ASR9000/XR: BNG deployment guide

Introduction
Broadband deployments are complex because of the options you have, varying
needs in terms of deployments, the combination of technologies and many other
reasons. In this article we'll go over the various designs, options and service
deliverables that you can achieve with the ASR9000 BNG solution.

Access models
One of the decissions to be made when running BNG is the type of access that is
preferred. There are 2 key options for the ASR9000 which is PPPoE (PPP over
Ethernet) or IP sessions. Both can run on single or double tagged subinterfaces.

PPPoE sessions are triggered by the reception of a PADI and IP sessions are
created by using DHCP as a session trigger.

In XR4.2.1 we can also use the "packet trigger" which means that an unclassified L3
address can be used to start a new session.

Also one has to decide on the Access interface, whether that is a single physical
interface or access via bundles with multiple members. When choosing bundles the
next decission is whether the members run in an active/active mode (that is all
members are forwarding traffic) or in an active standby mode (whereby there is one
link not forwarding traffic and only taking over when one of the member(s) fails).

Bundles vs Phyiscal interfaces

In the ASR9000 the use of a phyiscal interface, whether that be a GigabitEthernet or

a TenGigabitEthernet interface are terminated on the linecard, this significantly
increases the scale as effectively every linecard becomes its own controller of the
sessions.

When you are running bundles, the sessions are then maintained on the RSP.
The LC's currently have their own Control Policy Engine, PPP manager and AAA
processes. But they lack IGMP and LI today. This means that if you are planning to
use LI or IGMP or parameterized QOS LC based subscribers should not be the
choice for you.

You can use bundle interfaces with one member and disabling LACP to pull the subs
to the RSP so that you have access to these features:

interface GigabitEthernet0/0/0/0

bundle id 100 mode ​on

When you are using bundle interfaces, all features enabled on the subscriber are
programmed to the NP's where the bundle has members on.

So running a bundle with 2 members effectively creates the subscriber on both

NPU's for those members, because of the phenomenal failover support it has.

For downstream loadbalancing we can use destination based hashing, which is the
subscriber's ip address, so we always hash the traffic from one subscriber over 1
member, but the subscribers would be spread over the members based on their
destination address.

The following configuration takes care of that:

interface Bundle-Ether100

bundle load-balancing hash ​dst-ip

When one member fails, the traffic is carried over to the other member seemlessly.

For the upstream direction, we can't control how the traffic arrives to us, which is
controlled by the access layer device, whether that be your metro device or DSLAM.

Linecard based subscribers

This is an XR 5.1.1 deliverable. LC subs will increase the scale even further as it
distributed the control plane to the LC as opposed to the RSP.
Hardware requirements
The hardware you require for BNG on the ASR9000 is:

● Any typhoon linecard such as the A9K-MOD80-SE, A9K-24x10, 36x10 and

MOD160.
● A9K-RSP440-SE

Note that for both the RSP and the linecard we need to have the "SE" or Service
Edge variant.

Also the ASR9001 will support BNG.

Trident linecards are not supported for subscriber termination, but they can be used
as core facing linecard for transport

The MOD80 is a 2NP based linecard. Per NP we support 32k sessions with 64k per
linecard.

Per Port we support up to 8K sessions when they are running QOS. This because of
the QOS architecture within the NP that won't allow more then 8k parent shapers per
phyiscal port. (that restriction is partially lifted in XR4.3.1 which allows for QOS
chunk allocation more dynamically. You still have 32k parent shapers, but you can
instruct a subinterface to use a chunk. This means a limitation of 8k per vlan, 32k per
NPU)

These retrictions apply regardless of whether you are using LC or RSP based
subscribers.

All linecards that run BNG need to be of the Typhoon kind (NP4). Your core facing
interfaces if not running BNG can be Trident based or SIP700 based. However if you
are using L2TP, then your core facing LC's need to be NP4 also. This is because the
L2TP decap is not implemented in SIP or Trident which is handled by the core facing
LC in the downstream direction.
Radius Source Ports
Each LC is assigned a source port range for radius, so while all LC's present
themselves as a single NAS-ID, the source ports they are using effectively identify
the node within the system. This is transparent for your use and nothing needs to be
configured for that.

