Protecting TCP traffic (Range)

The Range feature brings DDoS protection, load balancing, and content acceleration to any TCP-based protocol. Range is a global TCP proxy running on IBM Cloud® Internet Services (Cloudflare) edge nodes.

Range can be used to:

Protect your TCP ports and protocols from Layer-3 and Layer-4 DDoS attacks.
Protect your HTTP(S) Range app with Layer-7 firewall rules.
Reduce the ability of attackers to snoop and steal sensitive data by enabling TLS encryption.
Integrate with CIS IP firewall, which allows you to block or challenge IP addresses, or entire IP ranges, from reaching your TCP services.
Configure load balancers with TCP health checks, failover, and steering policies to dictate where traffic flows.

Range is only available to Enterprise customers for an additional cost, and is priced per bandwidth usage.

Range limitations

You can create a maximum of 10 Range applications with unique origins. Each Range application with a unique origin must have a unique IP address allocated, and IP addresses are a limited resource. If you need more than 10 Range applications, open an IBM Support case. Support cases to add more Range applications require a review of the use case, and the process can take a few days.

You can create more than 10 applications if they reuse an existing origin, but use different ports.

For TCP Range apps, only IP rules apply. This is because IP rules are applied to OSI Layer 3 and Layer 4. However HTTP(S) Range apps work with both firewall rules and IP rules. In general, firewall rules are designed for properties exposed in OSI Layer 7 (HTTP), such as request headers and body content characteristics.

Adding an application using the console

Follow these steps to add an application using the UI.

Navigate to Security > Range.
Click Create.
Select a type of application from the list menu. You can choose TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, RDP, SSH, or Minecraft.
Enter the application name. Your application becomes associated with a DNS name on your CIS domain.
Enter the edge port. CIS listens for incoming connections to these addresses on this port. Connections to these addresses are proxied to your origin. You can enter a port range (for example: 8080-8090), but the origin must have the same quantity of ports specified in a consecutive range.
Select the edge IP connectivity.
In the Origin section, enter the origin IP and port of your TCP application. You can also select an existing load balancer and its port.
Enable IP firewall (optional). When enabled, IP access rules with a "block" or "allowlist" action are enforced for the application.
Enable edge TLS termination (optional). When enabled, select the type of TLS termination you want to use from the list menu.
Select a PROXY Protocol if you have a proxy in-line that supports PROXY Protocol (optional). This feature is useful if you are running a service that requires knowledge of the true client IP. In most cases, this setting remains off.
Click Create.

Provisioning a Range application incurs additional costs, based on the amount of bandwidth used per application.

Your application is now visible in a tile or table view with the following properties:

Application name
Application type
Edge port
TLS edge termination
Proxy protocol
Origin
Connections from the past hour (polled every minute)
Throughput from the past hour (polled every minute)
The overflow menu (top right corner) has the following options:
- Edit the application
- View metrics for the specified application
- Delete the application

When a Range application is created, it is assigned a unique IPv4 and IPv6 address. These IP addresses are not static and might be subject to change. You can determine the assigned IP address by using DNS. The DNS name always returns the IP addressed assigned to the application.

Viewing metrics

Your application is now ready to proxy TCP traffic through CIS (Cloudflare).

Navigate to Metrics > Range to view your number of connections to applications and throughput traffic. The graphs show metrics for up to 10 applications.

To toggle application metrics, use the Chart key or click the Select applications button. To change the Metrics data time frame, use the list menu.

Range AppTiles

After creating a few apps, the Security > Range page is populated with applications tiles. The application tiles contain the following information:

Application name
Edge port
Origin and port
Connections from the past hour (polled every minute)
Throughput from the past hour (polled every minute)

The application tile also contains an overflow menu in the top corner. The overflow menu provides users the option to:

Edit the application
View metrics for the specified application
- This takes the user to Metrics > Range page, which displays the metrics for only that application.
Delete the application

API usage examples

These are examples to create and list applications using Range.

Creating a Range app

There are two ways you can designate an origin in a Range app.

