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Disabling NetFlow causes DNS to stop working

rrriip001
Level 1
Level 1

Hello!

I have a 2811 doing dNAT and not much else. I was playing around with NetFlow data exporting, when a very confusing issue arose.

Initially, both interfaces had ip route-cache flow  configured, and everything worked fine. Then I switched to ip flow ingress, which AFAIK is the same command on newer IOS releases.

Now, if I turn inbound NetFlow off on LAN interface with no ip flow ingress, all DNS traffic from LAN to WAN stops coming through.

This is very confusing, since cisco command reference describe ip flow commands as commands for collecting data, not actually doing any switching, and ip route-cache flow is called deprecated and substituted by ip flow ingress.

I'd like to disable ingress netflow in favor of egress, but can't do that, since DNS service is of course mandatory. Even if that's not possible, I would very much like to know what's going on.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!

The config:

Current configuration : 2231 bytes

!

! Last configuration change at 00:19:29 UTC+4 Thu Aug 15 2013 by ***

!

version 12.4

service timestamps debug datetime msec

service timestamps log datetime msec

no service password-encryption

!

hostname ***

!

boot-start-marker

boot-end-marker

!

logging buffered 51200 warnings

!

aaa new-model

!

!

aaa authentication login default local

aaa authorization exec default local

!

aaa session-id common

!

resource policy

!

clock timezone UTC+4 4

ip subnet-zero

!

!

ip cef

!

!

ip flow-cache timeout active 3

!

username *** privilege 15 secret **********************

!

!

!

interface FastEthernet0/0

description RoSNet

ip address 217.171.15.*** 255.255.255.240 secondary

ip address 217.171.15.*** 255.255.255.240

ip flow ingress

ip flow egress

ip nat outside

duplex auto

speed auto

no cdp enable

!

interface FastEthernet0/1

ip address 192.168.0.1 255.255.255.0

ip access-group 101 in

ip flow ingress

ip flow egress

ip nat inside

duplex auto

speed auto

!

ip classless

ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 217.171.15.***

ip route 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.242

ip flow-export version 9

ip flow-export destination 192.168.0.43 9996

!

no ip http server

ip nat inside source list 1 interface FastEthernet0/0 overload

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.129 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.130 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.131 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.134 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.135 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

ip nat inside source static tcp 192.168.0.250 *** 217.171.15.*** *** extendable

!

access-list 1 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255

access-list 12 permit 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.255

access-list 12 deny   any

access-list 101 permit ip any any

snmp-server group snmpsec v2c access 12

snmp-server community public RO 12

!

control-plane

!

!

line con 0

line aux 0

line vty 0 4

access-class 12 in

privilege level 15

transport input telnet

line vty 5 15

access-class 12 in

privilege level 15

transport input telnet

!

scheduler allocate 20000 1000

ntp clock-period 17180328

ntp server 192.168.0.252

!

end

4 Replies 4

rrriip001
Level 1
Level 1

As an update, everything works fine with

no ip cef

...

interface fa0/1

     no ip flow ingress

So looks like CEF doesn't work right without ip flow ingress (route-cache flow) on LAN inteface. However, nowhere in the documentation was I able to find anything about CEF depending on inbound ip flow being enabled.

To sum up (all flow config shown for LAN interface):

ip cef & ip flow ingress : good

ip cef & no ip flow ingress : no DNS traffic

no ip cef & no ip flow ingress : good

no ip cef & ip flow ingress : good

Any ideas what's causing the trouble?

Hi Va Tu,

That doesnt seem to be right. NetFlow needs CEF to be turn on, but CEF doesnt require NetFlow to be on. Does it only affect DNS traffic when you have CEF on and NetFlow off? What's the IOS version on the router?

HTH,

Lei Tian

Thank your for the reply.

It seems to be just DNS, but I can't be sure - no time to test this on a production system. Pings to internet IP's work.

For instance, manually setting 8.8.8.8 DNS on a machine behind the NAT doesn't work, but ping 8.8.8.8 works fine.

Version seems to be one of the older mainline 12.4 releases.

***#sho ver

Cisco IOS Software, 2800 Software (C2800NM-IPBASE-M), Version 12.4(3i), RELEASE

SOFTWARE (fc2)

Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport

Copyright (c) 1986-2007 by Cisco Systems, Inc.

Compiled Wed 28-Nov-07 21:09 by stshen

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 12.4(13r)T, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

I wonder if doing a no ip flow ingress on WAN interface has any adverse effects. Been testing it for a day, found none yet.

If it's just a weird bug of an old IOS release, I guess we'll never know

hi Va Tu,

I met very similar problem. I'm using a Cisco 2801 with IOS version 12.4, detail as below:

Cisco IOS Software, 2801 Software (C2801-IPBASE-M), Version 12.4(1c), RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)

In my case all the PAT clients lost dns when netflow is enabled with CEF.

Hope Cisco expert can help us to figure out what's the problem is.

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