However it is imperative that your radius server supports extended source-ports (so
the combination of source-port + radius-request-ID) defines a unique request. This is
the same in IOS otherwise you can only support a call window of 256 (as the radius
ID is only an 8 bit field). So check your radius-server capability!

For example see this radius request received on a radius-server:

Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] message received from

3.0.0.234/​49080.12​​ code=4, length=361
Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] Acct-Interim-Interval = 60
Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] Acct-Status-Type = Stop
Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] Cisco-avpair =
"if-handle=167774432"
Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] Cisco-avpair =
"client-mac-address=0010.9441.0001"
Tue Apr 5 16:55:45 2011: [17224] Acct-Session-Id = "00000054“

This radius (accounting) request was sent from UDP Port ​49080​​ and its radiusID is
number 12

You can check in LPTS in IOS-XR where that source port is mapping to:

RP/0/RSP1/CPU0:A9K-BNG#show lpts pifib hardware entry br location 0/1/CPU0 | i

49080
Tue Apr 5 17:22:52.941 EST
(VRF:0) any.49080 , any.any UDP any 48 ​deliver 48

If you decode 48 into binary: 48 =======> 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 (Binary of 48)

The "1" represent the RSP's in the middle slot of a 10 slot chassis!

PPPoE vs DHCP/IP-sessions
Broadband access has natively been using PPP based access, which originates
from the dial days, whereby modems dialing into a modem-bank/access server
allowing the transmission of data packets by encapsulating them in PPP packets.
When access evolved to higher speeds using DSL (effectively ATM over the phone
line), PPP was still used in the flavor of PPPoA (PPP over ATM).

Now that the aggregation point's uplinks are transitioning from ATM based to
Ethernet based and the fact that there is Ethernet directly to the home, PPPoE has
made a strong hold in the access layer.

Still with DSL in the first mile, DSLAM's may convert the PPPoA session into PPPoE
towards the aggregator leaving PPP with a (well deserved) strong precense in the
access.

In a transition to an all ethernet, there is no need per-se to run PPP at the access.
PPPoE requires a client (which nowadays come natively in many operating systems
however), which created the opportunity for a more simple approach of direct IP
access using DHCP as a signal to trigger the session creation.

Drrivers of PPPoE are:

● Ability to run multistack, each Layer 3 protocol is negotiated separately via

their CP (Control Protocol) during the NCP phase (Network Control Protocol)
● Authentication natively build in via protocols such as CHAP, PAP, MS-CHAP
etc
● Link control (~negotiable options during LCP)
● Keepalives
● Ability to aggregate multiple lines together into a single link such via MLP
(Multilink PPP)

IP sessions don't have an authentication natively build in as there is no concept of

username/password here, but with BNG deployments there are options now by
having the BNG construct a username out of options of the DHCP discover or other
fields such as MAC address, access interface, VLAN etc.

First Sign of Life comparison between PPPoE and IPoE sessions

Access Interfaces
This is the basic configuration to be setup in order to get PPPoE and IP sessions
running.
Note that PPP and IPoE sessions can co-exist on the same parent interface as well
as on the same subinterface.

This this is a base configuration example to setup the FSOL handling for PPPoE or
IP sessions.
Using ambigious vlans
Originally for double tagged traffic, also known is QinQ or QiQ, we had to explicitly
configure the inner and outer vlan combination for each possible termination point. In
ASR9000/XR we can define ambigious ranges allowing us to specify the outer vlan
only and an inner range.

The most common deployment scenario for QIQ is whereby the outer vlan
represents the dslam and the inner vlan represents the subscriber, obviously
configuring 64k subinterfaces is not very easy to manage and the Ambigious vlan
support greatly reduces operational overhead, large configs and provides for much
more simplicity:

Configuration example:

interface Bundle-Ether1.50
service-policy type control subscriber PPP_IP_PM1
pppoe enable bba-group default
encapsulation ambiguous dot1q { any | <vlan range> }
dot1ad { any | <vlan range> }
dot1q <vlan#> second-dot1q { any |
<vlan range> }
dot1ad <vlan#> second-dot1q { any |
<vlan range> }
DHCP/IP sessions
PPP sessions have a native keepalive build in. If keepalives are not sent between
the BNG and the client, the sessions are automatically torn down. IP sessions don't
have a native keepalive mechanism and some implementations opted for an ICMP
or ARP keepalive methodology to detect absent IP sessions as opposed to relying
on (potentially long) DHCP lease timers.

