MPLS alternative
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I don't know much about MPLS except that even with redundant links the entire connection goes down if the company that runs it has a problem. So it's some kind of half-redundancy.
For real redundancy you need to have multiple links using different operators.
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@gjacobse said in MPLS alternative:
Just happened to think back,
The emergency system (911) used MPLS between the county sites and the main server.
How would a VPN have replaced this? Down time is one thing, but down time and no ability to get emergency calls passed,... that’s serious
Well, you already have a SPOF in the MPLS. MPLS does not provide any redundancy. A backhoe cutting the ISP lines still takes them down.
If the people running the 911 system wanted redundancy, they'd need two internet connections of some sort.
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@travisdh1 said in MPLS alternative:
@gjacobse said in MPLS alternative:
Just happened to think back,
The emergency system (911) used MPLS between the county sites and the main server.
How would a VPN have replaced this? Down time is one thing, but down time and no ability to get emergency calls passed,... that’s serious
Well, you already have a SPOF in the MPLS. MPLS does not provide any redundancy. A backhoe cutting the ISP lines still takes them down.
If the people running the 911 system wanted redundancy, they'd need two internet connections of some sort.
There is a lot of redundancy built in- it’s an absolute must. And yes, a backhoe, homeowner and even Mother Nature will play havoc...
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
You serve Citrix directly on the internet, Citrix's protocol ICA includes encryption. Sending ICA over VPN is double encryption.
This is one thing management have never liked. Opening the server to the outside world
.
But times are changing so going a mix of VPN for some serves and direct serve (i.e. on the internet) might be an option. -
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
How would multiple vpns be handled. Would it be a case each sites router would have multiple vpns to each site? Or a single VPN to a singe "master" site/device.
To make it simple, I'd do Each site's router would have a single VPN to HQ (the master site).
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
If we didn't have VPN/MPLS how would we serve our Citrix farm at the main site?
Directly. Citrix has no need for additional VPN/MPLS since the Citrix IPC protocol has the same security as a VPN already. You can't just tied it to AD, but that's a different issue. Citrix isn't meant to be used behind a VPN, that's an unnecessary layer of complication. You need some sort of protection, but neither of these do much to address the fundamental security flaw involved nor are they elegant solutions.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
These are things you never want. "Managed"
This I kind of disagree with, if we have an issue with a connection we phone it in and they sort withing the SLA. Down time means £££ loss.
Currently with the MPLS we have 4hr replacement on hardware and high SLA with BT on the pstn lines.Those are EXACTLY the reasons that I said what I said. SLAs and four hours of waiting to "maybe" have things fixed at super high cost, instead of a more reliable system at lower cost.
Remember "4 hr replacement" doesn't say that they WILL replace in 4hrs, it just tells you what they pay you if they don't. Very, VERY different from "keeping your business running."
The MPLS needs that SLA because it's so risky. If you didn't have the MPLS, you wouldn't have the same risks. That's part of the trick. Create the risk so that they can sell you the fix as well!
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
3 sites have 20+ users these are served by 100mb leased lines, would like to keep these.
Why would you ever want a leased line? Leased lines essentially only exist today to make MPLS possible. They are costly and risky.
Because we "couldn't" get a line above 5mb so Replication to the DR site would be impossible. Also handling the traffic from all the sites, like print servers, smb shares etc
(most of these are getting replaced slowly with things like o365)Anything you can get in a leased line you can get in an Internet line for the same or cheaper. Leased lines aren't magic, they are just the same lines without Internet access.
All that traffic from the sites can be handled by normal VPNs. But that begs the question, why are you doing things like printing over the WAN in the first place? Or SMB shares over the WAN? These are LAN-focused, 1990s technologies. I get that things linger, but this feels more and more like one basic mistake that no one evaluated and then piling mistakes on top of that layer after layer. None of it matches anything remotely modern, secure, or affordable but each mistake relies on another mistake as the excuse for itself.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
So what about SDWAN? Would this be an alternative too?
