Traffic Router Administration

Requirements

• CentOS 7 or later

• 4 CPUs

• 8GB of RAM

• Successful install of Traffic Ops (usually on another machine)

• Successful install of Traffic Monitor (usually on another machine)

• Administrative access to Traffic Ops

Note

Hardware requirements are generally doubled if DNSSEC is enabled

Installing Traffic Router

1. If no suitable Profile exists, create a new Profile for Traffic Router via the + button on the Profiles page in Traffic Portal

   Warning

   Traffic Ops will only recognize a Profile as assignable to a Traffic Router if its Name starts with the prefix ccr-. The reason for this is a legacy limitation related to the old name for Traffic Router (Comcast Cloud Router), and will (hopefully) be rectified in the future.

2. Enter the Traffic Router server into Traffic Portal on the Servers page (or via the Traffic Ops API), assign to it a Traffic Router Profile, and ensure that its status is set to ONLINE.

3. Ensure the FQDN of the Traffic Router is resolvable in DNS. This FQDN must be resolvable by the clients expected to use this CDN.

4. Install a Traffic Router server package, either from source or using a traffic_router-version string.rpm package generated using the instructions in Building Traffic Control.

   Changed in version 3.0: As of version 3.0, Traffic Router depends upon a package called tomcat. This package should have been created when Traffic Router was built. If installing the traffic_router produces a depenedency error, make sure that the tomcat package is available in an accessible yum(8) repository.

5. Edit /opt/traffic_router/conf/traffic_monitor.properties and specify the correct online Traffic Monitor(s) for your CDN.

   See also

   Traffic Router Configuration File Parameters

   traffic_monitor.properties

   URL that should normally point to this file, e.g. traffic_monitor.properties=file:/opt/traffic_router/conf/traffic_monitor.properties

   traffic_monitor.properties.reload.period

   Period to wait (in milliseconds) between reloading this file, e.g. traffic_monitor.properties.reload.period=60000

6. Start Traffic Router. This is normally done by starting its systemd(1) service. systemctl start traffic_router , and test DNS lookups against that server to be sure it’s resolving properly. with e.g. dig or curl. Also, because previously taken CDN Snapshots will be cached, they need to be removed manually to actually be reloaded. This file should be located at /opt/traffic_router/db/cr-config.json. This should be done before starting or restarting Traffic Router.

   #56 Starting and Testing Traffic Router

   [root@trafficrouter /]# systemctl start traffic_router
   [root@trafficrouter /]# dig @localhost mycdn.ciab.test
   
   ; <<>> DiG 9.9.4-RedHat-9.9.4-72.el7 <<>> @localhost mycdn.ciab.test
   ; (2 servers found)
   ;; global options: +cmd
   ;; Got answer:
   ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 27109
   ;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
   ;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
   
   ;; QUESTION SECTION:
   ;mycdn.ciab.test.       IN  A
   
   ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
   mycdn.ciab.test.    30  IN  SOA trafficrouter.infra.ciab.test. twelve_monkeys.mycdn.ciab.test. 2019010918 28800 7200 604800 30
   
   ;; Query time: 28 msec
   ;; SERVER: ::1#53(::1)
   ;; WHEN: Wed Jan 09 21:27:57 UTC 2019
   ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 104
   

7. Perform a CDN Snapshot.

   Note

   Once the Snapshot is taken, live traffic will be sent to the new Traffic Routers provided that their status has been set to ONLINE.

8. Ensure that the parent domain (e.g.: cdn.local) for the CDN’s top level domain (e.g.: ciab.cdn.local) contains a delegation (Name Server records) for the new Traffic Router, and that the value specified matches the FQDN of the Traffic Router.

Configuring Traffic Router

Changed in version 1.5: Many of the configuration files under /opt/traffic_router/conf are now only needed to override the default configuration values for Traffic Router. Most of the given default values will work well for any CDN. Critical values that must be changed are hostnames and credentials for communicating with other Traffic Control components such as Traffic Ops and Traffic Monitor. Pre-existing installations that store configuration files under /opt/traffic_router/conf will still be used and honored for Traffic Router 1.5 onward.

Changed in version 3.0: Traffic Router 3.0 has been converted to a formal Tomcat instance, meaning that is now installed separately from the Tomcat servlet engine. The Traffic Router installation package contains all of the Traffic Router-specific software, configuration and startup scripts including some additional configuration files needed for Tomcat. These new configuration files can all be found in the /opt/traffic_router/conf directory and generally serve to override Tomcat’s default settings.

For the most part, the configuration files and Parameters used by Traffic Router are used to bring it online and start communicating with various Traffic Control components. Once Traffic Router is successfully communicating with Traffic Control, configuration should mostly be performed in Traffic Portal, and will be distributed throughout Traffic Control via CDN Snapshot process.

Table 60 Traffic Router Configuration File Parameters

Configuration File	Parameter Name	Description	Default Value
traffic_monitor.properties	traffic_monitor.bootstrap.hosts	Semicolon-delimited Traffic Monitor FQDNs with port numbers as necessary	N/A
	traffic_monitor.bootstrap.local	Use only the Traffic Monitors specified in local configuration files	false
	traffic_monitor.properties	Path to file:traffic_monitor.properties; used internally to monitor the file for changes	/opt/traffic_router/traffic_monitor.properties
	traffic_monitor.properties.reload.period	The interval in milliseconds for Traffic Router to wait between reloading this configuration file	60000
dns.properties	dns.tcp.port	TCP port that Traffic Router will use for incoming DNS requests	53
	dns.tcp.backlog	Maximum length of the queue for incoming TCP connection requests	0
	dns.tcp.host	IP Address Traffic Router will listen on for incoming TCP DNS requests	0.0.0.0
	dns.udp.host	IP Address Traffic Router will listen on for incoming UDP DNS requests	0.0.0.0
	dns.udp.port	UDP port that Traffic Router will use for incoming DNS requests	53
	dns.max-threads	Maximum number of threads used to process incoming DNS requests	1000
	dns.queue-depth	Maximum number of threads allowed to queue when all workers threads are busy. To disable the queue, set to 0, or to allow an unlimited sized queue, set to -1.	1000
	dns.zones.dir	Path to automatically generated zone files for reference	/opt/traffic_router/var/auto-zones
traffic_ops.properties	traffic_ops.username	Username with which to access the Traffic Ops API (must have the admin Role)	admin
	traffic_ops.password	Password for the user specified in traffic_ops.username	N/A
cache.properties	cache.geolocation.database	Full path to the local copy of a geographic IP mapping database (usually MaxMind’s GeoIP2)	/opt/traffic_router/db/GeoIP2-City.mmdb
	cache.geolocation.database.refresh.period	The interval in milliseconds for Traffic Router to wait between polling for changes to the GeoIP2 database	604800000
	cache.czmap.database	Full path to the local copy of the coverage zone file	/opt/traffic_router/db/czmap.json
	cache.czmap.database.refresh.period	The interval in milliseconds for Traffic Router to wait between polling for a new coverage zone file	10800000
	cache.dczmap.database	Full path to the local copy of the deep coverage zone file	/opt/traffic_router/db/dczmap.json
	cache.dczmap.database.refresh.period	The interval in milliseconds for Traffic Router to wait between polling for a new deep coverage zone file	10800000
	cache.health.json	Full path to the local copy of the health state	/opt/traffic_router/db/health.json
	cache.health.json.refresh.period	The interval in milliseconds which Traffic Router will poll for a new health state file	1000
	cache.config.json	Full path to the locally cached copy of the CDN Snapshot	/opt/traffic_router/db/cr-config.json
	cache.config.json.refresh.period	The interval in milliseconds which Traffic Router will poll for a new Snapshot	60000
startup.properties	various parameters	This configuration is used by systemd(1) to set environment variables when the traffic_router service is started. It primarily consists of command line settings for the Java process	N/A
log4j2.xml	various parameters	Configuration of log4j is documented on their site; adjust as needed Log rotation is handled by logrotate. Relevant files are in /etc/logrotate.d and in /etc/cron.daily.	N/A
server.xml	various parameters	Traffic Router specific configuration for Apache Tomcat. See the Apache Tomcat documentation	N/A
web.xml	various parameters	Default settings for all Web Applications running in the Traffic Router instance of Tomcat	N/A