ASR9000 does not have ICMP or ARP keepalives for IP sessions rather instead we
have a different mechanism of lease-proxy which is elaborated on in this section.

Restart handling
Problem domain 1:​
IPoE sessions are initiated upon receipt of a DHCP discover and can be terminated
prior client’s IP address lease expires/is released by:
● CoA Account-Logoff/PoD
● Session Administratively cleared
● Reload

Need a way to recreate session if client lease is still valid:

Once we have marked the Binding in the dhcp proxy on the BNG as "stale" due to
one of the reasons mentioned above, a subsequent DHCP request from the client
(eg on renew) is NAK'd to the client who will then faill back to a discovery mode upon
which we can recreate the session.

To support a sort of keepalive mechanism we can shorten the lease time, which will
require the session to renew its lease at half the lease time. So we effectively have a
keepalive mechanism at half-lease time in this scenario.

This inherently increases the load on the dhcp server because the BNG will forward
the renew requests to the dhcp server and when Acknowledged it will maintain the
binding and the session.
A smoother solution is the concept of "lease proxy". This means that eventhough the
server offers a lease, in this example of 40 minutes, the BNG advertises a lease to
the client of a configurable time, in this example 10 minutes.

Every 5 minute interval the client will renew, but now the BNG intercepts and
re-acknowledges the lease to the client, as opposed to relying on the dhcp server to
ack the renew.

At half the lease time, here 20 minutes, we renew with the dhcp server to maintain
proper state.

DHCP lease limits

Lease limit and Lease proxy for DHCP subscribers

Lease limit for a given proxy profile can be specified for:

per remote id:

eg.,

dhcp ipv4

profile dhcp-red proxy

limit lease per-remote-id 1000

per circuit-id:

eg.,

dhcp ipv4

profile dhcp-green proxy

limit lease per-circuit-id 1000

or
per interface:

eg.,

dhcp ipv4

profile dhcp-blue proxy

limit lease per-interface 1000

Note that per circuit-id and per remote-id options are confined to any given access

interface. In other words, per circuit id limit on a given access interfaces doesn't
affect

or influence the circuit-id limit configured for any other access interface

Lease proxy:

DHCP lease proxy is also known as DHCP split lease. With this implementation, the
DHCP proxy

ie., BNG router will renew the lease of the client without contacting the DHCP server.
The

lease proxy value configured is assumed to be lower than the server lease.
Following terminologies

are used:

i) Client<->Proxy is the client lease

ii) Proxy<->Server is the proxy lease

ASR9K is the DHCP proxy

Lease proxy benefits include:

a) shorter client lease times and longer proxy lease

b) Proxy can respond faster to renews at the network edge

c) Reduces load on centralized DHCP servers for renewal processing

Configuration:

dhcp ipv4

profile dhcp-red proxy

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:BNG1(config-dhcpv4-proxy-profile)#lease proxy client-lease-time

?

<300-4294967295> Value of lease proxy client-time in seconds

dhcp ipv4

profile dhcp-red proxy

lease proxy client-lease-time 300

Example TAL (Transparent Autologon) use case 1

TAL or transparent autologon is one of the most commonly used access scenarios
for IP sessions.

You can authenticate the user on mac address or option 82 information. The
following use cases depict on how to set that up with the ASR9000 BNG
implementation.
Example TAL use case 2
IP sessions and security forwarding
When your access interface is configured for IP it by nature can start forwarding IP
already. A session that takes a static source ip can start forwarding traffic just fine
then.

This could be a security issue and this has been done at the explicit request from
some our initial adopters of A9K BNG.

Downstream ​traffic can only flow on AMBIGUOUS vlans when we have a session
since the mapping from destination IP to mac and vlan is only held by the dhcp
binding. In UNAMB scenarios, we could technically send traffic down to the sub.

UPstream ​traffic can be mitigated by either using:

● uRPF
● ACL

ACL being a far less pps implication then uRPF.

also uRPF will not necessarily capture all issues, especially when an ip source is
chosen in the same range as the unnumbered or designated address of this access
interface.