SDWAN is just a marketing term for managed VPN. So as a technology, it's just VPN which we said to use. But if you mean a product from the ISP that they call SDWAN, then see the "never, ever get any service like this from the ISP" advice.
Remember, if it's managed, it's bad. There's no way to have an exception to this. Market pressure would never allow it.
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@IRJ said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
1990's LAN-based thinking. Modern networks with security are zero-trust (aka LANless) in design and VPN/MPLS would not serve any purpose.
I'll put my hand up and agree this is me, but will be looking at LANless/zero-trust on Monday and learn what it means fully.
Yeah that's really the only route to go anymore
And it's not new, we've been talking about it here since day one and it wasn't new then. I know companies doing this for close to two decades now. And that means companies I don't know were way ahead of the curve.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
Any link to good reading on zero-trust stuff?
MangoCon 2016. One of the three most viewed MC talks ever.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
You serve Citrix directly on the internet, Citrix's protocol ICA includes encryption. Sending ICA over VPN is double encryption.
This is one thing management have never liked. Opening the server to the outside world
.
But times are changing so going a mix of VPN for some serves and direct serve (i.e. on the internet) might be an option.Another fundamental flaw of the business in general: "management have never liked." Management's job here is to make sure that "what is good for the business" is what is chosen, not what someone "likes" emotionally. An emotional manager is a saboteur. They have no place in IT or business. Their job is to protect against this, not do it themselves. This is like the security card stealing from the till. It's doing exactly the thing that they are paid to protect against. In one case it is stealing, in the other it is illogical and reckless decision making.
It's nothing to do with the times changing. It's about common myths being finally exposed often enough. ICA has always, or at least for a really long time been secure. But people constantly misconfiguring it is the issue, not the protocol. You know what else is a huge risk from misconfiguration? VPNs and MPLS!!
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@dafyre said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
How would multiple vpns be handled. Would it be a case each sites router would have multiple vpns to each site? Or a single VPN to a singe "master" site/device.
To make it simple, I'd do Each site's router would have a single VPN to HQ (the master site).
AKA hub and spoke.
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@Pete-S said in MPLS alternative:
I don't know much about MPLS except that even with redundant links the entire connection goes down if the company that runs it has a problem. So it's some kind of half-redundancy.
For real redundancy you need to have multiple links using different operators.
Exactly. MPLS is for companies who don't care about reliability. It's the polar opposite of reliable. Everything about it is unnecessarily fragile and risky.
I know Fortune 100s that have it and it's 99% the cause of their downtime. It fails way more often than any other link, and it takes way longer to fix than any other link. Bigger outages, more often. Plus high cost. The worst of all worlds.
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@gjacobse said in MPLS alternative:
Just happened to think back,
The emergency system (911) used MPLS between the county sites and the main server.
How would a VPN have replaced this? Down time is one thing, but down time and no ability to get emergency calls passed,... that’s serious
Well, since a VPN beats an MPLS is every way... any risk you have with the MPLS is reduced with a VPN. So there's nothing for VPN to do. If MPLS is acceptable, literally anything is acceptable. There's nothing worse.
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
You serve Citrix directly on the internet, Citrix's protocol ICA includes encryption. Sending ICA over VPN is double encryption.
This is one thing management have never liked. Opening the server to the outside world
.
But times are changing so going a mix of VPN for some serves and direct serve (i.e. on the internet) might be an option.They are missing the point then... the VPN is exposed directly to the web...why is it better than the Citrix server?
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@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@Dashrender said in MPLS alternative:
You serve Citrix directly on the internet, Citrix's protocol ICA includes encryption. Sending ICA over VPN is double encryption.
This is one thing management have never liked. Opening the server to the outside world
.
But times are changing so going a mix of VPN for some serves and direct serve (i.e. on the internet) might be an option.They are missing the point then... the VPN is exposed directly to the web...why is it better than the Citrix server?
