Reduce ASL3 remove server data usage?

1

I have both an ASL3 and Hamvoip server running at a remote site on an LTE modem. I’m trying to reduce monthly background data usage. The ASL server has 3 nodes and the Hamvoip server has 1 node. Data usage without ANY node connections and just running in the background (plus each server is running Tailscale):
ASL3 1.8MB/Hr UL and 4.5MB/Hr. DL Total of 6.3MB/Hr. Monthly 4.5GB
HamVoip .6MB/Hr. UL and 3.6MH/Hr. DL Total of 3.6MB/Hr. Monthly 2.6GB
So that’s just over 7GB/mo. not counting connections (and some management tasks and a few web page pull downs on Allmon/Supermon and the Router and an occasional alert on the tower mounted camera).
Does this data usage sound in-line with other remote site users? Also, run nethogs which shows network usage by process, on the ASL3 server I keep seeing wget keep popping up as a new Asterisk process every so many seconds. It’s so fast the process closes and goes to the next that I can’t pin it down. Is there some type of update process for the node going on in the background?

2

There are a few ways you can reduce overall traffic:

  1. Disable the use of statpost in rpt.conf. That will stop the status posting to the AllStarLink system that happens every 30-60 seconds. The trade-off is you won’t be able to see link stats, the bubble connection carts, etc.

  2. Disable the asl3-update-nodelist service (sudo systemctl stop asl3-update-nodelist && sudo systemctl disable asl3-update-nodelist), delete the file /var/lib/asterisk/rpt_extnodes, and change node_lookup_method = dns (from “both”) in /etc/asterisk/rpt.conf. Currently, the ASL3 system is configured to use both DNS then files and thus the file service is still pulling down the updated directory every 15 seconds.

  3. If you want to be maximalist about it, disable Allmon3 and Apache on the system and run Alllmon3 from a cloud system or somewhere else, having it reach back to your node over TCP/5038 for data when it needs it. That’ll prevent general web “drive by” traffic hitting the webserver for Allmon3 and such.

3

I just checked one of my nodes and it looks like the timer is firing once every 60 seconds. I also captured how much data is being downloaded and it looks like each run pulls down about 3KB of data (3KB x 60 updates/min = 180KB/hr).

I also noted a mention of Supermon. Running that web service will needs to periodically update the astdb.txt file. ASL3 includes the asl3-update-astdb command (and the related service) that updates that file every 6 hours. But, I’ve also seen some Supermon installation instructions that have you add a cron job. Did you enable the asl3-update-astdb service? Did you also add a cron job to update the astdb.txt file?

4

My question is how do you have Hamvoip running on a server when it is only designed to run on a raspberry Pi?

5

Those are great suggestions.
1). I had already disabled statpost a few weeks past, only because for whatever reason my ASL3 server at the time was throwing errors saying every one of my nodes couldn’t authenticate against the authentication server (even though I could ping the server, the passwords were correct and the nodes were logged in an working just fine). No problem from the Hamvoip server.
2). I didn’t realize ASL3 is configured to use both DNS and files. No reason, the rest of the world uses DNS, right? I trust the new ASL custom DNS service, everything else about ASL has been done right so I will kill the file pull down.
3). No worries about Allmon/Apache, no one can reach it from the outside and I have it running on remote nodes that can look back at the mountaintop servers on 5038, just for that reason.
I appreciate the feedback, will implement Step #2. Jim

6

Asterisk running on an RPi is considered a server.

Bob
K6ECM

7

Great ideas for those of us who only have a cellular data connection.

  • Supermon - Turn off, remove the updater, etc
  • ASL3 nodelist lookup via DNS, disable file updates

I also have changed port 80 and 22 to reduce traffic.

Any other ideas?

Roger
WA1NVC

8

no on a Pi it is a Pi node. not a server. Hamvoip does not have a server version as of yet

9

Using standard AllStarLink terminology, the system running Asterisk/app_rpt is the “Server” and a “Server” hosts one or more “Nodes” regardless of what the underlying hardware is.

1 Like
10

So I adopted suggestion #2 but DNS is just a mess over an LTE connection on ASL3, not sure what is happening. I can no longer connect to external nodes as the IP addresses don’t match between what is in DNS and what my node’s IP currently is. I discovered this when I ssh’d to one of my other remote nodes and in verbose mode I can see what is happening when my ASL node tries to connect to it. It shows the incoming IP of the my ASL node, and then says it doesn’t match the expected IP (where usually the last set in the address is different), and refuses the connection. Possibly an old address? Even though the node is registered. As a side note I have a Hamvoip node at the same remote site and it has no issues connecting to external nodes, the DNS addresses match. I saw a post similar to this from back in November in another thread. Any suggestions?

11

Since you mention using an LTE connection then you want to look at IAX-Based Registration

12

Allan, I figured as much. I had switched to DNS to cut down on data usage on the LTE plan, but I guess I have to bite the bullet and pull down the whole node list. I changed the timer interval on that to 5 mins., instead of every minute. Once I get Tailscale working through a single exit node and can masquerade some IPs, maybe DNS will work again. Jim