When you apply an ACL, make sure it allows DHCP to go through.

Packet trigger or unclassified Source

This implementation allows for IPoE subscribers to be established based on

a received packet from an IP source on the access interface when the "unclassified

source" is enabled. Typically, the sessions will be restricted to packets originating

from a particular network. Multiple matching criteria may be specified to match

packets

from discontiguous networks. In addition, the packets may be subject to radius

based

AAA for a successful session bringup. An access interface may be configured to

support

both DHCP and PKT triggered sessions

In an ideal network, the subscriber would first send an ARP request to the access

interface and if the packet matching criteria are met, this in itself is a sufficient

condition to bringup the IPoE session. However, if there is a burst of traffic with

unique flows, this could overwhelm the BNG router in terms of processing each
packet

to determine if it is a IPoE (PKT) candidate. The software limits the amount of

in-flight

requests to 200. In cases where traffic rates for IPoE-PKT sessions are high (>120
pps) and

there are also parallel DHCP based sessions creates in progress, it may be
desirable to

configure static policer on the line cards. Based on testing results, a policer rate of
200 per LC is shown to handle this stress condition satisfactorily.

Configuration:

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:BNG1#config

Wed Jun 13 14:20:40.883 PDT

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:BNG1(config)#lpts punt police location 0/0/cpu0 protocol

unclassified rsp rate 200

aaa attribute format ip-plus-mac

format-string length 253 "%s:%s" addr client-mac-address

interface Bundle-Ether10.41

ipv4 address 21.1.1.1 255.255.255.0

service-policy type control subscriber ipsub_policy1

encapsulation dot1q 30

ipsubscriber ipv4 l2-connected

initiator dhcp

initiator unclassified-source

policy-map type control subscriber ipsub_policy1

event session-start match-first

class type control subscriber class-dhcp do-all

 1 activate dynamic-template ipsub_template

3 authorize aaa list default identifier circuit-id password dhcp123

5 activate dynamic-template acct-default

class type control subscriber class-pkt do-until-failure

1 activate dynamic-template ipsub_template

3 authorize aaa list default format ip-plus-mac password abc123

5 activate dynamic-template acct-default

end-policy-map

class-map type control subscriber match-any class-pkt

match source-address ipv4 192.1.0.0 255.255.0.0

end-class-map

dynamic-template

type ipsubscriber ipsub_template

ipv4 unnumbered Loopback1

!
Using Control Polices
One integral part of the BNG solution in XR is the use of control policies.

With control policies you are able to manage the sessions life while various events
on the session are triggered.

You can handle these events or ignore them depending on your configuration and
deployment needs.

User authentication/control
One key action in the control policy is obviously the authentication.
These can be executed via the command under the event/class:

● 10 authorize aaa list default identifier source-address-mac password cisco

● 10 authenticate aaa list default

Both of these will trigger a RADIUS access-request message, but the difference
between the two is with the authorize statement we can compose the username
ourselves regardless of what is received on the line, where as the authenticate
statement uses the PPP chap or pap username and password received. The
authenticate option for that reason only applies to PPP based sessions.

You can define the username in the authorize statement either inline as per example
above or you can construct the username via a "formatted" way:
Note that an authentication does NOT have to succeed in order for BNG to bring up
the session.

The activation of a dynamic template will create the subscriber interface regardless
of the authentication result.

A failed authentication will result in an unauthenticated state and you'll be able to

apply HTTP-redirect or restricted access on the session.

Nas identification
Source IP

Is by default selected of the interface's address that is used to reach the

radius-server.

This is configurable to be overriden from this default.

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG(config)#radius source-interface <interface name>

Or per default configuration:

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#show run | i radius-server

Fri Mar 16 12:40:15.791 EDT

Building configuration...

radius-server host ​3.0.0.38​​ auth-port 1645 acct-port 1646

radius-server attribute list LIST

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#sh route ​3.0.0.38

Routing entry for 3.0.0.0/8

Known via "connected", distance 0, metric 0 (connected)

Installed Feb 22 15:42:37.812 for 3w1d

Routing Descriptor Blocks

directly connected, ​via MgmtEth0/RSP0/CPU0/0

Route metric is 0

No advertising protos.