The Traffic Router Profile

Much of a Traffic Router’s configuration can be obtained through the Parameters on its Profile. The Parameters of a Traffic Router’s Profile that have meaning (others are just ignored) are detailed in the The Parameters of a Traffic Router Profile.

Table 61 The Parameters of a Traffic Router Profile

Name	Config File	Value Description
ecsEnable	CRConfig.json	Boolean value to enable or disable EDNS0 client subnet extensions. This is a universal value for the CDN but can be set on the Delivery Service level through the EDNS0 Client Subnet Enabled field.
geolocation.polling.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where a geographic IP mapping database may be found.
geolocation.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for an updated geographic IP mapping database.
certificates.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for Delivery Service certificates.
certificate.api.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where Traffic Router can request Delivery Service certificates from.
regional_geoblock.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for Regional Geo-blocking rules.
regional_geoblock.polling.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where Traffic Router can request Regional Geo-blocking rules from.
anonymousip.policy.configuration	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where Traffic Router can request the Anonymous IP Blocking configuration file from.
anonymousip.polling.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where Traffic Router can request the Anonymous IP Database from.
anonymousip.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for the Anonymous IP Blocking configuration and database
coveragezone.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for an updated Coverage Zone Map.
coveragezone.polling.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where a Coverage Zone Map may be found.
deepcoveragezone.polling.interval	CRConfig.json	How often - in milliseconds - Traffic Router should check for an updated Deep Coverage Zone Map
deepcoveragezone.polling.url	CRConfig.json	The location (URL) where a Deep Coverage Zone Map may be found.
strip.special.query.params	CRConfig.json	If “true”, Traffic Router will strip its special query parameters (namely “trred” and “fakeClientIpAddress”) from its responses. Note: the special query parameter “format” is not stripped due to its generality.
tld.soa.expire	CRConfig.json	The value for the “expire” field the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on SOA records.
tld.soa.minimum	CRConfig.json	The value for the minimum field the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on SOA records.
tld.soa.admin	CRConfig.json	The DNS Start of Authority administration email address, which clients will be directed to contact for support if DNS is not working correctly.
tld.soa.retry	CRConfig.json	The value for the “retry” field the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on SOA records.
tld.soa.refresh	CRConfig.json	The value for the “refresh” field the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on SOA records.
tld.ttls.NS	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on NS records.
tld.ttls.SOA	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on SOA records.
tld.ttls.AAAA	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on AAAA records.
tld.ttls.A	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on A records.
tld.ttls.DNSKEY	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on DNSKEY records.
tld.ttls.DS	CRConfig.json	The TTL the Traffic Router DNS Server will respond with on DS records.
api.port	server.xml	The TCP port on which Traffic Router servers the Traffic Router API.
api.cache-control.max-age	CRConfig.json	The value of the Cache-Control: max-age= HTTP header in the of the Traffic Router API.
api.auth.url	CRConfig.json	The URL of the authentication endpoint of the Traffic Ops API (user/login). The actual FQDN can be subsituted with ${tmHostname} to have Traffic Router automatically fill it in, e.g. https://${tmHostname}/api/4.0/user/login.
consistent.dns.routing	CRConfig.json	Control whether DNS-routed Delivery Services use Consistent Hashing. May improve performance if set to “true”; defaults to “false”.
dnssec.enabled	CRConfig.json	Whether DNSSEC is enabled; this parameter is updated via the DNSSEC administration user interface in Traffic Portal.
dnssec.allow.expired.keys	CRConfig.json	Allow Traffic Router to use expired DNSSEC keys to sign zones; default is “true”. This helps prevent DNSSEC related outages due to failed Traffic Control components or connectivity issues.
dynamic.cache.primer.enabled	CRConfig.json	Allow Traffic Router to attempt to prime the dynamic zone cache; defaults to “true”.
dynamic.cache.primer.limit	CRConfig.json	Limit the number of permutations to prime when dynamic zone cache priming is enabled; defaults to “500”.
edge.dns.limit	CRConfig.json	Integer that controls the default number of records returned when edge.dns.routing is set to true
edge.dns.routing	CRConfig.json	Boolean flag to control whether edge routing is enabled; this controls localization of NS records
edge.http.limit	CRConfig.json	Integer that controls the default number of records returned when edge.http.routing is set to true; this can be overridden by the maxDnsAnswers delivery service setting
edge.http.routing	CRConfig.json	Boolean flag to control whether edge routing is enabled; this controls localization of traffic router routing names for HTTP delivery service records
keystore.maintenance.interval	CRConfig.json	The interval in seconds which Traffic Router will check the Traffic Ops API for new DNSSEC keys.
keystore.api.url	CRConfig.json	The URL of the DNSSEC key management endpoint of the Traffic Ops API (cdns/name/{{name}}/dnsseckeys). The actual FQDN may be substituted with ${tmHostname} to and the name of a CDN may be substituted with ${cdnName} to have Traffic Router automatically fill them in.
keystore.fetch.timeout	CRConfig.json	The timeout in milliseconds for requests to the DNSSEC Key management endpoint of the Traffic Ops API (cdns/name/{{name}}/dnsseckeys).
keystore.fetch.retries	CRConfig.json	The number of times Traffic Router will attempt to load DNSSEC keys before giving up; defaults to “5”.
keystore.fetch.wait	CRConfig.json	The number of milliseconds Traffic Router will wait in between attempts to load DNSSEC keys
signaturemanager.expiration.multiplier	CRConfig.json	Multiplier used in conjunction with a zone’s maximum TTL to calculate DNSSEC signature durations; defaults to “5”.
zonemanager.threadpool.scale	CRConfig.json	Multiplier used to determine the number of CPU cores to use for zone signing operations; defaults to “0.75”.
zonemanager.cache.maintenance.interval	CRConfig.json	The interval in seconds on which Traffic Router will check for zones that need to be re-signed or if dynamic zones need to be expired from its cache.
zonemanager.dynamic.response.expiration	CRConfig.json	A duration (e.g.: “300s”) that defines how long a dynamic zone will remain valid before expiring.
zonemanager.dynamic.concurrencylevel	CRConfig.json	An integer that defines the size of the concurrency level (threads) of the Guava cache used by ZoneManager to store zone material.
zonemanager.dynamic.initialcapacity	CRConfig.json	An integer that defines the initial size of the Guava cache, default is 10000. Too low of a value can lead to expensive resizing.
zonemanager.init.timeout	CRConfig.json	An integer that defines the number of minutes to allow for zone generation; this bounds the zone priming activity.
DNSKEY.generation.multiplier	CRConfig.json	Used to determine when new DNSSEC keys need to be generated. Keys are re-generated if expiration is less than the generation multiplier multiplied by the TTL. If this Parameter does not exist, the default is “10”.
DNSKEY.effective.multiplier	CRConfig.json	Used when creating an effective date for a new key set. New keys are generated with an effective date of that is the effective multiplier multiplied by the TTL less than the old key’s expiration date. Default is “2”.

