Cisco Systems 8600 Series Co-locating Routing Hubs and Interface Shelves, Network Management

BPX Routing Hubs in a Tiered Network

Connections within tiered networks consist of distinct segments within each tier. A routing segment traverses the routing network, and an interface shelf segment provides connectivity to the interface shelf end-point. Each of these segments are added, configured and deleted independently of the other segments. The SV+ Connection manager provides management of these individual segments as a single end-to-end connection.

Interface shelves are attached to the routing network via a BPX routing hub using a BXM trunk (T3/E3 or OC3) or BNI trunk (T3/E3). The connection segments within the routing network are terminated on the BNI feeder trunks.

All frame relay connection types which can terminate on the BPX ASI card are supported on the BNI feeder trunk (currently VBR, CBR, ABR, and ATF types). No check is made by the routing network to validate whether the connection segment type being added to a BNI feeder trunk is actually supported by the attached interface shelf.

Co-locating Routing Hubs and Interface Shelves

The trunk between an interface shelf and the routing network is a single point of failure, therefore, the interface shelves should be co-located with their associated hub node. Card level redundancy is supported by the Y-Cable redundancy for the BXM, BNI, AIT, and BTM.

Network Management

Communication between CPE devices and the routing network is provided in accordance with Annex G of Recommendation Q.2931. This is a bidirectional protocol for monitoring the status of connections across a UNI interface. (Note: the feeder trunk uses the STI cell format to provide the ForeSight rate controlled congestion management feature.)

Communication includes the real time notification of the addition or deletion of a connection segment and the ability to pass the availability (active state) or unavailability (inactive state) of the connections crossing this interface.

A proprietary extension to the Annex G protocol is implemented which supports the exchange of node information between an interface shelf and the routing network. This information is used to support the IP Relay feature and the Robust Update feature used by network management.

Network Management access to the interface shelves is through the IP Relay mechanism supported by the SNMP and TFTP projects or by direct attachment to the interface shelf. The IP Relay mechanism relays traffic from the routing network to the attached interface shelves. No IP Relay support is provided from the interface shelves into the routing network.

The BPX routing hub is the source of the network clock for its associated feeder nodes. Feeders synchronize their time and date to match their routing hub.

Robust Object and Alarm Updates are sent to a network manager which has subscribed to the Robust Updates feature. Object Updates are generated whenever an interface shelf is added or removed from the hub node and when the interface shelf name or IP Address is modified on the interface shelf.

Alarm Updates are generated whenever the alarm state of the interface shelf changes between Unreachable, Major, Minor and OK alarm states.

An interface shelf is displayed as a unique icon in the SV+ Network Management topology displays. The colors of the icon and connecting trunks indicate the alarm state of each. Channel statistics are supported by FRP, FRM, ASI, and MGX 8220 endpoints. BNIs, AITs, and BTMs do not support channel statistics. Trunk Statistics are supported for the feeder trunk and are identical to the existing BNI trunk statistics.

Tiered Networks 13-5