18.12. Routing traffic from a specific subnet to a different default gateway by using the network RHEL system role
You can use policy-based routing to configure a different default gateway for traffic from certain subnets. By using the network RHEL system role, you can automate the creation of the connection profiles, including routing tables and rules.
For example, you can configure RHEL as a router that, by default, routes all traffic to internet provider A using the default route. However, traffic received from the internal workstations subnet is routed to provider B. By using Ansible and the network RHEL system role, you can automate this process and remotely configure connection profiles on the hosts defined in a playbook.
This procedure assumes the following network topology:
Prerequisites
- You have prepared the control node and the managed nodes.
- You are logged in to the control node as a user who can run playbooks on the managed nodes.
-
The account you use to connect to the managed nodes has
sudopermissions for these nodes. -
The managed nodes use NetworkManager and the
firewalldservice. The managed nodes you want to configure has four network interfaces:
-
The
enp7s0interface is connected to the network of provider A. The gateway IP in the provider’s network is198.51.100.2, and the network uses a/30network mask. -
The
enp1s0interface is connected to the network of provider B. The gateway IP in the provider’s network is192.0.2.2, and the network uses a/30network mask. -
The
enp8s0interface is connected to the10.0.0.0/24subnet with internal workstations. -
The
enp9s0interface is connected to the203.0.113.0/24subnet with the company’s servers.
-
The
-
Hosts in the internal workstations subnet use
10.0.0.1as the default gateway. In the procedure, you assign this IP address to theenp8s0network interface of the router. -
Hosts in the server subnet use
203.0.113.1as the default gateway. In the procedure, you assign this IP address to theenp9s0network interface of the router.
Procedure
Create a playbook file, for example,
~/playbook.yml, with the following content:--- - name: Configuring policy-based routing hosts: managed-node-01.example.com tasks: - name: Routing traffic from a specific subnet to a different default gateway ansible.builtin.include_role: name: redhat.rhel_system_roles.network vars: network_connections: - name: Provider-A interface_name: enp7s0 type: ethernet autoconnect: True ip: address: - 198.51.100.1/30 gateway4: 198.51.100.2 dns: - 198.51.100.200 state: up zone: external - name: Provider-B interface_name: enp1s0 type: ethernet autoconnect: True ip: address: - 192.0.2.1/30 route: - network: 0.0.0.0 prefix: 0 gateway: 192.0.2.2 table: 5000 state: up zone: external - name: Internal-Workstations interface_name: enp8s0 type: ethernet autoconnect: True ip: address: - 10.0.0.1/24 route: - network: 10.0.0.0 prefix: 24 table: 5000 routing_rule: - priority: 5 from: 10.0.0.0/24 table: 5000 state: up zone: trusted - name: Servers interface_name: enp9s0 type: ethernet autoconnect: True ip: address: - 203.0.113.1/24 state: up zone: trustedFor details about all variables used in the playbook, see the
/usr/share/ansible/roles/rhel-system-roles.network/README.mdfile on the control node.Validate the playbook syntax:
$ ansible-playbook --syntax-check ~/playbook.ymlNote that this command only validates the syntax and does not protect against a wrong but valid configuration.
Run the playbook:
$ ansible-playbook ~/playbook.yml
Verification
On a RHEL host in the internal workstation subnet:
Install the
traceroutepackage:# dnf install tracerouteUse the
tracerouteutility to display the route to a host on the internet:# traceroute redhat.com traceroute to redhat.com (209.132.183.105), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 _gateway (10.0.0.1) 0.337 ms 0.260 ms 0.223 ms 2 192.0.2.1 (192.0.2.1) 0.884 ms 1.066 ms 1.248 ms ...The output of the command displays that the router sends packets over
192.0.2.1, which is the network of provider B.
On a RHEL host in the server subnet:
Install the
traceroutepackage:# dnf install tracerouteUse the
tracerouteutility to display the route to a host on the internet:# traceroute redhat.com traceroute to redhat.com (209.132.183.105), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 _gateway (203.0.113.1) 2.179 ms 2.073 ms 1.944 ms 2 198.51.100.2 (198.51.100.2) 1.868 ms 1.798 ms 1.549 ms ...The output of the command displays that the router sends packets over
198.51.100.2, which is the network of provider A.
On the RHEL router that you configured using the RHEL system role:
Display the rule list:
# ip rule list 0: from all lookup local 5: from 10.0.0.0/24 lookup 5000 32766: from all lookup main 32767: from all lookup defaultBy default, RHEL contains rules for the tables
local,main, anddefault.Display the routes in table
5000:# ip route list table 5000 default via 192.0.2.2 dev enp1s0 proto static metric 100 10.0.0.0/24 dev enp8s0 proto static scope link src 192.0.2.1 metric 102Display the interfaces and firewall zones:
# firewall-cmd --get-active-zones external interfaces: enp1s0 enp7s0 trusted interfaces: enp8s0 enp9s0Verify that the
externalzone has masquerading enabled:# firewall-cmd --info-zone=external external (active) target: default icmp-block-inversion: no interfaces: enp1s0 enp7s0 sources: services: ssh ports: protocols: masquerade: yes ...