Deprecated since version ATCv4.0: The use of “CRConfig.xml” as a Parameter “Config File” value has no known meaning, and its use for configuring Traffic Router is deprecated. All configuration (?) that previously used that value should instead use the equivalent Parameter with the Config File value “CRConfig.json”.

Consistent Hashing

Traffic Router does special optimization for some requests to ensure that requests for specific content are consistently fetched from a small number (often exactly one, but dependent on Initial Dispersion) of cache servers - thus ensuring it stays “fresh” in the cache. This is done by performing “consistent hashing” on request paths (when HTTP routing) or names requested for resolution (when DNS routing). To an extent, this behavior is configurable by modifying fields on Delivery Services. Consistent hashing acts differently on a Delivery Service based on how Delivery Services of its Type route content.

• HTTP, HTTP_NO_CACHE, HTTP_LIVE, HTTP_LIVE_NATNL, DNS, DNS_LIVE, and DNS_NATNL

  These Delivery Service Types route directly to cache servers, so consistent hashing is used to choose a cache server to which the client will be redirected.

• STEERING and CLIENT_STEERING

  These Delivery Service Types route to “target” Delivery Services, so consistent hashing is used to choose a “target” which will service the client request.

See also

See the Wikipedia article on consistent hashing.

Consistent Hashing Patterns

New in version 4.0.

Regular expressions (“patterns”) can be provided in the Consistent Hashing Regular Expression field of an HTTP-routed Delivery Service to influence what parts of an HTTP request path are considered when performing consistent hashing. These patterns propagate to Traffic Router through Snapshots.

Important

Consistent Hashing Patterns on STEERING-Type Delivery Services will be used for Consistent Hashing - the Consistent Hashing Pattern(s) of said Delivery Service’s target(s) will not be considered. If Consistent Hashing Patterns are important to the routing of content on a STEERING-Type or CLIENT_STEERING-Type Delivery Service, they must be defined on that Delivery Service itself, and not on its target(s).

How it Works

The supplied Consistent Hashing Regular Expression is applied to the request path to extract matching elements to build a new string before consistent hashing is done. For example, using the pattern /.*?(/.*?/).*?(m3u8) and given the request paths /test/path/asset.m3u8 and /other/path/asset.m3u8 the resulting string used for consistent hashing will be /path/m3u8

See also

See Oracle’s documentation for the java.util.regex.Pattern implementation in Java.

Testing Pattern-Based Consistent Hashing

In order to test this feature without affecting the delivery of traffic through a CDN, there are several test tools in place.

• Traffic Router API

  Several Traffic Router endpoints exist to test regular expression application against a request path, cache server selection, and Delivery Service selection.

• Traffic Ops API

  The consistenthash endpoint will proxy request data through to one of the Traffic Router endpoints in order to test regular expression application against a request path, in the event that direct access to the Traffic Router API is not possible and/or desired.

• Traffic Portal

  On the Delivery Service creation/modification form in Traffic Portal (under Delivery Services), there is a Test Regex section that the user can use to validate a regular expression before saving it to a Delivery Service.

Consistent Hash Query Parameters

Normally, when performing consistent hashing for an HTTP-routed Delivery Service, any query parameters present in the request are ignored. That is, if a client requests /some/path?key=value consistent hashing is only performed on the string ‘/some/path’. However, query parameters that are part of uniquely identifying content can be specified by adding them to the set of Consistent Hashing Query Parameters of a Delivery Service. For example, suppose that the file /video.mp4 is available on the origin server in different resolutions, which are specified by the resolution query parameter. This means that /video.mp4?resolution=480p and /video.mp4?resolution=720p share a request path, but represent different content. In that case, adding resolution to the Delivery Service’s Consistent Hashing Query Parameters will cause consistent hashing to be done on e.g. /video.mp4?resolution=480p instead of just /video.mp4 - however if the client requests e.g. /video.mp4?resolution=480p&bitrate=120kbps consistent hashing will only consider /video.mp4?resolution=480p.

Note

Consistent Hashing Patterns are applied before query parameters are considered - i.e. a pattern cannot match against query parameters, and need not worry about query parameters contaminating matches.

Important

Consistent Hash Query Parameters on the targets of STEERING-Type Delivery Services will be used for Consistent Hashing - the Consistent Hash Query Parameters of said Delivery Services themselves will not be considered. If Consistent Hash Query Parameters are important to the routing of content on a STEERING-Type or CLIENT_STEERING-Type Delivery Service, they must be defined on that Delivery Service’s’ target(s), and not on the Delivery Service itself.