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#sh run int mgmtEth 0/rsP0/CPU0/0

Fri Mar 16 12:40:26.121 EDT

interface MgmtEth0/RSP0/CPU0/0

ipv4 address ​3.0.0.233​​ 255.0.0.0

RADIUS:
Thu Mar 15 11:55:12 2012: [18848] NAS-IP-Address = ​3.0.0.233

Nas-Port-ID
Attribute 87 can be filled with the configuration like this:

aaa attribute format NAS-PORT-ID

circuit-id plus remote-id
!
aaa radius attribute nas-port-id format NAS-PORT-ID

Nas-ID
Attribute 32 is the BNG's hostname, always and only configurable when changing
the router's hostname.

Example:

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#sh run | i host

hostname A9K-BNG

RADIUS:
Thu Mar 15 11:55:12 2012: [18848] NAS-Identifier = "​A9K-BNG​​"

Nas-PORT
Attribute 5

Is computed very flexibly configured on a per session type basis:

aaa radius attribute nas-port format e <format> [type <0-44>]

Format (32bits): entered as a string of letters:

Zero : 0
One : 1
Slot : S
Adapter : A
Port : P
(Outer) VLAN Id : V
Session-Id : U
Inner VLAN ID: Q
Ex “SSSSAAPPPPPVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV”

Type
ETHERNET 15
PPPOEOE 32
PPPOEOVLAN 33
PPPOEOQINQ 34
VIRTUAL_PPPOEOE 35
VIRTUAL_PPPOEOVLAN 36
VIRTUAL_PPPOEOQINQ 37

If type is omitted it will apply and be used for any session without a more specific
type definition.

Control policy Events, Classes and Actions

The folllowing pictures shows how everything ties together in a control policy:
The diagram below shows where the various events would be triggered for a PPPoE
session.

Note that the session activate event is only applicable to PPP sessions.

You need to make sure that the session-start event has a template defined with the
lcp paramters

which are used during LCP.

the power of the solution, amongst many others, is the differentiation you can do
between authentication failures as well as no response,

so you can act upon a faulty username differently then a radius-server not
responding.

Failover for that reason can be embedded in the control policy like this:

event session-activate match-first

 class type control subscriber CLASS do-until-failure

10 activate dynamic-template TPL

20 authenticate aaa list default

event authentication-failure

class ...

10 "apply http redirect"

On authentication failure we an apply a layer 4 redirect

service while keeping the session active.

event authentication-no-response

10 authenticate aaa list failover-list

If there was no response from radius, we can try a different

radius-server list

Using Class-Maps
The class map definition allows you to control how the event triggered is handled.
Either the event is handled for the first class that is matched, or ALL classes for this
event are evaluated as part of the event definition directive.

Example:
class-map type control subscriber match-any IP_SUB
match protocol dhcpv4
!​ The above would match specifically on IP subscribers only

class-map type control subscriber match-any PPP_SUB

match protocol ppp
! ​This example would match specifically on PPP subscribers only
Using these example classes allows you to have a single control policy that can
handle events and use different actions per access category.

Available Match Criteria:

● Domain name: domain <string>
● Protocol: protocol { dhcpv4 | ppp }
● Source address: source-address { ipv4 | mac }
● User name: username <string>
● Authentication Status: authen-status { authenticated | unauthenticated }
● To negate match criteria: not <>

Available Match policies​​ (as part of the class-map definition):

● match-any: match any of match clauses
● match-all: match all match clauses

If you only have 1 match clause in your class-map it obviously doesn't make a
difference whether you choose match-all or match-any.

Also the class-maps allow for very extensive control of the event handling whereby
you can handle a particular event differently for an unauthenticated ppp subscriber
vs an authenticated ip subscriber or any combination of that of course!

Handling failed authentications

When an authentication fails for a subscriber against radius, we can still bring the
user up by activating a dynamic template.

So the order of actions executed during an event is very important along with using
do-until-success/failure etc.

For instance the following actions:

event session-start do-all

10 activate dynamic-template TPL

20 authorize aaa list default mac-address password cisco

would bring up the subscriber even with failed authentication.

In this example where the actions are effectively reversed:

event session-start do-until-failure

10 authorize aaa list default mac-address password cisco

20 activate dynamic-template TPL

would not bring up a user after authentication failure.

