Network Videoconference Video Communication Server Voice over IP 24/24