Caution

Certain query parameters are reserved by Traffic Router for its own use, and thus cannot be present in any Consistent Hash Query Parameters. These reserved parameters are:

• trred

• format

• fakeClientIPAddress

DNSSEC

See also

The Wikipedia page on Domain Name Security Extensions

Overview

DNSSEC is a set of extensions to DNS that provides a cryptographic mechanism for resolvers to verify the authenticity of responses served by an authoritative DNS server. Several RFCs (RFC 4033, RFC 4044, RFC 4045) describe the low level details and define the extensions, RFC 7129 provides clarification around authenticated denial of existence of records, and finally RFC 6781 describes operational best practices for administering an authoritative DNSSEC-enabled DNS server. The authenticated denial of existence RFC 7129 describes how an authoritative DNS server responds in NXDOMAIN and NODATA scenarios when DNSSEC is enabled. Traffic Router currently supports DNSSEC with NSEC, however, NSEC3 and more configurable options are planned for the future.

Operation

Upon startup or a configuration change, Traffic Router obtains keys from the ‘keystore’ API in Traffic Ops which returns KSKs and ZSKs for each Delivery Service that is a sub-domain of the CDN’s TLD in addition to the keys for the CDN TLD itself. Each key has timing information that allows Traffic Router to determine key validity (expiration, inception, and effective dates) in addition to the appropriate TTL to use for the DNSKEY record(s). All TTLs are configurable Parameters in The Traffic Router Profile.

Once Traffic Router obtains the key data from the API, it converts each public key into the appropriate record types (DNSKEY, DS) to place in zones and uses the private key to sign zones. DNSKEY records are added to each Delivery Service’s zone (e.g.: demo1.mycdn.ciab.test) for every valid key that exists, in addition to the CDN TLD’s zone. A DS record is generated from each zone’s KSK and is placed in the CDN TLD’s zone (e.g.: mycdn.ciab.test); the DS record for the CDN TLD must be placed in its parent zone, which is not managed by Traffic Control.

The DNSKEY to DS record relationship allows resolvers to validate signatures across zone delegation points. With Traffic Control, we control all delegation points below the CDN’s TLD, however, the DS record for the CDN TLD must be placed in the parent zone (e.g.: ciab.test), which is not managed by Traffic Control. As such, the DS record must be placed in the parent zone prior to enabling DNSSEC, and prior to generating a new CDN KSK. Based on your deployment’s DNS configuration, this might be a manual process or it might be automated. Either way, extreme care and diligence must be taken and knowledge of the management of the upstream zone is imperative for a successful DNSSEC deployment.

To enable DNSSEC for a CDN in Traffic Portal, Go to CDNs from the sidebar and click on the desired CDN, then toggle the ‘DNSSEC Enabled’ field to ‘true’, and click on the green Update button to save the changes.

Rolling Zone Signing Keys

Traffic Router currently follows the ZSK pre-publishing operational best practice described in RFC 6781#section-4.1.1.1. Once DNSSEC is enabled for a CDN in Traffic Portal, key rolls are triggered by Traffic Ops via the automated key generation process, and Traffic Router selects the active ZSKs based on the expiration information returned from the ‘keystore’ API of Traffic Ops.

Edge Traffic Routing

Overview

Edge Traffic Routing is a feature that enables localization for more DNS record types than just the routing name for DNS delivery services. This feature has two main components: localization of HTTP delivery service routing names and localization for CDN-managed NS records. This allows Traffic Router to scale horizontally more easily, as there is a practical limit to how many records can be in an RRset for NS, A, or AAAA record types. The practical limit is typically an answer size exceeding 512 bytes; we have observed issues where some clients and/or resolvers do not honor larger answer responses, while in some cases, resolvers are unable to use TCP for larger responses. Additionally, this feature allows Traffic Router to serve an RRset containing only Traffic Routers that are near the client (resolver), placing more control over which Traffic Routers a given resolver or client will interact with.

Localizing NS records reduces latency for the resolver, which, due to caching in DNS is of little utility for NS records, but it will force resolvers to use the closest Traffic Routers for all queries. This is important for look-ups of CDN routing name records that have very short TTLs, meaning DNS traffic for routing name records is frequent. Like localization for routing names of DNS delivery services, localizing the routing name for HTTP delivery services provides the client (end user) with a list of Traffic Routers that are physically close, reducing latency when the client moves from DNS resolution to the HTTP connection to Traffic Router for the 302 redirect to the edge cache. This feature reduces latency between a resolver and Traffic Router, reduces latency for the client’s HTTP request to Traffic Router, and allows Traffic Control to dictate which Traffic Routers are used in any given location when a client can be localized.

Edge DNS Routing

Edge DNS routing refers to the localization of NS records in Traffic Router. This can be turned on and off via the edge.dns.routing parameter; the number of records returned is controlled via edge.dns.limit and there is a hard-coded default limit of 4 when this feature is enabled. See The Traffic Router Profile documentation for parameter details.

Edge HTTP Routing

Edge HTTP routing refers to the localization of A and AAAA records that represent routing names for HTTP delivery services. This can be turned on and off via the edge.http.routing parameter; the number of records returned is controlled via edge.http.limit and there is a hard-coded default limit of 4 when this feature is enabled. The default or global limit can be overridden by modifying the maxDnsAnswers setting on the delivery service. See The Traffic Router Profile documentation for parameter details.

Edge Traffic Router Selection

Traffic Router performs localization on client requests in order to determine which Traffic Routers should service a given request. After localization, Traffic Router will perform a consistent hash on the incoming name and will use the value to refine Traffic Router selection. There are two main cases for Traffic Router selection: a localization hit, and a localization miss.

Localization Hit: Consistent Hash (CH)

When a client is localized, Traffic Router selects the nearest Traffic Router Location (Cache Group) based on proximity. Proximity is determined by using the latitude and longitude of the client, regardless of whether it is a coverage zone or geolocation hit, and the latitude and longitude specified on Traffic Router Locations. Once the location is identified, a consistent hash is performed on the incoming name and the list of Traffic Routers is ordered based upon the consistent hash. Once ordered, the list is limited to the appropriate number based on the limit parameter specified by the hard-coded default (4), edge.dns.limit, edge.http.limit, or maxDnsAnswers, depending on the configuration and request being localized. This approach can be thought of as the CH selection process.

Localization Miss: Consistent Hash + Round Robin (CH + RR)

When a client cannot be localized, Traffic Router still needs to produce a list of Traffic Routers to service the request. Because the number of Traffic Routers in the CDN could far exceed the practical limits of what constitutes a “normal” sized answer, a selection algorithm is applied to select Traffic Routers. Much like the localization hit scenario, the incoming request name is consistent hashed and results size is limited by the same parameters. Because no client location is known, Traffic Router must distribute the load across all Traffic Router Locations. To distribute the load, Traffic Router will order all Traffic Routers at each location based on the consistent hash, selecting a Traffic Router at the nth position, incrementing the index, n, after iterating over all locations.

