Technical Guide: How Can Newbies Quickly Test And Go Online With Singapore Cn2 Direct Connection?

Short introduction

This guide provides pragmatic and reproducible steps and check items for novice engineers who want to quickly test and go online with Singapore's CN2 direct connection. The article emphasizes connectivity, delay, packet loss and routing policy verification to help find and solve common problems before going online to ensure a stable production environment.

Preparation work and environmental requirements

Confirm the basic environment before testing: obtain the peer gateway IP, ASN, BGP neighbor information and service ports, and ensure that the physical links, optical fibers and SFP modules of the switches and routers are compatible. Prepare a test server with public network routing capabilities for active detection and performance testing.

Testing tools and key indicators

Common tools include ping, traceroute/mtr, iperf3, and tcpdump. Key metrics to focus on are one-way/round-trip latency, jitter, packet loss rate, and available bandwidth. Set acceptable thresholds in advance, such as packet loss less than 0.5%, delay and jitter within business requirements.

Connectivity and latency testing

Use ping and mtr to conduct multi-period detection, record the stable delay and path hop count, and pay attention to whether it passes through unexpected transit nodes. Compare the results in different time periods, identify delays or packet loss fluctuations during peak periods, and communicate with the peer operation or upstream link if necessary.

Bandwidth and Stability Test

Use iperf3 to perform bandwidth testing in the TCP/UDP direction, gradually increase concurrent traffic to observe the link saturation point, and monitor packet loss and delay changes. Long-term stability testing (e.g., 30 minutes to several hours) can help identify sudden jitter or retransmission issues.

BGP routing and policy verification

After establishing a BGP session, first verify the neighbor status, announcement and recycling of route prefixes. Check that policies such as AS PATH, MED, Local Pref, etc. take effect as expected, and use route reachability testing to ensure that traffic follows the intended path and avoids black holes or detours.

Firewalls, MTU and Security Checks

Check whether the firewall/ACL allows BGP, ICMP and the ports required for testing, and confirm that the two-way policy is consistent. Measure and adjust the MTU to prevent performance degradation due to fragmentation, especially when tunneling or carrying additional labels, and ensure there is margin in the interface MTU.

Online steps and rollback plan

Develop a gradual promotion plan before going online: first switch traffic during off-peak hours, divert traffic in batches, and monitor key indicators in real time. Prepare rollback scripts and contact lists. Once the delay or packet loss exceeds the threshold, roll back immediately and record the fault information for subsequent analysis.

Summary and suggestions

For starters, checklist-by-checklist verification of connectivity, performance, and routing strategies is core to quickly rolling out CN2 Direct Connect. It is recommended to repeatedly verify all steps in the test environment, and implement gradual diversion and real-time monitoring during the official switch. If an exception is encountered, roll back in a timely manner and investigate with the peer.