Conntrack Sync

One of the important features built on top of the Netfilter framework is connection tracking. Connection tracking allows the kernel to keep track of all logical network connections or sessions, and thereby relate all of the packets which may make up that connection. NAT relies on this information to translate all related packets in the same way, and iptables can use this information to act as a stateful firewall.

The connection state however is completely independent of any upper-level state, such as TCP’s or SCTP’s state. Part of the reason for this is that when merely forwarding packets, i.e. no local delivery, the TCP engine may not necessarily be invoked at all. Even connectionless-mode transmissions such as UDP, IPsec (AH/ESP), GRE and other tunneling protocols have, at least, a pseudo connection state. The heuristic for such protocols is often based upon a preset timeout value for inactivity, after whose expiration a Netfilter connection is dropped.

Each Netfilter connection is uniquely identified by a (layer-3 protocol, source address, destination address, layer-4 protocol, layer-4 key) tuple. The layer-4 key depends on the transport protocol; for TCP/UDP it is the port numbers, for tunnels it can be their tunnel ID, but otherwise is just zero, as if it were not part of the tuple. To be able to inspect the TCP port in all cases, packets will be mandatorily defragmented.

It is possible to use either Multicast or Unicast to sync conntrack traffic. Most examples below show Multicast, but unicast can be specified by using the “peer” keywork after the specificed interface, as in the following example:

set service conntrack-sync interface eth0 peer 192.168.0.250

Configuration

set service conntrack-sync accept-protocol

Accept only certain protocols: You may want to replicate the state of flows depending on their layer 4 protocol.

Protocols are: tcp, sctp, dccp, udp, icmp and ipv6-icmp.

set service conntrack-sync event-listen-queue-size <size>

The daemon doubles the size of the netlink event socket buffer size if it detects netlink event message dropping. This clause sets the maximum buffer size growth that can be reached.

Queue size for listening to local conntrack events in MB.

set service conntrack-sync expect-sync <all|ftp|h323|nfs|sip|sqlnet>

Protocol for which expect entries need to be synchronized.

set service conntrack-sync failover-mechanism vrrp sync-group <group>

Failover mechanism to use for conntrack-sync.

Only VRRP is supported. Required option.

set service conntrack-sync ignore-address <x.x.x.x>

IP addresses or networks for which local conntrack entries will not be synced

set service conntrack-sync interface <name>

Interface to use for syncing conntrack entries.

set service conntrack-sync interface <name> port <port>

Port number used by connection.

set service conntrack-sync listen-address <ipv4address>

Local IPv4 addresses for service to listen on.

set service conntrack-sync mcast-group <x.x.x.x>

Multicast group to use for syncing conntrack entries.

Defaults to 225.0.0.50.

set service conntrack-sync interface <name> peer <address>

Peer to send unicast UDP conntrack sync entires to, if not using Multicast configuration from above above.

set service conntrack-sync sync-queue-size <size>

Queue size for syncing conntrack entries in MB.

set service conntrack-sync disable-external-cache

This diable the external cache and directly injects the flow-states into the in-kernel Connection Tracking System of the backup firewall.

Operation

show conntrack table ipv4

Make sure conntrack is enabled by running and show connection tracking table.

vyos@vyos:~$ show conntrack table ipv4
TCP state codes: SS - SYN SENT, SR - SYN RECEIVED, ES - ESTABLISHED,
                 FW - FIN WAIT, CW - CLOSE WAIT, LA - LAST ACK,
                 TW - TIME WAIT, CL - CLOSE, LI - LISTEN

CONN ID    Source                 Destination            Protocol         TIMEOUT
1015736576 10.35.100.87:58172     172.31.20.12:22        tcp [6] ES       430279
1006235648 10.35.101.221:57483    172.31.120.21:22       tcp [6] ES       413310
1006237088 10.100.68.100          172.31.120.21          icmp [1]         29
1015734848 10.35.100.87:56282     172.31.20.12:22        tcp [6] ES       300
1015734272 172.31.20.12:60286     239.10.10.14:694       udp [17]         29
1006239392 10.35.101.221          172.31.120.21          icmp [1]         29

Note

If the table is empty and you have a warning message, it means conntrack is not enabled. To enable conntrack, just create a NAT or a firewall rule. set firewall state-policy established action accept

show conntrack-sync cache external

Show connection syncing external cache entries

show conntrack-sync cache internal

Show connection syncing internal cache entries

show conntrack-sync statistics

Retrieve current statistics of connection tracking subsystem.

vyos@vyos:~$ show conntrack-sync statistics
Main Table Statistics:

cache internal:
current active connections:            19606
connections created:                 6298470    failed:            0
connections updated:                 3786793    failed:            0
connections destroyed:               6278864    failed:            0

cache external:
current active connections:            15771
connections created:                 1660193    failed:            0
connections updated:                   77204    failed:            0
connections destroyed:               1644422    failed:            0

traffic processed:
                   0 Bytes                         0 Pckts

multicast traffic (active device=eth0.5):
           976826240 Bytes sent            212898000 Bytes recv
             8302333 Pckts sent              2009929 Pckts recv
                   0 Error send                    0 Error recv

message tracking:
                   0 Malformed msgs                  263 Lost msgs
show conntrack-sync status

Retrieve current status of connection tracking subsystem.

vyos@vyos:~$ show conntrack-sync status
sync-interface        : eth0.5
failover-mechanism    : vrrp [sync-group GEFOEKOM]
last state transition : no transition yet!
ExpectationSync       : disabled

Example

The next example is a simple configuration of conntrack-sync.

Conntrack Sync Example

Now configure conntrack-sync service on router1 and router2

set high-availablilty vrrp group internal virtual-address ... etc ...
set high-availability vrrp sync-group syncgrp member 'internal'
set service conntrack-sync accept-protocol 'tcp'
set service conntrack-sync accept-protocol 'udp'
set service conntrack-sync accept-protocol 'icmp'
set service conntrack-sync failover-mechanism vrrp sync-group 'syncgrp'
set service conntrack-sync interface 'eth0'
set service conntrack-sync mcast-group '225.0.0.50'

On the active router, you should have information in the internal-cache of conntrack-sync. The same current active connections number should be shown in the external-cache of the standby router

On active router run:

$ show conntrack-sync statistics

Main Table Statistics:

cache internal:
current active connections:               10
connections created:                    8517    failed:            0
connections updated:                     127    failed:            0
connections destroyed:                  8507    failed:            0

cache external:
current active connections:                0
connections created:                       0    failed:            0
connections updated:                       0    failed:            0
connections destroyed:                     0    failed:            0

traffic processed:
                   0 Bytes                         0 Pckts

multicast traffic (active device=eth0):
              868780 Bytes sent               224136 Bytes recv
               20595 Pckts sent                14034 Pckts recv
                   0 Error send                    0 Error recv

message tracking:
                   0 Malformed msgs                    0 Lost msgs

On standby router run:

$ show conntrack-sync statistics

Main Table Statistics:

cache internal:
current active connections:                0
connections created:                       0    failed:            0
connections updated:                       0    failed:            0
connections destroyed:                     0    failed:            0

cache external:
current active connections:               10
connections created:                     888    failed:            0
connections updated:                     134    failed:            0
connections destroyed:                   878    failed:            0

traffic processed:
                   0 Bytes                         0 Pckts

multicast traffic (active device=eth0):
              234184 Bytes sent               907504 Bytes recv
               14663 Pckts sent                21495 Pckts recv
                   0 Error send                    0 Error recv

message tracking:
                   0 Malformed msgs                    0 Lost msgs