For example, with four Traffic Router Locations each containing 10 Traffic Routers and a limit of 6, the algorithm would:

• Consistent hash the incoming name

• Order the Traffic Routers at each location by the consistent hash

• Select the Traffic Router at at the first position of each location

• Select the Traffic Router at the second position of each location, stopping after selecting the 6th Traffic Router

Because the algorithm employs consistent hashing, the answers should be consistent as long as the topology remains the same. This approach can be thought of as the consistent hash round robin (CH + RR) selection process.

Example Request Flow

The following is an example of the request flow when a client requests the routing name for an example delivery service, tr.service.cdn.example.com. The request flow assumes that the resolver is cold and has yet to build a local cache of look-ups, meaning it has to walk the domain hierarchy asking for NS records until it reaches service.cdn.example.com. This example starts after the resolver has determined which name servers are authoritative for cdn.example.com. Note that the same logic is applied for each of the three queries made by the resolver.

Fig. 21 Example Request Flow for Edge Traffic Routing. Note this picks up when the resolver hits the CDN managed domain.

Troubleshooting and log files

Traffic Router log files can be found under /opt/traffic_router/var/log and /opt/tomcat/logs. Initialization and shutdown logs are in /opt/tomcat/logs/catalinadate.out. Application related logging is in /opt/traffic_router/var/log/traffic_router.log, while access logs are written to /opt/traffic_router/var/log/access.log.

Event Log File Format

Summary

All access events to Traffic Router are logged to the file /opt/traffic_router/var/log/access.log. This file grows up to 200MB and gets rolled into older log files, ten log files total are kept (total of up to 2GB of logged events per Traffic Router instance)

Traffic Router logs access events in a format that largely follows ATS event logging format.

Message Format

• Except for the first item, each event that is logged is a series of space-separated key/value pairs.

• The first item is always the Unix epoch in seconds with a decimal field precision of up to milliseconds.

• Each key/value pair is in the form of unquoted_string="optionally quoted string"

• Values that are quoted strings may contain whitespace characters.

• Values that are not quoted should not contains any whitespace characters.

Note

Any value that is a single dash character or a dash character enclosed in quotes represents an empty value

Table 62 Fields Always Present

Name	Description	Data
qtype	Whether the request was for DNS or HTTP	Always “DNS” or “HTTP”
chi	The IP address of the requester	Depends on whether this was a DNS or HTTP request, see other sections
rhi	The IP address of the request source address	Depends on whether this was a DNS or HTTP request, see other sections
ttms	The amount of time in milliseconds it took Traffic Router to process the request	A number greater than or equal to zero
rtype	Routing result type	One of ERROR, CZ, DEEP_CZ, GEO, MISS, STATIC_ROUTE, DS_REDIRECT, DS_MISS, INIT, FED
rloc	GeoLocation of result	Latitude and longitude in degrees as floating point numbers
rdtl	Result details Associated with unusual conditions	One of DS_NOT_FOUND, DS_NO_BYPASS, DS_BYPASS, DS_CZ_ONLY, DS_CZ_BACKUP_CG
rerr	Message about an internal Traffic Router error	String

See also

If Regional Geo-Blocking is enabled on the Delivery Service, an additional field (rgb) will appear.

Sample Message

Items within brackets are detailed under the HTTP and DNS sections

#57 Example Logfile Lines

144140678.000 qtype=DNS chi=192.168.10.11 rhi=- ttms=789 [Fields Specific to the DNS request] rtype=CZ rloc="40.252611,58.439389" rdtl=- rerr="-" [Fields Specific to the DNS result]
144140678.000 qtype=HTTP chi=192.168.10.11 rhi=- ttms=789 [Fields Specific to the HTTP request] rtype=GEO rloc="40.252611,58.439389" rdtl=- rerr="-" [Fields Specific to the HTTP result]

Note

These samples contain fields that are always present for every single access event to Traffic Router

rtype Meanings

-

The request was not redirected. This is usually a result of a DNS request to the Traffic Router or an explicit denial for that request

ANON_BLOCK

The client’s IP matched an Anonymous Blocking rule and was blocked

CZ

The result was derived from Coverage Zone data based on the address in the chi field

DEEP_CZ

The result was derived from Deep Coverage Zone data based on the address in the chi field

DS_MISS

_*HTTP Only*_ No HTTP Delivery Service supports either this request’s URL path or headers

DS_REDIRECT

The result is using the Bypass Destination configured for the matched Delivery Service when that Delivery Service is unavailable or does not have the requested resource

ERROR

An internal error occurred within Traffic Router, more details may be found in the rerr field

FED

_*DNS Only*_ The result was obtained through federated coverage zone data outside of any Delivery Services

GEO

The result was derived from geolocation service based on the address in the chi field

GEO_REDIRECT

The request was redirected based on the National Geo blocking (Geo Limit Redirect URL) configured on the Delivery Service

GEO_DS

The request was redirected to the Miss Location configured on the Delivery Service, because CZF couldn’t resolve the client IP, and Maxmind returned the default coordinates of the country code of the client IP

MISS

Traffic Router was unable to resolve a DNS request or find a cache for the requested resource

RGALT

The request was redirected to the Regional Geo-Blocking URL. Regional Geo blocking is enabled on the Delivery Service and is configured through the regional_geoblock.polling.url Parameter on the Traffic Router Profile

RGDENY

_*DNS Only*_ The result was obtained through federated coverage zone data outside of any Delivery Service - the request was regionally blocked because there was no rule for the request made

STATIC_ROUTE

_*DNS Only*_ No DNS Delivery Service supports the hostname portion of the requested URL

rdtl Meanings

-

The request was not redirected. This is usually a result of a DNS request to the Traffic Router or an explicit denial for that request

DS_BYPASS

Used a bypass destination for redirection of the Delivery Service

DS_CLIENT_GEO_UNSUPPORTED

Traffic Router did not find a resource supported by coverage zone data and was unable to determine the geographic location of the requesting client

DS_CZ_BACKUP_CG

Traffic Router found a backup cache via fall-back (through the edgeLocation field of a Snapshot) or via coordinates (Coverage Zone File) configuration

DS_CZ_ONLY

The selected Delivery Service only supports resource lookup based on coverage zone data

DS_NO_BYPASS

No valid bypass destination is configured for the matched Delivery Service and the Delivery Service does not have the requested resource

