Software Summary

Cisco engineers designed a router optimized for aggregation by analyzing over a thousand potential features. In examining each feature, the engineers looked for those that were standards-based and reliable, provided security, offered flexibility, and, most of all, were a logical fit on the edge of the network.

While the software features of the Cisco 10000 include everything from ping to hot swapping, there are several features that have been specifically optimized for use in an aggregation router. In general, features can be enhanced in two ways:

• The code can be optimized to ensure greater reliability, flexibility, faster performance, and improved scalability.

• The command line interface (CLI) can be improved to make the feature easier to use.

This chapter introduces some of the features that have been optimized for the Cisco 10000, as well as other features that are critical for an aggregation router.

Multilink Point-to-Point Protocol

Other Encapsulations

The Cisco 10000 supports these traditional encapsulations:

See the Cisco 10000 ESR Software Configuration Guide for lists of supported features for each of these protocols. See the Cisco IOS Release 12.0S documentation set for details about each protocol.

Border Gateway Protocol

Other Internet Routing Protocols

In addition to BGP, the Cisco 10000 supports these major protocols to be run on connections to the Internet backbone:

• Transmission priority

• Bandwidth priority

• Drop priority, for managing network congestion

• The class-map command---defines classes of traffic. This command tells the router how to identify a packet subject to QoS.

• The policy-map command---defines policies for classes of traffic. This command tells the router what to do with a packet that is subject to QoS.

• The service-policy command---applies a policy to an interface.

These commands are fully documented in the Cisco 10000 ESR Software Configuration Guide.

Some specific QoS and access policy technologies that you implement using configuration modes are

BGP provides a powerful, scalable means of utilizing attributes, such as community values, to propagate destination-based packet classification policy throughout a large network. Propagation takes place in BGP routing updates. Packet classification policy can be propagated by BGP without the writing and deploying of complex access lists at each of a large number of routers. BGP ensures that return traffic to customers is handled as premium traffic by the network.

Multicast Routing Protocols

Other protocols and services that accommodate multicast routing on the Cisco 10000 include

• Unidirectional Link Routing (URDL)

• Session Directory Protocol (SDP)

• Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

• Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)

Multicast Features

Cisco IOS Release 12.0S provides the following services for configuring multicast routes:

• Multicast static routes---The IP multicast static route capability allows you to configure generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnels for use by multicast packets. GRE is a tunneling protocol that creates a virtual point-to-point link between routers over an IP internetwork.

• Multicast routing monitor (MRM)---This feature provides network fault detection and isolation in a large multicast routing infrastructure.

MPLS is based on the concept of label swapping. Packets or cells are assigned short, fixed-length labels that tell the router how data should be forwarded. The Layer 3 header is analyzed just once. At each hop, the forwarding decision is made by looking only at the value of the label. MPLS offers benefits in traffic management, scalability, and service flexibility.

MPLS Traffic Engineering

MPLS traffic engineering includes the capability to gracefully recover from link or node failures that change the topology of the backbone. You do not have to manually configure the network devices to set up explicit routes. Instead, you can rely on the MPLS traffic engineering feature to interpret the backbone topology and adapt to the new set of constraints.

In addition to the advanced hardware, various optimizations have been made to algorithms or internal processing paths. Unless otherwise noted, these optimizations do not affect configuration procedures and hence are not visible to a system administrator. However, these improvements have a large impact on performance.

Some examples of performance improvements in the Cisco 10000 are

The Cisco 10000 ESR Software Configuration Guide explains how to perform initial startup and configuration of the Cisco 10000. It also includes a configuration chapter for each of the line cards.

Status Checks

Other systems help service providers with fault discovery and the identification of real-time status changes. These systems identify serious anomalies such as card/port loss, loss of signal, packet loss in excess of acceptable thresholds, and the failure of primary components in redundant systems. In response to serious problems, most service providers send technicians to inspect alarms.

The technicians use operating system tools, network management equipment, and testing tools to extract key information from various logs, and then they prepare their analysis based on the results. Most reporting systems are powerful enough to automatically generate reports, complete with statistics and graphs, that give the administrator an overview of such factors as traffic patterns and line reliability.