Alternatively, you can pull in the event for authorization failure and disconnect the
service like this:

event authorization-failure do-all

10 disconnect

Or you can use the authorization failure to apply HTTP-Redirect and start a timer, so
effectively allowing the user to login within that time before he is getting
disconnected.

Account Logon
If the user failed authentication and has a restricted access service applied, we can
force the user to go the web portal to provide credentials and try to login again, pay
their bill etc.

The model is here that the user goes to a web page to provide credentials that are
then send via a coa account logon to the BNG.
The BNG will generate an access request to authenticate using these credentials.

If it succeeds new attributes can be send in that access-accept to remove the

restricted access or HTTP-R service.
How IP sessions /DHCP interact with AAA

Address assignment options

Obviously in order for a subscriber to have access to the network, an address has to
be handed out. There are different options available for this that'll be listed out here.
Local pools (PPPoE)
When you have PPPoE based sessions, the easiest implementation is to define a
local pool from which the addresses are handed out to the subscriber during IPCP

The associated configuration is:

pool vrf default ipv4 ​POOL

address-range 199.1.1.1 199.1.255.255

Multiple ranges can be provided and addresses in that range can be excluded.

Which can be monitored via this command:

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#show pool ipv4

Allocation Summary

---------------------------------------------------

Used: 1

Excl: 0

Free: 65278

Total: 65279

Utilization: 0%

Pool VRF Used Excl Free Total

---------- ---------- ----- ----- ----- -----

POOL default 1 0 65278 65279

The Pool can either be referenced directly on the dynamic template which is
activated to the subscriber during its event handling in the control policy like this:
This is the template that holds the base configuration for subscribers when this
template gets activated on the session:

dynamic-template

type ppp ​TPL

ppp authentication chap

ppp ipcp dns 1.2.3.4 1.2.3.3

ppp ipcp peer-address pool POOL

ipv4 unnumbered Loopback1000

This template can then be referenced in an event handling of the control policy as
with this example:

policy-map type control subscriber sub

event session-start match-first

class type control subscriber CLASS do-until-failure

10 activate dynamic-template TPL

Alternatively the POOL can also be referenced via Radius Attributes during the
Access-Accept as per following example:

● With a Cisco-Avpair

user1@domain.com Password = "cisco"

Service-Type = Framed-User,

Framed-Protocol = PPP,

Cisco-avpair = "​ipv4:addr-pool=POOL​​",

● Using an Ascend Attribute (number 218):

Ascend-Assign-IP-Pool = POOL
 ● Using an IETF Attribute (number 88):

​Framed-Pool = POOL

● Alternatively, but uncontrolled is the use of the

Framed-IP-Address magic number 255.255.255.254 which will
instruct the NAS to do a "pool pick" from any pool
available.

Using this method of locally defined pools on the BNG is by far preferred because it
allows us to create a summary route and advertise the pool in its whole. This
reduces significant amount of routing updates, but has the limitation that a full block
is assigned to the BNG regardless of whether it needs it or not.

Pool advertisement
Can be done via the following methodology:

First define a summary route for the pool range:

router static

address-family ipv4 unicast

199.1.0.0/16 Null0

Next inject that summary route into your eg IGP via a redistribution command

router ospf CORE

redistribute static

When users come online they will have a /32 in the routing table which is then
followed for forwarding rather then the summary route to NULL0.

Another "disadvantage" of this methodology is that you'll be drawing all 199.1.x.x

traffic to the BNG regardless of whether there is a session or not. However the
ingress LC's NPU will drop the packets in hardware in that case.
Radius based pools (PPPoE)
Instead of assigning a pool on the BNG, you can also outsource the pool
management to a radius-server.

IT is recommended to have the radius server select a pool per BNG device, this in
order to keep the model of summary advertisement.

If the pool attributes are distributed between different BNG's, you're required to inject
the /32's which will put unnecessary burden on your IGP.

In this case you probably want to consider STUB areas to keep the /32's only floating
in your OSPF STUB area and summarize them at the area border.

Radius based pools rely on the accounting mechanism from AAA to learn whether
addresses are in use or not.

This requires a strong Accounting back end on the radius-server and obviously
proper delivery of your AAA records.

Don't implement radius pools without AAA System accounting.