DS_NOT_FOUND

Always goes with rtypes STATIC_ROUTE and DS_MISS

GEO_NO_CACHE_FOUND

Traffic Router could not find a resource via geographic location data based on the requesting client’s location

NO_DETAILS

This entry is for a standard request

REGIONAL_GEO_ALTERNATE_WITHOUT_CACHE

This goes with the rtype RGDENY. The URL is being regionally blocked

REGIONAL_GEO_NO_RULE

The request was blocked because there was no rule in the Delivery Service for the request

HTTP Specifics

#58 Sample Message

1452197640.936 qtype=HTTP chi=69.241.53.218 rhi=- url="http://foo.test.example.com/some/asset.m3u8" cqhm=GET cqhv=HTTP/1.1 rtype=GEO rloc="40.252611,58.439389" rdtl=- rerr="-" pssc=302 ttms=0 rurl="http://cache1.test.example.com:8090/some/asset.m3u8" rh="Accept: */*" rh="myheader: asdasdasdasfasg"

Table 63 Request Fields

Name	Description	Data
url	Requested URL with query string	A URL String
cqhm	Http Method	e.g GET, POST
cqhv	Http Protocol Version	e.g. HTTP/1.1
rh	One or more of these key value pairs may exist in a logged event and are controlled by the configuration of the matched Delivery Service | Key/value pair of the format name: value

Table 64 Response Fields

Name	Description
rurl	The resulting URL of the resource requested by the client

DNS Specifics

#59 Sample Message

144140678.000 qtype=DNS chi=192.168.10.11 rhi=- ttms=123 xn=65535 fqdn=www.example.com. type=A class=IN ttl=12345 rcode=NOERROR rtype=CZ rloc="40.252611,58.439389" rdtl=- rerr="-" ans="192.168.1.2 192.168.3.4 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:c0a8:102 0:0:0:0:0:ffff:c0a8:304"

Table 65 Request Fields

Name	Description	Data
xn	The ID from the client DNS request header	a whole number between 0 and 65535 (inclusive)
rhi	The IP address of the resolver when EDNS0 client subnet extensions are enabled.	An IPv4 or IPv6 string, or dash if request is for resolver only and no client subnet is present
fqdn	The qname field from the client DNS request message (i.e. the FQDN the client is requesting be	A series of DNS labels/domains separated by ‘.’ characters and ending with a ‘.’ character
type	The qtype field from the client DNS request message (i.e. the typeof resolution that’s requested such as IPv4, IPv6)	Examples are A (IpV4), AAAA (IpV6), NS, SOA, and CNAME, (see qtype)
class	The qclass field from the client DNS request message (i.e. the class of resource being requested)	Either IN or ANY (Traffic Router rejects requests with any other value of class)

Table 66 Response Fields

Name	Description	Data
ttl	The ‘time to live’ in seconds for the answer provided by Traffic Router (clients can reliably use this answer for this long without re-querying traffic router)	A whole number between 0 and 4294967295 (inclusive)
rcode	The result code for the DNS answer provided by Traffic Router	One of NOERROR (success), NOTIMP (request is not NOTIMP (request is not supported), REFUSED (request is refused to be answered), or NXDOMAIN (the domain/name requested does not exist)

Deep Caching

Overview

Deep Caching is a feature that enables clients to be routed to the closest possible “deep” Edge-tier cache servers on a per-Delivery Service basis. The term “deep” is used in the networking sense, meaning that the Edge-tier cache servers are located deep in the network where the number of network hops to a client is as minimal. This deep caching topology is desirable because storing content closer to the client gives better bandwidth savings, and sometimes the cost of bandwidth usage in the network outweighs the cost of adding storage. While it may not be feasible to cache an entire copy of the CDN’s contents in every deep location (for the best possible bandwidth savings), storing just a relatively small amount of the CDN’s most requested content can lead to very high bandwidth savings.

What You Need

1. Edge cache deployed in “deep” locations and registered in Traffic Ops

2. A Deep Coverage Zone File mapping these deep cache hostnames to specific network prefixes

3. Deep caching Parameters in the Traffic Router Profile

   • deepcoveragezone.polling.interval

   • deepcoveragezone.polling.url

   See also

   See The Traffic Router Profile for details.

4. Deep Caching enabled on one or more HTTP Delivery Services (i.e. ‘Deep Caching’ field on the Delivery Service details page (under Advanced Options) set to ALWAYS)

How it Works

Deep Coverage Zone routing is very similar to that of regular Coverage Zone routing, except that the DCZF is preferred over the regular CZF for Delivery Services with Deep Caching enabled. If the client requests a Deep Caching-enabled Delivery Service and their IP address gets a “hit” in the DCZF, Traffic Router will attempt to route that client to one of the available “deep” cache servers in the client’s corresponding zone. If there are no “deep” cache servers available for a client’s request, Traffic Router will fall back to the regular CZF and continue regular CZF routing from there.

Steering Feature

Overview

A Steering Delivery Service is a Delivery Service that is used to route a client to another Delivery Service. The Type of a Steering Delivery Service is either STEERING or CLIENT_STEERING. A Steering Delivery Service will have target Delivery Services configured for it with weights assigned to them. Traffic Router uses the weights to make a consistent hash ring which it then uses to make sure that requests are routed to a target based on the configured weights. This consistent hash ring is separate from the consistent hash ring used in cache selection.

Special regular expressions - referred to as ‘filters’ - can also be configured for target Delivery Services to pin traffic to a specific Delivery Service. For example, if the filter .*/news/.* for a target called target-ds-1 is created, any requests to Traffic Router with “news” in them will be routed to target-ds-1. This will happen regardless of the configured weights.

Some other points of interest

• Steering is currently only available for HTTP Delivery Services that are a part of the same CDN.

• A new role called STEERING has been added to the Traffic Ops database. Only users with the Steering Role or higher can modify steering assignments for a Delivery Service.

• Traffic Router uses the steering endpoints of the Traffic Ops API to poll for steering assignments, the assignments are then used when routing traffic.

A couple simple use-cases for Steering are:

• Migrating traffic from one Delivery Service to another over time.

• Trying out new functionality for a subset of traffic with an experimental Delivery Service.

• Load balancing between Delivery Services

The Difference Between STEERING and CLIENT_STEERING

The only difference between the STEERING and CLIENT_STEERING Delivery Service Types is that CLIENT_STEERING explicitly allows a client to bypass Steering by choosing a destination Delivery Service. A client can accomplish this by providing the X-TC-Steering-Option HTTP header with a value of the xml_id of the target Delivery Service to which they desire to be routed. When Traffic Router receives this header it will route to the requested target Delivery Service regardless of weight configuration. This header is ignored by STEERING Delivery Services.