Well, so here is what happens....
Someone accidentally ties the Citrix ICA authentication to AD. They then expose AD to the Internet. They then realize that AD depends on LAN security and the mechanisms that work on a LAN are useless on the WAN and they disable them. Then they are exposed not because ICA is risky, not because the Internet is scary, but because AD is fragile and a bad overall security mechanism and totally unable to be used without the addition of a trusted LAN space (e.g. simply not very secure.)
Instead of learning from their mistakes (of using the wrong technology, AD in this case, and configuring Citrix wrong) they double down on their mistakes by trying to use a VPN, which is exactly the same security technology as Citrix ICA, but typically don't tie this to AD and voila, they think that the VPN fixed their previous mistake that they never took time to figure out.
It's a standard pattern of incompetence that happens so often (much like the Inverted Pyramid design) that one clueless shop repeats this story to another clueless shop and they get agreement that the same thing happened to them and you start to get people corroborating each other's incorrect theories and soon it becomes Internet myth.
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@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
Remember "4 hr replacement" doesn't say that they WILL replace in 4hrs,
Yes it does, we've used it several times when we were with BT foe the MPLS. We log a call and WITHIN 4hrs the hardware is replaced.
Anything you can get in a leased line you can get in an Internet line for the same or cheaper. Leased lines aren't magic, they are just the same lines without Internet access.
Wrong!!! We are in the UK and bound by Openreach infrastructure, where some site only have ADSL products and long line lengths. If we need more bandwidth we have to pay for better lines. Thankfully 4G coverage is getting better and that's a good alternative.
All that traffic from the sites can be handled by normal VPNs. But that begs the question, why are you doing things like printing over the WAN in the first place? Or SMB shares over the WAN? These are LAN-focused, 1990s technologies. I get that things linger, but this feels more and more like one basic mistake that no one evaluated and then piling mistakes on top of that layer after layer. None of it matches anything remotely modern, secure, or affordable but each mistake relies on another mistake as the excuse for itself.
Agreed but unfortunately i'm not management, i can only recommend better ways of doing it. If the Management have the mind set of "if it works don't break it" i have to work with what we have.
Another fundamental flaw of the business in general: "management have never liked." Management's job here is to make sure that "what is good for the business"
Their mind set is to keep the business running, i.e. if it's working why change? (I'm not disagreeing with you but we live in the real world)
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@hobbit666 said in MPLS alternative:
@scottalanmiller said in MPLS alternative:
Remember "4 hr replacement" doesn't say that they WILL replace in 4hrs,
Yes it does, we've used it several times when we were with BT foe the MPLS. We log a call and WITHIN 4hrs the hardware is replaced.
Just because they managed to get it done in 4 hours those times doesn’t mean they are 100% assures to every time.
As Scott mentioned, if they are in a situation where they have to choose between fixing your thing on time and some other issue that’s costing them more than the contract say they have to pay you for missing the SLA, you can bet they will miss your deadline, because it makes financial sense to do so.Now that said, let’s not forget that they are very likely charging you an arm and a leg just to have that SLA, so if they miss it, they still likely come out ahead because they’ve capped their losses through the SLA (most I’ve seen say your max paying is the cost of the service for the outage timeframe, or all affected billing periods, whichever is greater. Clearly the cost of the service comes no where near to the losses you most likely suffer do to said outages.
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So if we were looking at a green field.
We've got 300 end points in 60 locations that need access to the Citrix Server at a single location. They also have documents that everyone needs access to (Some Read some Read/Write).
E-mails/Word/Excel etc are already handled by Office365.
So would you say, don't even look at AD. Move all the documents to SharePoint for the shared documents & OneDrive for "personal" files.
Then for Citrix just publish the ICA part so people just connect via the internet.How do you handle Username/Passwords for accessing the Citrix with out AD? Then are we going to have different credentials for SharePoint and Office365
(Think this is where my LAN thinking is failing me)
