Cisco AnyConnect speed woes!

Roy Hirst rhirst at xkl.com
Tue Dec 9 20:14:12 UTC 2014


Have you considered user protocol issues, higher up the stack where your 
NOC investigation can't see them? If TCP is not tuned, and detects TCP 
packets are dropping due to congestion, it drops (halves?) its transmit 
rate until all is well again. At a network operator level, you may have 
the L1 bandwidth ready and willing to tranport all the bits in sight, 
but just one poor TCP stack (old FTP? old SMB?)  in the TCP roundtrip 
will throttle bits presented way down. I have on my desk here a badly 
configured example where poor TCP buffering drops throughput to 5% of 
expected. Well known issue, for IT folks in enterprises. Wireshark etc 
will easily let you see how fast user traffic is arriving. Just a thought.
Roy

*Roy Hirst* | 425-556-5773 | 425-324-0941 cell
XKL LLC | 12020 113th Ave NE, Suite 100 | Kirkland, WA 98034 | USA

On 12/9/2014 12:02 PM, Darden, Patrick wrote:
> MTU should be automatically managed by the AnyConnect client.  With that said, have you done PMTUd (e.g. nmap --script path-mtu <dest-ip> from one endpoint to the next)?
>
> I'd do a network map, working with your upstream provider, to identify and isolate variables.  E.g. to find media changes (wrt MTU changes/mismatches).
> 	--start with icmp traceroute
> 	--next do a udp traceroute
> 	--next do a tcp traceroute
> 	--each traceroute will give you a slightly different picture, some hops will respond to one but not another
> 	--try a vpn connection  from Upstream1 first, to see if it happens there.
> 	--try a vpn connection  from Upstream2 next, to see if it happens there.
> 	--try a vpn connection in reverse from Upstream2, then Upstream1, to see if the speed in one direction, via one or another portal, is faster.
> 	--continue to isolate networks, network devices, until you can find the point (e.g. advertisement injector) or process (e.g. MTU LCD or asymmetric routing) which is causing this.
>
> --p
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces at nanog.org] On Behalf Of Zachary McGibbon
> Sent: Tuesday, December 09, 2014 1:42 PM
> To: NANOG
> Subject: [EXTERNAL]Cisco AnyConnect speed woes!
>
> I'm looking for some input on a situation that has been plaguing our new AnyConnect VPN setup.  Any input would be valuable, we are at a loss for what the problem is.
>
> We recently upgraded our VPN from our old Cisco 3000 VPN concentrators running PPTP and we are now running a pair of Cisco 5545x ASAs in an HA active/standby pair.
>
> The big issue we are having is that many of our users are complaining of low speed when connected to the VPN.  We have done tons of troubleshooting with Cisco TAC and we still haven't found the root of our problem.
>
> Some tests we have done:
>
>     - We have tested changing MTU values
>     - We have tried all combinations of encryption methods (SSL, TLS, IPSec,
>     L2TP) with similar results
>     - We have switched our active/standby boxes
>     - We have tested on our spare 5545x box
>     - We connected our spare box directly to our ISP with another IP address
>     - We have whitelisted our VPN IP on our shaper (Cisco SCE8000) and our
>     IPS (HP Tipping Point)
>     - We have bypassed our Shaper and our IPS
>     - We made sure that traffic from the routers talking to our ASAs is
>     synchronous, OSPF was configured to load balance but this has been changed
>     by changing the costs on the links to the ASAs
>     - We have verified with our two ISPs that they are not doing any kind of
>     filtering or shaping
>     - We have noticed that in some instances that if a user is on a low
>     speed connection that their VPN speed gets cut by about 1/3.  This doesn't
>     seem normal that the VPN would use this much overhead
>     - We do not have the issue when connecting to VPN directly on our own
>     network, only connections from the Internet
>
> If you have any ideas on what we could try net, please let me know!
>
> - Zachary




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