Configuration

The following needs to be completed for Steering to work correctly:

1. Two target Delivery Services are created in Traffic Ops. They must both be HTTP Delivery Services part of the same CDN.

2. A Delivery Service with type STEERING or CLIENT_STEERING is created in Traffic Portal.

3. Target Delivery Services are assigned to the Steering Delivery Service using Traffic Portal.

4. A user with the role of Steering is created.

5. The Steering user assigns weights to the target Delivery Services.

6. If desired, the Steering user can create filters for the target Delivery Services.

See also

For more information see Configure Delivery Service Steering.

HTTPS for HTTP Delivery Services

New in version 1.7: Traffic Router now has the ability to allow HTTPS traffic between itself and clients on a per-HTTP Delivery Service basis.

Note

As of version 3.0 Traffic Router has been integrated with native OpenSSL. This makes establishing HTTPS connections to Traffic Router much less expensive than previous versions. However establishing an HTTPS connection is more computationally demanding than an HTTP connection. Since each client will in turn get redirected to an ATS instance, Traffic Router is most always creating a new HTTPS connection for all HTTPS traffic. It is likely to mean that an existing Traffic Router may have some decrease in performance if you wish to support a lot of HTTPS traffic. As noted for DNSSEC, you may need to plan to scale Traffic Router vertically and/or horizontally to handle the new load.

The HTTPS set up process is:

1. Select one of ‘1 - HTTPS’, ‘2 - HTTP AND HTTPS’, or ‘3 - HTTP TO HTTPS’ for the Delivery Service

2. Generate private keys for the Delivery Service using a wildcard domain such as *.my-delivery-service.my-cdn.example.com

3. Obtain and import signed certificate chain

4. Perform a CDN Snapshot

Clients may make HTTPS requests to Delivery Services only after the CDN Snapshot propagates to Traffic Router and it receives the certificate chain from Traffic Ops.

Protocol Options

HTTP

Any secure client will get an SSL handshake error. Non-secure clients will experience the same behavior as prior to 1.7

HTTPS

Traffic Router will only redirect (send a 302 Found response) to clients communicating with a secure connection, all other clients will receive a 503 Service Unavailable response

HTTP AND HTTPS

Traffic Router will redirect both secure and non-secure clients

HTTP TO HTTPS

Traffic Router will redirect non-secure clients with a 302 Found response and a location that is secure (i.e. an https:// URL instead of an http:// URL), while secure clients will be redirected immediately to an appropriate target or cache server.

Certificate Retrieval

Warning

If you have HTTPS Delivery Services in your CDN, Traffic Router will not accept any connections until it is able to fetch certificates from Traffic Ops and load them into memory. Traffic Router does not persist certificates to the Java Keystore or anywhere else.

Traffic Router fetches certificates into memory:

• At startup time

• When it receives a new CDN Snapshot

• Once an hour starting whenever the most recent of the last of the above occurred

Note

To adjust the frequency at which Traffic Router fetches certificates add the Parameter certificates.polling.interval with the ConfigFile “CRConfig.json” and set it to the desired duration in milliseconds.

Note

Taking a CDN Snapshot may be used at times to avoid waiting the entire polling cycle for a new set of certificates.

Warning

If a CDN Snapshot is taken that involves a Delivery Service missing its certificates, Traffic Router will ignore ALL changes in that CDN Snapshot until one of the following occurs:

• It receives certificates for that Delivery Service

• Another CDN Snapshot is taken and the Delivery Service without certificates is changed such that its HTTP protocol is set to ‘http’

Certificate Chain Ordering

The ordering of certificates within the certificate bundle matters. It must be:

1. Primary Certificate (e.g. the one created for *.my-delivery-service.my-cdn.example.com)

2. Intermediate Certificate(s)

3. Root Certificate from a CA (optional)

Warning

If something is wrong with the certificate chain (e.g. the order of the certificates is backwards or for the wrong domain) the client will get an SSL handshake. Inspection of /opt/tomcat/logs/catalina.log is likely to yield information to reveal this.

To see the ordering of certificates you may have to manually split up your certificate chain and use openssl(1ssl) on each individual certificate

Automatic Certificate Management Environment

Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) is a protocol for automatically generating, renewing, and revoking SSL certificates. Currently, ACME can be used through Let’s Encrypt or through External Account Binding.

External Account Binding

External account binding allows the user to use an existing account with an ACME provider to obtain, renew, and revoke SSL certificates. To use this functionality, fill in the fields in cdn.conf for the ACME provider with which the account is set up. The first time this is used for a specific ACME provider (defined by the acme_provider and user_email fields) the information will be used to get a private key and account URL from the ACME provider and register the account. These will be stored for later use. External account binding information can only be used once, so after the first time, the private key and URL will be used.

Important

The acme_provider and user_email combination must be unique. The acme_provider field must correlate to the AuthType field for each certificate to be renewed using that provider.

External account binding can be set up through cdn.conf by updating the following fields:

Table 67 Fields to update for external account binding using ACME protocol under acme_accounts

Name	Type	Required	Description
acme_provider	string	Yes	The certificate provider. This field needs to correlate to the AuthType field for each certificate so the renewal functionality knows which provider to use.
user_email	string	Yes	The email used to set up the account with the provider.
acme_url	string	Yes	The URL for the ACME.
kid	string	No	The key ID provided by the ACME provider for external account binding.
hmac_encoded	string	No	The HMAC key provided by the ACME provider for external account binding. This should be in Base64 URL encoded.

Note

The kid and hmac_encoded fields are required unless the account has already been registered and the information has been stored in the Traffic Ops Database.

Let’s Encrypt

Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated CA using ACME protocol. Let’s Encrypt performs a domain validation before issuing or renewing a certificate. There are several options for domain validation but for this application the DNS challenge is used in order to receive wildcard certificates. Let’s Encrypt sends a token to be used as a TXT record at _acme-challenge.domain.example.com and after verifying that the token is accessible there, will return the newly generated and signed certificate and key. The basic workflow implemented is:

1. POST to Let’s Encrypt and receive the DNS challenge token.

2. Traffic Ops stores the DNS challenge.

3. Traffic Router has a watcher which checks with Traffic Ops for any new challenges or deleted challenges.

4. When a new record appears, Traffic Router temporarily adds a static route for the specified Delivery Service with the token from Let’s Encrypt at _acme-challenge.domain.example.com.

5. Let’s Encrypt continuously attempts to resolve it as a TXT record to verify ownership of the domain.

Note

DNSSec should be turned on for any CDN using Let’s Encrypt to guard against a ‘Man in the Middle’ interference with this transaction.

