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How do you find the bottleneck of a network?

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/306795

I am interested in your ways to identify a bottleneck within a network.

In my case, I've got 2 locations, one in UK, one in Germany. Hardware is Fortigates for FW/routing and switches are Cisco/HPE. Locations are connected through an Ipsec VPN over the internet and all internet connections have at least a bandwidth of 100 Mbps.

The problem occurs as soon as one client in UK tries to download data via SSH from a server in Germany. The max download speed is 10 Mbps and for the duration of the download the whole location in UK has problems accessing resources through the VPN in Germany (Citrix, Exchange, Sharepoint, etc).

I've changed some information for privacy reasons but I'd be interested in your first steps on how to tackle such a problem. Do you have some kind of runbook that you follow? What are common errors that your encounter? (independently from my case too, just in general)

EDIT: Current list

  • packet capture on client and server to check for packet loss, latency, etc. - if packets dropped, check intermediate devices
  • check utilization of intermediate devices (CPU, RAM, etc)
  • check throughput with different tools (ipfer3, nc, etc) and protocols (TCP, UDP, etc) and compare
  • check if traffic shaper/ QoS are in place
  • check ports intermediate devices for port speed mismatch
  • MTU/MSS mismatch
  • is the internet connection affected too, or just traffic through the VPN
  • Ipsec configuration
  • turn off security function of FW temporary and check if it is still reproducible
  • traceroute from A to B, any latency spikes?
  • check RTT, RWND, MSS/MTU, TTL via pcap, on the transferring client itself and reference client, without and while an active data transfer

Prob not related but noteworthy:

  • check I/O of server and client

I'll keep this list updated and appreciate further tips.

Update I had to postpone the session and will do the stress test on Monday or Tuesday evening. I'll update you as soon as I have the results.

Update2 So, I'll try to keep it short.

First iperf3 over TCP run (UK < DE) with same FW rules let me reproduce the problem. Max speed 10 Mbps, and DE < UK even slower, down to 1-2 Mbps. Pattern of the test implies an unreliable connection (short up to 30 Mbts, then 0, and so on). Traceroute shows same hops in both directions, no latency spikes, all good.

BUT ICMP and iperf3 over UDP runs show a packet loss of min 10% and up to 30% in both directions! Multiple speed tests to endpoints over the internet (UK>Internet) showed a download of 80 Mbts andupload of like 30 Mbts, which indicates a problem with the IPSec tunnel.

Some smaller things we've tried without any positive effect:

  • routing changes
  • disabling all security features for affected rule set
  • removed traffic shaper
  • Port speed/duplex negotiations are looking good
  • and some other things that I already forgot

Things we prepared:

  • We have opened some tickets at our ISPs to let them check it on their site > waiting for response
  • Set up smokeping to ping all provider/public/gw/ipsec endpoinrts/host IPs and see where packets could be dropped (server located in DE)
  • Planned a new session with an Fortigate expert to look in-depth into the IPSec configuration.

Need to do:

  • look through all packet captures (takes some time)
  • MSS/MTU missmatches / DF flags
  • further iperf3 tests with smaller/larger packet
  • double check ipsec configuration
  • QoS on Switches

I wish I had more time. I'll keep you updated

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  • Care to tell me those numbers?

    • RTT
    • TCP Window Size (RWND)
    • TCP MSS (that or MTU, inside the tunnel)

    Honestly, that sounds like TCP bandwidth-delay product.
    50 ms with a 65k byte RWND is just around 10Mbps.
    See for yourself with your numbers:
    https://wintelguy.com/wanperf.pl

    • Just saw this part:

      the whole location in UK [...]

      Some VPN solutions downgrade the MSS of all VPNs to the lowest common denominator for things like MTU/MSS. I guess that can make sense in a full-mesh, but whatever.
      Take a packet capture of another client while the problem one connects, you'll likely see something.
      Decrypted traffic is usually easier to analyze.

      Ohhh and you say that's when they connect through SSH? Check that he's not tcp forwarding all traffic through his SSH connection somehow.

      • Getting a pcap of another client could bring some insight, yeah.

        SSH is used for the data transfer. Without knowing it at this moment, I'd assume scp or rsync. You mean whether all their internet traffic is routed through the active SSH session?

        • I mean that in an SSH connection you can configure it to bind local/remote ports of local/remote IPs.
          The user might have unknowingly or maliciously configured their stuff to either:

          • forward all their traffic through the ssh session, adding more bandwidth than you're expecting
          • remote port forward something important that's somehow used by all your users to his machine. This is a bit unlikely, but then your symptoms are a bit weird.

          Unlikely, because they couldn't bind a port that is already in use on the server. Still, that could technically happen if there's a misconfigured load balancer, maybe from an old config that was never removed, that has that server as a member and just declares it down/up when that user starts listening on that port.

          That last one is far-fetched.
          I'd start with cpu/mem, mtu/mss, etc.

          I tend to have a bit of a bias towards absolutely far-fetched things because I'm basically the last line of support where I work. This means all most of the "normal" problems get filtered out before they get to me, which leaves me with the stuff that's bananas.

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