Converting Multicast to Unicast

In my previous blogtorial "Converting unicast to multicast" we discussed how to convert unicast to multicast and what the benefits are. Suppose that for one reason or another we had to convert from multicast to unicast -- how would we go about doing that? Well in this blogtorial we'll do just that.

Let's get started.

In this scenario, R2 will convert multicast coming in on Fast1/0 and convert it to unicast on Fast1/1.

Complete configs can be found here.

Enabling TCP TimeStamp Linux and Windows

I've had a couple of comments from my previous TCP TimeStamp - Demystified post about how to enable TCP TimeStamp option on different operation systems. Therefore, this is a follow up post on how to enable TCP TimeStamp option on Linux and Windows.

Since I am pro-Linux, we will start with Linux. 

Linux:

In Linux, TCP TimeStamp is enabled by default. You can check this by running this command. 

Converting Unicast to Multicast

Imagine that you had to do a presentation in front of an audience. Would it make sense to stand on a stage and give the presentation or sit with each individual and repeat the presentation multiple times? Well obviously standing on the stage and giving the presentation once to many audiences is much more efficient – this concept in networking is referred to as one-to-many multicast. One stream distributed to multiple receivers is just one of the advantages of running multicast on your network. If there are many receivers listening for one stream, there is no need for the server to send the same stream to multiple destinations – just use multicast.

But what if the server is running an outdated software and can not do multicast? No worries, today we are going to see how we can convert unicast into multicast. This blogtorial assumes that the reader is somewhat familiar with multicast concepts and configurations such RP, IGMP and PIM.

Here is our objective:

• Software BuiBui residing on Comp1 is sending unicast data.
• Instead of Comp1 wasting bandwidth and sending the same data to Comp4 (C4) and Comp5 (C5), we need to convert the unicast to multicast data and forward it to Comp4 (C4) and Comp5 (C5).

Consider the topology below and let’s get started.

Complete configs can be found here.

TCP Timestamp - Demystified

What controls you? Some may argue that it’s their jobs, their bosses or their parents but only a selected few will say time. In reality time controls all of us -- what/when/how we do anything is all dictated by time. We all understand how important time is and TCP is no exception which is why RFC 1323 implements a TCP option known as “TIMESTAMP”. This optional 10 byte (1B Kind + 1B Length + 4B TSVal + 4B TSecr) field allows us to time stamp at the TCP level which can be used for TCP RTT calculations and PAWS (Protect Against Wrapped Sequence numbers). I was curious about the TCP TIMESTAMP option so I took a packet capture to investigate it further. However, I was unable to determine how to interpret the fields or how to utilize it to calculate TCP RTT. So I did what most of you would have done – googled it. Much to my dismay, I couldn't really find anything other than RFCs and sites stating the same definition that is already published in the RFC. So I decided to write a blogtorial about it so my fellow searchers/googlers can easily understand on how to utilize TSVal and TSecr to calculate the TCP RTT.

Timestamp packet capture can be downloaded here.

Let’s get started.