1. Let’s Encrypt returns the signed certificate and key to Traffic Ops.

2. Traffic Ops stores the certificate and key in Traffic Vault and removes the DNS challenge record.

3. The Traffic Router watcher removes the TXT record.

Let’s Encrypt can be set up through cdn.conf by updating the following fields:

Table 68 Fields to update for Let’s Encrypt under lets_encrypt

Name	Type	Required	Description
user_email	string	Yes	Email to create account with Let’s Encrypt or to receive expiration updates. If this is not included then rate limits may apply for the number of certificates.
send_expiration_email	boolean	No	Option to send email summarizing certificate expiration status
convert_self_signed	boolean	No	Option to convert self signed to Let’s Encrypt certificates as they expire. Only works for certificates labeled as Self Signed in the Certificate Source field.
renew_days_before_expiration	int	No	Number of days before expiration date to renew certificates
environment	string	No	Let’s Encrypt environment to use. Options are ‘staging’ or ‘production’. Defaults to ‘production’.

Automatic Certificate Renewal

If desired, an automated certificate renewal script is located at /traffic_ops/etc/cron.d/autorenew_certs. This job is setup to be run, but the file must be updated with the username and password for Traffic Ops in order to be run. In cdn.conf the following fields can be defined in order to alter the number of days in advance to renew and send a summary email after renewal.

Note

In order for this to work, the AuthType field for the certificate must match the ACME provider in the cdn.conf.

Important

After the automatic renewal script has run, a queue and snapshot must be run manually in order for the certificates to be used.

Table 69 Fields to update to run the automatic renewal script under acme_renewal:

Name	Type	Required	Description
summary_email	boolean	No	The email address to use for summarizing certificate expiration and renewal status. If it is blank, no email will be sent.
renew_days_before_expiration	int	No	Number of days before expiration date to renew certificates. Default is 30 days.

Table 70 Fields to update for sending emails under smtp

Name	Type	Description
enabled	boolean	Enable sending emails through Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
user	string	User for SMTP server access
password	string	Password for SMTP server access
address	string	SMTP server address including port

Suggested Way of Setting up an HTTPS Delivery Service With Let’s Encrypt Automation

Assuming you have already created a Delivery Service which you plan to modify to use HTTPS, do the following in Traffic Portal:

1. Select one of ‘1 - HTTPS’, ‘2 - HTTP AND HTTPS’, or ‘3 - HTTP TO HTTPS’ for the protocol field of a Delivery Service and click the Update button

2. Go to More ‣ Manage SSL Keys

3. Click on More ‣ Generate SSL Keys

4. Click on the Use Let’s Encrypt slider, click on the green Generate Keys button, then confirm that you want to make these changes

5. Take a new CDN Snapshot

Once this is done you should be able to verify that you are being correctly redirected by Traffic Router using e.g. curl(1) commands to HTTPS destinations on your Delivery Service.

Suggested Way of Setting up an HTTPS Delivery Service With Certificate Authority

Assuming you have already created a Delivery Service which you plan to modify to use HTTPS, do the following in Traffic Portal:

1. Select one of ‘1 - HTTPS’, ‘2 - HTTP AND HTTPS’, or ‘3 - HTTP TO HTTPS’ for the protocol field of a Delivery Service and click the Update button

2. Go to More ‣ Manage SSL Keys

3. Click on More ‣ Generate SSL Keys

4. Fill out the form and click on the green Generate Keys button, then confirm that you want to make these changes

5. Copy the contents of the Certificate Signing Request field and save it locally

6. Go back and select ‘HTTP’ for the protocol field of the Delivery Service and click Save (to avoid preventing other CDN Snapshot updates from being blocked by Traffic Router)

7. Follow your standard procedure for obtaining your signed certificate chain from a CA

8. After receiving your certificate chain import it into Traffic Ops

9. Edit the Delivery Service

10. Restore your original choice for the protocol field and click Save

11. Click More ‣ Manage SSL Keys

12. Paste your key information into the appropriate fields

13. Click the green Update Keys button

14. Take a new CDN Snapshot

Once this is done you should be able to verify that you are being correctly redirected by Traffic Router using e.g. curl(1) commands to HTTPS destinations on your Delivery Service.

Router Load Testing

The Traffic Router load testing tool is located in the Traffic Control repository under test/router. It can be used to simulate a mix of HTTP and HTTPS traffic for a CDN by choosing the number of HTTP Delivery Services and the number HTTPS Delivery Service the test will exercise.

There are 2 parts to the load test:

• A web server that makes the actual requests and takes commands to fetch data from the CDN, start the test, and return current results.

• A web page that’s used to run the test and see the results.

Running the Load Tests

1. First, clone the Traffic Control repository.

2. You will need to make sure you have a CA file on your machine

3. The web server is a Go program, set your GOPATH environment variable appropriately (we suggest $HOME/go or $HOME/src)

4. Open a terminal emulator and navigate to the test/router/server directory inside of the cloned repository

5. Execute the server binary by running go run server.go

6. Using your web browser of choice, open the file test/router/index.html

7. Authenticate against a Traffic Ops host - this should be a nearly instantaneous operation - you can watch the output from server.go for feedback

8. Enter the Traffic Ops host in the second form and click the button to get a list of CDN’s

9. Wait for the web page to show a list of CDN’s under the above form, this may take several seconds

10. The List of CDN’s will display the number of HTTP- and HTTPS-capable Delivery Services that may be exercised

11. Choose the CDN you want to exercise from the drop-down menu

12. Fill out the rest of the form, enter appropriate numbers for each HTTP and HTTPS Delivery Services

13. Click Run Test

14. As the test runs the web page will occasionally report results including running time, latency, and throughput

Tuning Recommendations

The following is an example of the command line parameters set in /opt/traffic_router/conf/startup.properties that has been tested on a multi-core server running under HTTPS load test requests. This is following the general recommendation to use the G1 garbage collector for JVM applications running on multi-core machines. In addition to using the G1 garbage collector the InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent was lowered to run garbage collection more frequently which improved overall throughput for Traffic Router and reduced ‘Stop the World’ garbage collection. Note that any environment variable settings in this file will override those set in /lib/systemd/system/traffic_router.service.

#60 Example CATALINA_OPTS Configuration

CATALINA_OPTS="\
-server -Xms2g -Xmx8g \
-Dlog4j.configurationFile=$CATALINA_BASE/conf/log4j2.xml \
-Djava.library.path=/usr/lib64 \
-XX:+UseG1GC \
-XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions \
-XX:InitiatingHeapOccupancyPercent=30"