l2tpns/INTERNALS

Documentation on various internal structures.

Most important structure use an anonymous shared mmap()
so that child processes can watch them. (All the cli connections
are handled in child processes).

TODO: Re-investigate threads to see if we can use a thread to handle
cli connections without killing forwarding performance.

session[]
	An array of session structures. This is one of the two
	major data structures that are sync'ed across the cluster.

	This array is statically allocated at startup time to a 
	compile time size (currently 50k sessions). This sets a
	hard limit on the number of sessions a cluster can handle.

	There is one element per l2tp session. (I.e. each active user).

	The zero'th session is always invalid.

tunnel[]
	An array of tunnel structures. This is the other major data structure
	that's actively sync'ed across the cluster.

	As per sessions, this is statically allocated at startup time
	to a compile time size limit.

	There is one element per l2tp tunnel. (normally one per BRAS
	that this cluster talks to).

	The zero'th tunnel is always invalid.

ip_pool[]
	
	A table holding all the IP address in the pool. As addresses
	are used, they are tagged with the username of the session,
	and the session index.

	When they are free'd the username tag ISN'T cleared. This is
	to ensure that were possible we re-allocate the same IP
	address back to the same user.

radius[]
	A table holding active radius session. Whenever a radius
	conversation is needed (login, accounting et al), a radius
	session is allocated.

char **ip_hash

	A mapping of IP address to session structure. This is a
	tenary tree (each byte of the IP address is used in turn
	to index that level of the tree).

	If the value is postive, it's considered to be an index
	into the session table. 

	If it's negative, it's considered to be an index into
	the ip_pool[] table.

	If it's zero, then there is no associated value.

config->cluster_iam_master 

	If true, indicates that this node is the master for
	the cluster. This has many consequences...
	
config->cluster_iam_uptodate
	
	On the slaves, this indicates if it's seen a full run
	of sessions from the master, and thus it's safe to be
	taking traffic. 

	On the master, this indicates that all slaves are
	up to date. If any of the slaves aren't up to date,
	this variable is false, and indicates that we should
	shift to more rapid heartbeats to bring the slave
	back up to date.


============================================================

Clustering: How it works.

	At a high level, the various members of the cluster elect
a master. All other machines become slaves as soon as they hear
a heartbeat from the master. Slaves handle normal packet forwarding.
Whenever a slave get a 'state changing' packet (i.e. tunnel setup/teardown,
session setup etc) it _doesn't_ handle it, but instead forwards it
to the master.

	'State changing' it defined to be "a packet that would cause
a change in either a session or tunnel structure that isn't just
updating the idle time or byte counters". In practise, this means
almost all LCP, IPCP, and L2TP control packets.

	The master then handles the packet normally, updating
the session/tunnel structures. The changed structures are then
flooded out to the slaves via a multicast packet.


Heartbeat'ing:
	The master sends out a multicast 'heartbeat' packet
at least once every second. This packet contains a sequence number,
and any changes to the session/tunnel structures that have
been queued up. If there is room in the packet, it also sends
out a number of extra session/tunnel structures.

	The sending out of 'extra' structures means that the
master will slowly walk the entire session and tunnel tables.
This allows a new slave to catch-up on cluster state.


	Each heartbeat has an in-order sequence number. If a
slave receives a heartbeat with a sequence number other than 
the one it was expecting, it drops the unexpected packet and
unicasts C_LASTSEEN to tell the master the last heartbeast it
had seen. The master normally than unicasts the missing packets
to the slave. If the master doesn't have the old packet any more
(i.e. it's outside the transmission window) then the master
unicasts C_KILL to the slave asking it to die. (The slave should
then restart, and catchup on state via the normal process).

	If a slave goes for more than a few seconds without
hearing from the master, it sends out a preemptive C_LASTSEEN.
If the master still exists, this forces to the master to unicast
the missed heartbeats. This is a work around for a temporary
multicast problem. (i.e. if an IGMP probe is missed, the slave
will temporarily stop seeing the multicast heartbeats. This
work around prevents the slave from becoming master with 
horrible consequences).

Ping'ing:
	All slaves send out a 'ping' once per second as a
multicast packet. This 'ping' contains the slave's ip address,
and most importantly, the number of seconds from epoch
that the slave started up. (I.e. the value of time(2) at
that the process started). (This is the 'basetime').
Obviously, this is never zero.

	There is a special case. The master can send a single
ping on shutdown to indicate that it is dead and that an
immediate election should be held. This special ping is
send from the master with a 'basetime' of zero.

Elections:

	All machines start up as slaves.

	Each slave listens for a heartbeat from the master.
If a slave fails to hear a heartbeat for N seconds then it
checks to see if it should become master.

	A slave will become master if:
		* It hasn't heard from a master for N seconds.
		* It is the oldest of all it's peers (the other slaves).
		* In the event of a tie, the machine with the
			lowest IP address will win.

	A 'peer' is any other slave machine that's send out a
	ping in the last N seconds. (i.e. we must have seen
	a recent ping from that slave for it to be considered).

	The upshot of this is that no special communication
	takes place when a slave becomes a master.

	On initial cluster startup, the process would be (for example)

		* 3 machines startup simultaneously, all as slaves.
		* each machine sends out a multicast 'ping' every second.
		* 15 seconds later, the machine with the lowest IP
			address becomes master, and starts sending
			out heartbeats.
		* The remaining two machine hear the heartbeat and
			set that machine as their master.

Becoming master:
	
	When a slave become master, the only structure maintained up
	to date are the tunnel and session structures. This means
	the master will rebuild a number of mappings.

	#0. All the session and table structures are marked as
	defined. (Even if we weren't fully up to date, it's
	too late now).

	#1. All the token bucket filters are re-build from scratch
	with the associated session to tbf pointers being re-built.

TODO: These changed tbf pointers aren't flooded to the slave right away!
Throttled session could take a couple of minutes to start working again
on master failover!

	#2. The ipcache to session hash is rebuilt. (This isn't
	strictly needed, but it's a safety measure).

	#3. The mapping from the ippool into the session table
	(and vice versa) is re-built.


Becoming slave:

	At startup the entire session and table structures are
	marked undefined.

	As it seens updates from the master, the updated structures
	are marked as defined.

	When there are no undefined tunnel or session structures, the
	slave marks itself as 'up-to-date' and starts advertising routes
	(if BGP is enabled).

STONITH:
	
	Currently, there is very minimal protection from split brain.
In particular, there is no real STONITH protocol to stop two masters
appearing in the event of a network problem.



TODO:
	Should slaves that have undefined sessions, and receive
a packet from a non-existant session then forward it to the master??
In normal practice, a slave with undefined session shouldn't be 
handling packets, but ...