Static address assignment (PPPoE/IPoE)

Requires you most of the times to inject /32's into the IGP for proper routing if not
part of a summary.

The way to achieve this is via the radius attribute Framed-IP-Address (IETF number
8).

IP sessions
IP sessions address assignment is done via a DHCP Server. IOS-XR release 4.3.0
will come with an on board dhcp server.

In today's model the dhcp server is responsible for handing out addresses which are
picked based on the "giAddr" field in the dhcp discover which is filed in by the DHCP
Proxy component of the ASR9000.

Static addresses are defined within the dhcp server.

The advertisement is here more simple since the unnumbered interface to the
subscriber session provides the subnet it is serving hence the inclusion of this
unnumbered interface in your IGP will take care of the proper routing:

In this example we set the dhcp server to 81.1.1.2, the giAddr for pool selection is
set to the red value to instruct the dhcp server where to pick an address from. The
giAddr selection in this example is based on the dhcp option 60, vendor Class which
is matching a hex string.

dhcp ipv4

profile AutoSelectGiaddr proxy

class MATCHALL

match option 60 hex 68656C6C6F mask 0

helper-address vrf default ​81.1.1.2​​ giaddr ​10.1.1.254

class HardPhone1

match option 60 hex 4861726450686F6E6531 mask 0

helper-address vrf default 81.1.1.2 giaddr 10.1.1.254

class HardPhone2

match option 60 hex 4861726450686F6E6532 mask 0

helper-address vrf default 81.1.1.2 giaddr ​172.28.15.254

relay information option

relay information policy replace

relay information option remote-id testme

relay information option allow-untrusted

interface Bundle-Ether100.2 proxy profile AutoSelectGiaddr

This combined with the following template configuration, the subscriber is
unnumbered to loopback interface number 12.

dynamic-template

type ipsubscriber IPSUB

​ipv4 unnumbered Loopback12

Which has then address in the same pool range as the giAddr and the dhcp server
will want to set the default-router option to this value.

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#sh run int ​lo12

Fri Mar 16 10:52:33.265 EDT

interface Loopback12

ipv4 address ​172.28.15.254​​ 255.255.255.0

Including Loopback 12 (passively) in your IGP will provide for proper downstream
routing!

More information on the DHCP configlet is in the ​BNG training guide

Applying configuration to a subscriber

Configuration can be applied to a subscriber via 3 methods and in order of
preference from lowest to highest:

1. Dynamic Template
2. Radius/Access-Accept (also known as Policy ​PULL​​)
3. COA (also known as Policy ​PUSH​​)
So that means that local template configuration can be overridden by RADIUS,
which can be overidden by COA.

Here are a few examples on how to match a CLI Configuration to a radius attribute,
full documentation is available in the XR configuration guide.

PPP timer configuration

It is very important for any BNG implementation to properly define your PPP timer
configuration to make sure that sessions establish, also under load and that we are
not prematurely timing out, or working on establishment while the peer already gave
up.

The picture below shows the different stages of PPP and which timers apply that
need evaluation.

The referenced timers can be configured on the dynamic template for PPP
subscribers:

dynamic-template type ppp <tmpl_name>

ppp max-configure <#>
​ppp max-failure <#>
​ppp timeout retry <sec>
 ppp lcp delay <sec>
ppp lcp renegotiation ignore
ppp authentication { pap | chap | ms-chap }
keepalives { disable | <sec> }

ppp max-bad-auth <#>

​ppp timeout authentication <sec>

ppp ipcp peer-address pool <poolname>

ppp ipcp mask <mask>
ppp ipcp { dns | wins } <server ip>
ppp ipcp renegotiation ignore

ipv4 unnumbered <interface>

Quality of Service
QOS application to the session can be done via static configuration in the dynamic
template, or the policy-map name can be referenced via Cisco AVP's in RADIUS
access-accept or COA requests.

This requires the configuration of the policy-map to be present in the XR

configuration.

QOS can be applied at the port level, vlan level (subinterface) and at the session
level with classes in a hierarchical manner.

This constitutes the 4 layers of QOS.

