Intelligent Routing Platform is licensed based on the network outbound bandwidth usage, measured as monthly 95th percentile. Fill in a quote request and we will prepare a customized quote for you.
IRP has been successfully tested with Brocade/Foundry, Cisco, Juniper, and Vyatta. Generally, IRP is designed to work with any standards-compliant BGP router which supports routing policies and standard BGP attributes. Devices which do not support BGP SNMP MIBs are not compatible with IRP.
Currently IRP does only outbound traffic optimization, however a version supporting inbound traffic is developed as we speak. Inbound traffic optimization is estimated to be release by the end of Q4 2014.
A detailed list of hardware and software requirements can be found in the product documentation.
The initial configuration is performed by Noction engineers.
The IRP BGP daemon injects routes to the improved prefixes with an updated next-hop, and a higher local-preference value, so that the improved routes take precedence over the original routes received from the providers.
Virtual Machine is only suitable for a test deployment. For production purposes IRP has to be installed on a physical server.
Yes. We can deploy a test installation in your infrastructure. The system can run in a non-intrusive (read-only) BGP mode. It will provide reporting on network performance and problems in the middle-mile network segment, without issuing any BGP updates. Fill in a trial request and we will get back to you.
IRP analyzes Netflow/sFlow data to find the path that satisfies the performance and cost policies. IRP doesn`t export Netflow or any other kind of flow data.
To connect IRP to your edge routers, an iBGP session needs to be established between the IRP appliance and your edge routers.
Yes. IRP needs CentOS 6, x86_64.
The networks to be analyzed and optimized are chosen from the traffic data gathered by the FLOW collector according to configurable volume thresholds. Each collected network is being probed by the system to detect outages, packet loss, latency and other network anomalies. At the same time, the SPAN collector can detect additional network anomalies such as excessive delay and high packet retransmission. Then, depending on the system configuration, the prefixes are improved accordingly.
Yes, IRP does fully support IPv6.
14. What happens in the case of multiple edge routers? Would we need a separate IRP instance for each HA pair of edge routers?
An IRP instance is required for each geographical location/POP. Therefore, if you have a single location with multiple routers, a single IRP instance is enough. IRP is able to handle multiple BGP sessions with your edge routers.
The minimum contract period is one year. However there is a month-to-month option available as well at a higher price. Please request a quote for exact pricing.
In this case the BGP sessions between your edge routers and the IRP appliance are reset and all the announced improvements are withdrawn automatically from the routing tables. The router(s) returns to using the routes received from the providers, thus no downtime occurs and the traffic is being automatically routed through the regular non-optimized paths.
IRP is only announcing the optimized prefixes/routes with the updated next-hop.
18. Are you providing the platform as a physical appliance or as a software package that can be installed on our own hardware?
Both options are available.
IRP supports NetFlow v1, v5, v9, jFlow, and sFlow.
By default, 70 concurrent probing threads are set up, generating an average outgoing traffic of 1200 Kbps and 230 Kbps of incoming traffic.
After an initial probing (and improvement, if required), each improved prefix is being reprobed in configurable intervals (by default – 4 hours).
Yes. You can learn how other service providers improved network performance with Noction IRP by reading the success stories of WiredTree and ATE.
Noction IRP is designed to help service and content providers with multiple Internet connections to improve BGP routing.
Information about installing and configuring IRP can be found in the product documentation. Noction engineers will fully assist you during the deployment process.
The system uses one of the following methods for probing a remote network: ICMP, UDP, and TCP_SYN. The probing is self-learning, based on the network replies, updating the algorithms accordingly.
Noction Intelligent Routing Platform (IRP) is designed to improve the performance and reduce the costs of running a multi-homed BGP network. The platform operates at the network edge and does non-intrusive traffic analysis in order to detect network congestion and blackouts. The affected network routes are probed for a set of specific metrics through all the available providers in order to detect and reroute the traffic to the best performing path.
It strictly depends on the complexity of the infrastructure and the feedback speed. Usually it takes from 3 to 7 days.
Yes. All existing improvements are stored in a persistent database. In case of a long downtime, the improvements status will be checked by re-probing.
Intrusive BGP mode – means that the improvements are actually announced to your network, running in Non-intrusive mode, the system performs the probing and provides the reports; however, it does not inject the updates into your edge routers.
Yes, for proactive probing there are several PBR settings to configure on your edge routers. In specific complex scenarios, traffic from the IRP platform should pass multiple routers before getting to the provider. If a separate probing Vlan cannot be configured across all routers, GRE tunnels from IRP to the Edge routers should be configured (one GRE tunnel per each edge router). Also, for report generation, Commit Control decision-making and prevention of overloading a specific provider with an excessive number of improvements, a SNMP community per each provider needs to be set (a read-only community is enough).
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34. Does IRP support failover mode? Is there a way to add a second IRP instance as a backup for the main one?
Yes, IRP supports failover mode at the operating system level. As a requirement, one must install two IRP instances on two separate hardware units, having the latest CentOS operating system preinstalled. Using the CentOS High Availability feature, one of the IRP instances runs in an Active mode and the second one runs in a Passive mode. Each server must have two network cards: one used for network communication and the other one used for data synchronization with the partner instance. In case of the Active instance failure, the Passive one will immediately take over.
Currently, IRP does not have an API available, however, this feature is specified in our roadmap and it is planned to be released at the end of 2014.
IRP is not compatible with such authentication mechanisms yet. Their integration is currently under development.
IRP does not work with MPLS since it has been designed to solve middle-mile issues, thus operating at the network edge using BGP.
38. Can IRP alter the BGP configurations on the edge routers, like changing a BGP peer-group, altering a BGP policy etc. ?
No, IRP doesn’t affect the BGP configurations running on the edge routers.
IRP can collect and process up to 400,000 Mbps of NetFlow data, moreover there are IRP instances in production that can handle 600,000 Mbps.
Yes. IRP is able to intelligently reroute peering traffic across Internet Exchanges, as well as across separate eBGP links with your peers.
Yes, IRP is able to announce routing updates to a route reflector, which then propagates them to the edge routers
Yes, IRP is able to optimize traffic across such providers. However, a requirement is that the network must connect to at least one transit provider delivering a full routing table.
Despite the fact IRP is not designed as a DDoS prevention system, it would act like one, rerouting traffic around congestion and outages. In addition, IRP will send you notifications regards to congested links or persistent provider failure. It is to mention though: IRP is not a DDoS prevention system.
IRP 2.3 uses SNMP traps to send alerts towards the customer’s monitoring systems to notify about events that administrators have chosen to monitor. These are fully adjustable and administrators can decide upon which events should trigger notifications and then configure them on the platform. See this post for more details.
Considering the inter-datacenter link’s added latency, one IRP instance can optimize networks with multiple physical locations which are in relatively close geographical proximity. If the network’s Points of Presence are located considerably far from each other, multiple IRP instances are required. Please see this post for additional details.