Knowledge in one place.
By Carlos Volpe – Product Owner
DATACOM works very closely with its customers, and through demands received daily, it maps essential needs for the various network applications and equipment use. With this, through its multiplatform operating system called DmOS, it is in constant technological evolution to provide advanced solutions that guarantee the main applications of major operators and providers (ISP).
The new versions of DmOS software bring a series of improvements and features that add a lot of value to DATACOM products. Among the main highlights of these versions are the features of MAC / IP Profile Settings and black-hole Static Route, which were made available in version 5.4, and also the RSVP-TE (Resource Reservation Protocol - Traffic Engineering) that was made available in version 5.6.
DmOS 5.4
The new functionality of MAC / IP Profile settings, brings greater flexibility for certain hardware platforms that use DmOS, because depending on the positioning of the equipment on the network, the customer can select through configuration profiles whether it will operate with a greater capacity in the MAC table or routing table. DmOS has 3 options for distributing the capacity of the tables: the default mode, the extended-ip mode, and the extended-mac mode.
Below is an example of configuration using the DM4270 equipment. Through the command “show forwarding-resources”, it is possible to view the available profiles and which one is being used:
This feature is available for the following product lines:
The black-hole functionality for static routes brings greater security to providers who wish to use DmOS at the edge of their network. A practical application to use is when you are doing eBGP peering with the operator that provides you with the internet link. On your edge router, you can create static routes from the public address blocks pointed to the black-hole, and through the “network” configuration command in the scope of the BGP, make the announcement of the block. This action ensures greater security of your network at the edge, in addition to ensuring that customers' traffic is routed to your Autonomous System (AS):
The configuration of this application is quite simple, and below we present an example in DmOS:
After performing the configurations in the example above, static routes will be installed on hardware with a “black-hole” destination, and once activated, the network prefixes specified in the BGP network command will be announced to the Internet. All traffic forwarded to the AS 65000 that matches the 192.0.2.0/22 network will be discarded in hardware, unless there is a more specific active route on the edge capable of forwarding traffic to the end customer.
DmOS 5.6
Following with the news, in version 5.6 we present the RSVP-TE functionality, based on MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching). This resource has become a very important tool for the development of the networks of Telecommunications operators and Service Providers (ISP).
As seen in article 5 reasons to use MPLS at your provider, with the continuous increase in bandwidth consumption and also with the need to guarantee the quality of network services (QoS - Quality of Service and SLAs - Service Level Agreements) by providers, Traffic Engineering becomes a strong ally. Through it the operator can define paths for the flow of traffic (tunnels) according to their needs. By default, traffic flow from an MPLS network follows the path defined by the IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol), which causes part of the resources of a given network to be underutilized.
In the coming weeks we will have a specific article on RSVP-TE DATACOM, but in summary this resource uses Affinity Bit techniques to define the paths of the MPLS tunnels. The use of Affinity Bit in conjunction with multiple paths, brings greater flexibility for the operation of the network and also rapid convergence in cases of failure. In addition, it is possible to perform switching between paths through configuration commands, aiming for example at the scheduled maintenance of the network.
The following figure demonstrates a single unidirectional MPLS tunnel with three possible paths:
As stated, in DmOS the operator can specify different paths in his network using Affinity Bit techniques, and after this definition, he can make use of them in the tunnels as he wishes. In the example below, the paths named: Path1 (Affinity 0x1), Path2 (Affinity 0x2) and Path3 (Affinity 0x4) have been defined, these three paths being used by tunnel 1. The paths can be prioritized by the operator as follows:
For tunnel 1, according to the priority specified in the example, Path1 will be the main path used by the Tunnel, and Path2 and Path3 will be the redundant paths. If the operator needs to carry out maintenance or expansion of the network along the Path1 path, he can switch the tunnel to Path2, disabling Path1:
With this operation, tunnel 1 switches to Path2. DmOS waits for the tunnel to ascend on the new path to carry out traffic switching, thereby ensuring switching times of the order of sub 50ms, that is, it generates a minimal impact on the services associated with the tunnel.
For more information about the new technologies available in DmOS 5.4 and 5.6 contact our technical support.
It is always important to remember that Datacom has a complete structure in its headquarters where on-site training is offered. In the training, it will be possible to manipulate the equipment, perform configurations of various topologies and application scenarios in a complete laboratory environment, in addition to being able to count on the help of our professionals in a series of good practices that will greatly assist in the operation of your network.
Regularly follow our Newsletter and the information in the DmOS release notes for more details on features. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, check for notifications and also share the link on your social networks.
For questions and request for proposal, contact the commercial team: sales@datacom.com.br or (+55) 51 3933 3000. If you have questions about these applications, do not hesitate to contact our suporte.prevendas@datacom.com.br team. We are available to assist you in choosing the product that best suits your needs.