Origin IP - use parameter origin_direct
Load balancer - use parameters origin_dns and origin_port

For the origin IP request:

curl -X POST \
  https://api.cis.cloud.ibm.com/v1/<url-encoded-crn>/zones/<zone-d>/range/apps \
  -H 'X-Auth-User-Token: <token>' \
  -d '{"protocol":"tcp/22","dns":{"type":"CNAME","name":"ssh.example.com"},"origin_direct":["tcp://172.0.2.1:22"],"proxy_protocol":true,"ip_firewall":true}'

The response follows:

{
    "result": {
        "id": "4f70c3d4f20576b79135b898295e8093",
        "protocol": "tcp/22",
        "dns": {
            "type": "CNAME",
            "name": "ssh.example.com"
        },
        "origin_direct": [
            "tcp://172.0.2.1:22"
        ],
        "ip_firewall": true,
        "proxy_protocol": true,
        "created_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z",
        "modified_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z"
    },
    "success": true,
    "errors": [],
    "messages": []
}

For a load balancer request:

curl -X POST \
  https://api.cis.cloud.ibm.com/v1/<url-encoded-crn>/zones/<zone-d>/range/apps \
  -H 'X-Auth-User-Token: <token>' \
  -d '{"protocol":"tcp/22","dns":{"type":"CNAME","name":"ssh.example.com"},"origin_dns": {"name": "test"},"proxy_protocol":true,"ip_firewall":true, "origin_port": 43}'

The response follows:

{
    "result": {
        "id": "4f70c3d4f20576b79135b898295e8093",
        "protocol": "tcp/22",
        "dns": {
            "type": "CNAME",
            "name": "ssh.example.com"
        },
        "origin_dns": {
          "name": "test"
        },
        "origin_port": 43,
        "ip_firewall": true,
        "proxy_protocol": true,
        "created_on": "2019-01-09T17:39:09.190606Z",
        "modified_on": "2019-01-09T17:39:09.190606Z"
    },
    "success": true,
    "errors": [],
    "messages": []
}

DNS Name - Your application is associated with a DNS name on your domain.
Protocol/Edge port - Port on which your application is running. Connections to these addresses are proxied to your origin.
Origin direct - IP on which your application is running, and the port that you want traffic to flow through from the edge to your origin.
IP Firewall - If enabled, firewall rules with a Block action are enforced for this Range application.
PROXY Protocol - Enable if you have a proxy in-line that supports PROXY Protocol v1. In most cases, this setting remains disabled.
Origin DNS - Name of the load balancer that you want to set as your origin.
Origin Port: - Port of your service.

Listing all Range apps

Use the following request to list all Range apps:

curl -X GET \
  https://api.cis.cloud.ibm.com/v1/<url-encoded-crn>/zones/<zone-d>/range/apps

The response follows:

{
    "result": [
        {
            "id": "4f70c3d4f20546b79135b898295e8093",
            "protocol": "tcp/22",
            "dns": {
                "type": "CNAME",
                "name": "ssh.example.com"
            },
            "origin_direct": [
                "tcp://172.0.2.1:22"
            ],
            "ip_firewall": true,
            "proxy_protocol": true,
            "created_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z",
            "modified_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z"
        }
    ],
    "success": true,
    "errors": [],
    "messages": []
}

Listing a specific Range app

Use the following request to list a specific Range app:

curl -X GET \
  https://api.cis.cloud.ibm.com/v1/<url-encoded-crn>/zones/<zone-d>/range/apps/4f70c3d4f20546b79135b898295e8093

The response follows:

App using the Origin IP

{
    "result": {
        "id": "4f70c3d4f20546b79135b898295e8093",
        "protocol": "tcp/22",
        "dns": {
            "type": "CNAME",
            "name": "ssh.example.com"
        },
        "origin_direct": [
            "tcp://172.0.2.1:22"
        ],
        "ip_firewall": true,
        "proxy_protocol": true,
        "created_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z",
        "modified_on": "2019-01-09T17:33:09.190606Z"
    },
    "success": true,
    "errors": [],
    "messages": []
}

App using a load balancer

{
    "result": {
        "id": "555359036e7f4acc82d69b916f62caba",
        "protocol": "tcp/22",
        "dns": {
            "type": "CNAME",
            "name": "ssh.example.com"
        },
        "origin_dns": {
            "name": "test_update"
        },
        "origin_port": 76,
        "ip_firewall": true,
        "proxy_protocol": true,
        "created_on": "2019-01-10T22:26:47.167008Z",
        "modified_on": "2019-01-10T22:26:47.167008Z"
    },
    "success": true,
    "errors": [],
    "messages": []
}