Introduction to the NFM-P Control Plane Assurance Manager

General information

The CPAM feature set provides real-time control-plane IGP and BGP topology capture, inspection, visualization, and troubleshooting functions. The CPAM is fully integrated with the NFM-P; the integration enables the CPAM to associate routing information with NFM-P network routes, service tunnels, LSPs, edge-to-edge service traffic paths, and OAM tests. The CPAM provides assurance against routing malfunctions, rapid problem resolution, and cost-effective scaling of the service provider IP/MPLS Network Operations Center (NOC) via simpler tools for new hires or staff redeployment.

The CPAM functions are available from the NFM-P main menu, and support network management activities such as the following:

• Planning

  Planning activities are optimized using real-time topology updates and strong linkages between services and infrastructure layers.

• Management

  Real-time topology updates and multi-layer highlighting allow the rapid assessment of service, tunnel, and routing states on the IGP and IP/MPLS maps.

• Troubleshooting

  Historical OAM trace, SPF and RSVP path monitoring, and checkpoints allow you to rapidly detect and resolve service-level issues for which the root cause is in the control plane.

  Troubleshooting functions include:

  • Path Computation—query the routing plane for its current forwarding decision between endpoints for IGP (SPF/CSPF), BGP prefixes (exit router) or multicast tree (source, group)

  • IP/LSP/SDP/Service Highlight—highlight the possible forwarding paths LSPs (primary, standby, secondaries), SDP (GRE, LDP, CoS, Backup, Load Balancing, Discarding), services (VLL, VPLS, VPRN, IES)

  • IGP/BGP/MP-BGP/Path History—history derived from routing update analysis, checkpoints and statistics. Graphical IGP analysis (map roll-back), checkpoint comparisons, 7-day prefix stability computation.

  • Impact Analysis—categorized changes to the SDP/service and composite services using a given IGP link, an LSP, or an IP path over a period of time.

• Restoration

  Checkpoints and real-time views of IP/MPLS, service, and service tunnel infrastructure allow you to restore network topologies.

• Assurance

  Alarms, network route and tunnel inspection lists, validation functions, checkpoints, and multi-layer views reveal routing faults as they occur.

  Assurance functions include:

  • Network Audit—facilitates the detection of configuration error graphically, via highlights or automated audits of the network.

  • Protocol, Network and Path Monitoring—detection of abnormal routing activity in the network and alarm notification. Routing flaps, prefix unreachability, path delay/jitter exceeded after reroute, diverging paths, routing table drop or jump for Internet and VPRN, etc.

  • Network Simulation—offers the ability to change the routing configuration of the current network or add/remove new routers/links to verify its impact on paths before committing the changes in the real network. This capability is intended for the NOC to verify the impact of upgrade nodes or of failing a link, etc.

CPAM scope of command roles

Permissions for CPAM functions are controlled by the scope of command profiles assigned to user groups. A scope of command profile contains a set of scope of command roles; see the chapter on NFM-P user security in the NSP System Administrator Guide for more information.

To perform functions in the CPAM feature set, user groups must be assigned a scope of command profile with the required scope of command roles.

A system administrator can configure custom scope of command roles to assign permissions. The NFM-P also provides predefined scope of command roles.

The following predefined scope of command roles are specific to CPAM functions:

• CPAM Management

• CPAM OSS PCA

• CPAM Topology Simulator

• Root Cause Analysis (RCA) Object Verification

See the NSP System Administrator Guide for descriptions of predefined scope of command roles and assignable permissions.

CPAM functions

The two main components to the control plane assurance management solution are:

• the CPAM feature set

• a CPAA route analyzer

The CPAM feature set includes control frameworks, applications, and co-ordination functions for the distributed CPAAs. The CPAM also processes the CPAA data.

The CPAM Java processing engine communicates with GUI and XML API clients using the NFM-P API.

The CPAM retrieves data directly from a CPAA. It aggregates and analyzes data from multiple CPAAs and data collected by the NFM-P. In addition, the CPAM co-ordinates CPAA activities for functions that require the participation of more than one CPAA, for example, an IP-to-IP SPF route calculation that involves multiple areas.

Each IGP administrative domain must be connected to at least one CPAA. The CPAM can communicate with the CPAAs through the following channels:

• proprietary protocol over TCP

• SNMPv2c or SNMPv3

• CLI over Telnet or SSH2

Most of the communication that occurs between the CPAM and CPAAs, such as routing updates, TCA, and SPF requests and responses, is over TCP. SNMP is used for CPAA configuration management. A CLI is required for system commands required for device commissioning.

The CPAM discovers CPAAs over the SNMP channel. Each CPAA gathers LSDB information from network areas and reports the information and subsequent routing events or alarms to the CPAM over the TCP channel.

CPAA route analyzer

The CPAA uses a passive version of the 7750 SR OS, and acts as a special-purpose routing element that passively peers with the network to capture a real-time view. The NFM-P manages a CPAA as a network device.

The CPAA collects and analyzes routing data from the routing areas to which it is connected. Traffic on the CPAA is restricted to control data and packages directly destined to the CPAA. Because no other traffic can pass through it, the CPAA only advertises itself to its neighbor routers and does not re-advertise link-state data received from its neighbors.

The following are the main functions of a CPAA:

• listening to routing data from the routing protocols that are running on it

• providing route calculation for routes passing through the routing areas the CPAA is responsible for

• performing routing analysis and providing the results to the CPAM, so the CPAM can generate network-wide reports or alarms

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