ISC Features

Chapter 1 About Cisco IP Solution Center

Overview of ISC

It is not required that the set of IPv4 addresses used in any two VPNs be mutually exclusive because the PEs translate IPv4 addresses into IPv4 VPN entities by using MP-BGP with extended community attributes.

The set of IP addresses used in a VPN, however, must be exclusive of the set of addresses used in the provider network. Every CE must be able to address the PEs to which it is directly attached. Thus, the IP addresses of the PEs must not be duplicated in any VPN.

ISC offers the following features:

•High Availability and Distributed Architecture

•Various protocols supported for the PE-CE link

•Multicast VPN support

•VRF Lite/Multi-VRF support

•Site of Origin support

•ATM/IMA interface support

•Unmanaged CPE with no CPE definition required

•Single service request for multiple MPLS VPN links

•MPLS VPN Service Policy support

•Service workflow for customizing MPLS VPN service activation

•Layer 2 Ethernet Access into MPLS VPNs

One of ISC key features is to hide much of the complexity in dealing with the deployment of Metro services.

•Autodiscovery: ISC supports Autodiscovery of network elements, of network topology, and MPLS VPN services. This feature greatly reduces the initial effort needed to insert ISC in the service provider’s operation. For details, refer to Chapter 3, “Discovering the Network.”

•Managed CLE: ISC offers the capability of managing the Customer Located Equipment (CLE), which gives the service provider the possibility of offering a managed Metro Service to their customer (configuration, monitoring, and auditing of the managed CLE).

•Plug and Play: As the network and customer base grow, network elements can be added to the network. ISC, working in collaboration with CNS Intelligent Agents, is able to detect newly added Network Elements.

This gives the service provider the ability to rapidly deploy services and network elements.

•End-To-End Service Management: ISC manages the entire end-to-end provisioning of MPLS VPN services. Assuming that the network operator defined MPLS VPN service policy and the parameters that are to be editable by the service operator during the provisioning process, ISC translates these service requirements into IOS configurations. ISC does a just-in-time Cisco IOS configuration download, which consist of always validating the configuration of the real devices before applying the needed configuration.

Once a service is configured, ISC makes sure that the service configuration is the intended one by checking the configuration and verifying that VPN routing is operational.

Cisco IP Solution Center, 3.0: MPLS VPN Management User Guide, 3.0

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