Service Provider Network Architecture

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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A service provider is an entity that provides different kinds of

services to other entities. Five types exist:
Communications service provider (CSP)
Telecommunications service provider (TSP)
Network service provider (NSP)
Internet service provider (ISP)
Application service provider (ASP)

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 ISP provides access to common network called Internet

ISP provides service to:
- Home user subscribers

ADSL, cable internet, and FTTH

Internet access, VoIP, and IPTV
- Business subscribers
ADSL, SDSL, and leased lines

Internet access, private VPNs, and VoIP

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Three entities in service provider relationship model:

- Customers
Pay ISP for providing Internet access to them

- Peers
Exchange traffic for free, which is a mutual benefit
- Transit partners
You pay your partner to access a certain range of networks

Relationships are defined in settlements between partners.

The Internet is based on the principle of global reachability.
Each network has to do one of two things:
- Pay another network for transit

- Peer with every other network

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 The IXP is the physical infrastructure that service providers use to

exchange traffic.
IXPs reduce traffic to upstream providers.
- Per-bit delivery cost reduction

Routing efficiency and fault tolerance is improved.

BGP is used for traffic routing.
Internet

ISP 5

ISP 4
ISP 3

IXP

ISP 1

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

ISP 2

Peering
Transit

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Tier 1 ISPs

Tier 2 ISP

Tier 2 ISP
Tier 2 ISP

Tier 3 ISP

Tier 3 ISP

Internet Users

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Purchase transit links from Tier 1 or Tier 2 ISPs

Peer with regional partners for cutting costs
Provide Internet access to end customers
- Focused on specific region
- Usually low price access
- Usually lower access speeds

Customers are usually home user subscribers

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Purchase transit links from Tier 1 ISPs

Peer with other ISPs for cutting costs (using IXP)
Provide Internet access to:
- End customers (home and business)
Focus on business customers
Charge higher prices
Offer higher speeds

- Tier 3 ISPs

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Large national or international ISPs

- Reach every other network on the Internet without purchasing IP transit links
or paying settlements

Transit-free network
- Peers with (every) other Tier 1 ISP
- Highest-speed connections
- Very reliable networks
- Usually expensive

Customers
- Lower-tiered ISPs
- Large companies

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)

- Responsible for allocation of globally unique:
IP addresses

AS number allocation
DNS root zone management
Protocol parameters
- IANA is operated by Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN)

IANA

allocate

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

RIR

allocate

NIR/LIR/ISP

allocate

ISP

assign

assign

assign

End user

End user

End user

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 Five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs)

- Manage and distribute Internet parameters within their respective regions
- IANA delegates Internet resources to RIRs

IANA

AfriNIC

APNIC

RIPE

LACNIC

ARIN

RIR

ISP

NIR

End user

End user

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

End user

ISP

ISP

End user

End user

End user

LIR

ISP

End user

End user

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 Local Internet Registry (LIR)

- Assigns address space to its users (that is, end users or other ISPs)
- RIR delegates Internet resources to LIR

- LIR can be:

ISP
Enterprise
Academic institution

National Internet Registry (NIR)

- Works within a country or economic unit

End Users
- Customers that need Internet access

IP address
AS number

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 End user requests IP address by its ISP

- IPv4 address or block of addresses
- IPv6 block of addresses
/64 address space (network) for end users
/48, /52, and /56 address spaces (networks) for business users

ISP distributes addresses from its assigned address space

IP address space can be:
- Provider Independent (PI)
Assigned by RIR from its special address space
A way to make your network multihomed
End user keeps address space
Results in big routing tables
- Provider Assigned (PA)
Assigned by ISP from ISP address space
End user needs to renumber when changing ISP
2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Routing is used to forward traffic from the source network to the

destination network
Routers pass traffic between networks based on a routing table.
- The routing table is built by a routing algorithm.
BGP (used for route distribution on the Internet)
OSPF (used internally in the service provider core network)

The RIR has only an indirect role in the routing process.

- The RIR helps to keep the routing table at manageable sizes.
Distribute larger blocks of address space

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 AS represents a group of routing prefixes (that is, list of IP addresses)

- Group of devices under a single administrative control
- Represented as a 2-Byte number

AS information is used in the routing process

Three types of autonomous systems
- Stub AS
Connected to only one AS (and ISP)

Only one connection to the Internet

- Multihomed AS
Connected to two or more autonomous systems
Redundant connection to the Internet

- Transit AS
Provide connection through itself to other networks
ISPs use transit autonomous systems
2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 BGP Routing Protocol

- Basic routing protocol on the Internet
- Exchange prefix information between BGP peers

Between autonomous systemsEBGP

Inside one ASIBGP
- Is multiprotocol
Carry information for multiple protocols

Size of routing table grows very fast

- Need more memory and CPU load for processing routing table
- Route aggregation and route summarization is used

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 Multihoming is used to increase the reliability of the Internet connection

for an IP network.
Multihoming customer site can have:
- Multiple connections to the same ISP
- Multiple connections to multiple ISPs

Internet
ISP

Customer

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Internet

ISP 1

ISP 2

Customer

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 A network must have its own

- IP address space
- AS number

BGP is used for routing.

Redundant gateway routers are suggested.
Prefixes smaller than /24 usually are filtered by the ISP.

2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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 2012 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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