Another Update On GFL's Network

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

Hey everyone,

 

I just wanted to give another update on GFL's Anycast network! We've been making a lot of progress as of lately, but there is still more work to do.

 

ASN Update

We are still in the process of acquiring our own ASN. In a post I submitted here, I said we could get our own ASN through ARIN within two days (compared to RIPE that will take a few weeks). However, what I did not see is that we would have to pay $200 up front and there's an annual fee afterwards (we do not have any sponsors with ARIN). Therefore, we are going to try to get our ASN through RIPE instead which was our initial plan anyways (I've confirmed that we can get it through our sponsor for completely free). This will take a few more weeks but we're in the process of doing so.

 

Physical Hosting Provider + Main PoP Server (Point of Presence)

As stated in the last update thread, we are looking to move our physical hosting over to Wholesale Internet (if we get the main PoP server and physical server with the same hosting provider in the same location, the route will be more optimized and there shouldn't be many hops). What we wanted to do initially was to buy a cheaper machine (~$20-$25/m) to use as our PoP server and then get our game server machine (either the i7-9700K for $129.00/m or i9-9900K for $149.00/m). However, after contacting Wholesale Internet, we found we cannot do BGP sessions with any machine under $60.00/m (regardless if we purchase another higher-end machine to come along with it). Personally, I don't want to pay for a $60.00/m machine for just our main PoP server. We are currently only paying ~$20.00/m for it with Vultr.

 

We decided to go hunting for other data centers in Kansas City (where Wholesale Internet is). These data centers will need the following:

 

• Support for BGP sessions/IPv4 block announcements on cheaper machines.
• Good peering with Wholesale Internet to ensure we have the most optimized route from the PoP server to the physical machine possible.

 

We found one hosting provider (Dedispec) already that have powerful cheap machines along with a lot of bandwidth (~100 TBs) and @Dreae asked them if they supported BGP sessions on these machines along with a test IPv4 address if possible. They came back stating they do support BGP sessions/IPv4 block announcements and they gave us a test IPv4 address. It turns out they actually use Wholesale Internet as a hosting provider either way (they probably colocate with them). This means the PoP server and physical machine will technically be in the same data center, but with different providers. This will still mean the route will be more than likely fully optimized.

 

We are also in contact with another hosting provider for the PoP server and awaiting their reply. It's good knowing our options  

 

If we are able to get our physical machine with Wholesale Internet and get our PoP server with another hosting provider for cheap that ALSO uses Wholesale Internet themselves (along with BGP support), it's a win-win situation for us, lol.

 

Aulerion

I just wanted to state we won't be able to use Aulerion once we get our own ASN. It turns out they shut down (thankfully we didn't start with them, haha). Looks like I might have to find another transit provider so that I can show further proof when acquiring our own ASN (need two transit providers as a part of the validation process). Here's the message on their website:

 

Quote

Dear customers and visitors.

 

Aulerion is currently facing difficulties in terms of financials, forcing a temporal closure of the service.

The reason behind this is that we tried remaining competitive in pricing, which worked for a long time as we
were able to cover all expenses with revenue. Aulerion to date has not generated a single cent profit for
it's owners. So far, the project has costed various persons which invested in the project over $30000:

 

Florian B. $20000
Robert R. $5000
Wim B. $5000

 

As a result of recent massive DDoS attacks targeting smaller and larger parts of our infrastructure, which
caused tremendous bandwidth bills especially in our Asian regions, we are no longer able to cover all our
costs and ran out of our last reserves in the company under which Aulerion operated.

 

To sumarize, the whole project has costed the owners over $30000 in costs to run, whilst not turning a
single cent profit, aside of dozen hours spent on maintaing the project. We are at this time unable to
continue operating Aulerion. The project has turned loss in every month of operation, up to the point
where continuing both makes no more sense and is simply not possible.

 

Servers are still online at the moment, please make sure to backup anything of relevance as soon as possible.
We are actively talking to suppliers to postpone termination of our agreements to allow our customers to backup,
but we do not anticipate a lot more room.

 

Finally, we wish to apologize for the huge inconvenience caused and we hope to be able to provide services to you
again in a smaller fashion in the near future, where you can potentially spend your potentially lost credit.

 

Conclusion

That's basically it. @Dreae has done an incredible job improving Compressor on our PoP servers recently and reaching out to some hosting providers! I just wanted to thank him again for everything he has done.

 

Since IP2Location decided to update our IPv4 block this month (thank god) instead of next month like they stated initially, our servers are showing up properly in the server browser (Valve's Master Server). We are starting to move servers over to this new machine along with setting up new servers. You can see the list of public servers running on our new network here. Our Fistful of Frags server we've setup is doing okay so far:

 

 

We will be changing physical hosting providers more than likely once we get our own ASN. However, keep in mind our game servers won't change public IPs under this network since we own the IPv4 block

 

If you have any questions, please let me know!

 

Thank you.

[DEV Lars 4 / 799]

Hoping to see more of this. Good read. 

 

Will there be a tutorial for this PoP Setup?

[Roy 10,832 / 0]

3 minutes ago, DEV Lars said:

Hoping to see more of this. Good read. 

 

Will there be a tutorial for this PoP Setup?

Yes, @Dreae and I plan to make a public guide going over everything we've done + advice that will be released on the website once the network is completely setup (running our own ASN, etc.).

 

Thank you.