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Subnet Matching

Introduction

The Subnet Matching feature helps Mesh Delivery for Enterprise customers better handle p2p traffic inside their corporate network and limit inter-site data transfers. It relies on pre-defined Sites on the Dashboard.

Note: Sites can also be set client-side using the dnaConfig object. Refer our documentation on siteId to learn more.

Sites are groups of users forming a mesh network that only allows video data transfer within itself. With well-defined sites, no video data will be transferred from one site to another ensuring that each sites outbound upload bandwidth is not used, and that download bandwidth is only used to get content from the CDN for a small fraction of users.

eCDN sites

Enabling subnet matching

Properties are a way to fine-tune various parameters across all your Mesh Delivery integrations and can be accessed under the “Properties” section in the dashboard. See our documentation for more information on them.
 

The Subnet Matching Mode option is accessible to Mesh Delivery for Enterprise customers.
 

The drop down allows you to pick one of the 3 available Modes :

Subnet matching modes

The (Network) Map Mode allows to fully define your sites and guarantees that p2p exchanges only happen within a site. You can also configure sites that are not to do p2p (VPN users for instance). A site can be composed of a single subnet or multiple subnets and can be added in the Subnets section.

Sites are composed of four values:

 

Value

Description

Name

The name of the site. Must be unique.

Public IPs

Raw IP and CIDR formats are accepted. 0.0.0.0/0 corresponds to “any address”.

Subnets

Private IPs. Only CIDR format is accepted. 0.0.0.0/0 corresponds to “any address”.

Mesh Enabled

The toggle to decide whether P2P is activated on the site.

 

Whenever a viewer connects to the stream, we gather its public and private IP (if available) and check to see if it belongs to a site.

Any couple of public IP / private IP must correspond to one and only one site.

Note: You can define sites relying only on public IP by entering the wildcard value "0.0.0.0/0" in the subnets column..
This will be considered as a wildcard on private IP by the system and all viewers (even those without access to their private IP) will be considered belonging to this subnet if their public IP is matching regardless of private IP.
 

Similarly, you can define sites based only on private IP addresses and “any address” for the public IP (wildcard value 0.0.0.0/0).

Creating Sites

The dashboard allows you to add your sites through a CSV upload or by manually entering them through the user interface.

Upload your CSV

The CSV upload function allows you to conveniently upload all your sites to the dashboard. The CSV must be in the following format:

 

name,dnaEnabled,publicIPs,subnets

 

For example,

 

Tokyo,true,"203.0.113.1,198.51.100.1",192.0.2.0/29

Rio,false,198.51.100.0/30,"192.0.2.1/29,203.0.113.2/32"

Paris,true,124.50.51.0/30,0.0.0.0/0

To upload your CSV:

  1. Navigate to the Subnets page.

  2. Click the 'Upload CSV' button on the top right corner of the page.

  3. Select your file to upload.

  4. Choose your method of upload.

    1. Add to site list will add the sites in the CSV to the existing list of sites already in the dashboard.

    2. Replace site list will completely remove any existing sites in the dashboard and replace it with the sites in the CSV.
       
  5. Click Submit.
Uploading CSV

Manually through the dashboard

If you do not have a CSV to upload, you can add your sites directly through the dashboard user interface
 

  1. Navigate to the Subnets page.

  2. Click the 'Create' button on the top right corner of the page.

  3. Enter the Name of your site, toggle ON or OFF P2P, enter the public IPs, and the subnet IPs within the site.

  4. Click 'Save' on the top right corner of the page.
Manually adding sites

Editing sites

Saved sites in the dashboard can be edited to reflect any changes you might have in your configurations. You can change the name of your site as well as add or remove any public IPs or subnet IPs.
 

To do this, click the edit icon for the site you would like to edit.

Export to CSV

If you need a complete list of all your sites and their respective public and subnet IPs, you can export them to a CSV with a click of a button. Once you click the 'Export to CSV' button, a CSV file will download to your browser.

Exporting to CSV

Deleting sites

Sites that are no longer in use to your company can be deleted. Deleting sites will permanently remove the sites from the dashboard and cannot be retrieved again. To ensure you don't lose your data, we recommend exporting your sites to CSV before deleting any sites.

Deleting sites

The Mask Mode allows to define sites with minimal configuration efforts.

The only thing you need to provide is your Subnet Prefix Length (an integer between 1 and 32).

Each device applies a mask to its private IP (by selecting the Subnet Prefix Length first bits of its private IP). The resulting number will be the site ID to which this device belongs.

Example: if my private IP is 192.168.165.010 and my Subnet Prefix Length is 16, I belong to site "192.168".

If you have various subnet size in your network:

  • providing us with the smallest size will guarantee that p2p traffic will stay inside subnets but it will break potentially bigger subnets into smaller ones, limiting overall p2p traffic.

  • providing us with the biggest size will maximize p2p performance at the expense of allowing smaller subnets to be grouped into bigger subnets.
Mask mode

The Map + Mask Mode allows to fully define the sites you know in detail (Map) and define sites you don’t know in detail with minimal configuration efforts (Mask). Fully defined sites can be composed of a single subnet or multiple subnets and can be added in the Subnets section.

Unkown devices

No matter the mode you picked, the Unknown Devices options lets you decide if viewers for which we were unable to assign a site should do P2P between themselves or not.

In Map mode, this corresponds to devices:
 

  • with pair (Public IP, Private IP) not belonging to any subnet listed in the Map.

  • unable to access their private IP.
     

In Mask mode and Map + Mask mode, this corresponds to devices who were unable to access their private IP.