The following pictures shows the basics of the 4 layer QOS:

Which can be further expanded on in this picture:

Parameterized QOS
Parameterized QOS is a very powerful option in ASR9000 BNG. It allows you to
construct the policy-map and its values from the AAA server.

pQOS only requires the class-map definitions to be present in XR configuration.

You can setup hierarchical policy-maps without a problem using pQOS.

Note however that if you have defined a static policy-map via configuration to the
dynamic template or from radius

then you cannot override it or modify it with pQOS.

If you desire to use pQOS the initial policy-map needs to be pQOS'd also.

You can modify pQOS policies on a per class basis and while the session is active
add or remove classes dynamically as you go!!

To see pQOS in action and the benefits see this video on demand ​BNG demo on YOUtube

VSA definition
Understanding the format of the Vendor Specific Attribute for Parameterized QOS
(pQOS).

VSA(9-1)”qos-policy-in:add-class(
<target-specifier>,(<class-list>),<qos-action-params> )”

VSA 9,1 is Cisco-Avpair

TARGET​​:
sub – The QoS policy attached to the subscriber session. This implies that the
CoA/Access-Accept target must be a subscriber session.
CLASS​​:
(class-default)
This example identifies the class “class-default” on the parent-policy​.
(​class-default,voip​​)
This example identifies a leaf class “voip”. This class will be added to or removed
from a nested child policy specified under the class “class-default” of the policy
attached to the target.
(​class-default,voip-aggregate,voip-1​​)
This example specifies a leaf class “voip-1”. This class will be added to or removed
from a nested child policy specified under the class “voip-aggregate” of the policy
which is in turn nested under “class-default” of the policy attached to the target

ACTIONS:

See this next section on how to map IOS-XR MQC (modular Qos
configuration) actions to the parameterized QOS equivalent.

Supported pQOS actions:

Examples
Policing
CLI Equivalent: police <bps> <burst-normal> <burst-max> <burst-size>
conform-action <action> exceed-action <action> violate-action <action>
police(CIR,CBS,PIR,PBS,conform-action,exceed-action,violate-action)
VSA value:
qos-policy-in:add-class(sub,(voip),police(200000,9216,0,0,transmit,drop,drop) )

Shaping
CLI Equivalent: shape <shape-rate>
VSA value: qos-policy-out:add-class(sub,(class-default),shape(14700))
For complete COA examples check the ​Change of Authorization document

Multicast and video distribution

Coming soon!!

Call Admission Control

Unlike IOS, ASR9000/XR BNG has no explicit call admission control configuration as
that is natively build into the system.
When resources are running slow or the system experiences internal back pressure
to do slow responses on function calls
the number of in flight sessions increases which are then throttled back down at the
access interface.

Most of the time you may want to control the number of in flight sessions so you can
streamline the number of radius access requests that are being sent to the RADIUS
server.

The way to monitor and control the in flight sessions is via this command :

RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG#show pppoe summary total location 0/rsP0/CPU0

....<output omitted>...
==============================
Flow Control
==============================
Limit 2000
In Flight 0
Dropped 0
Disconnected 1
Successful 9

Limit​​ means the number of in lfight sessions you want to control on a per node
basis. A node constitutes a pppoe processing entity which is either the LC for
phyiscal interface based sessions or the RSP when using bundle interfaces. This
number is configurable via the followingcommand:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:A9K-BNG(config)#pppoe in-flight-window 2000
Default value is 200, recommended for RP-based subscribers. Recommended value
for LC-based subscribers is 50.

In Flight​​ is the number of sessions we are currently handling and have not fully
established yet. A fully established session is the signal from the session control
entity that the subscriber interface is up and forwarding

Dropped​​ are the sessions when the in flight session number exceeds the Limit set.

Disconnected​​ how many sessions ahve been disconnected for normal reasons, eg
send a PADT etc.

Successful​​ is the number of sessions that we successfully established over time on

this node

AAA
Throttling
This feature supports throttling of access (authentication and authorization) and
accounting records

that are sent to the radius server. Throttling rate can be configured separately for
access

and accounting requests. When the threshold is reached for a server, no more
requests of that type
will be sent. A retransmit timer is started when the threshold limit is reached. After
expiry of

the retransmit timer, the queue is checked to see if the outstanding requests is less
than the

configured limit. If so, then the request is sent out to the radius server

AAA throttling can be configured globally or at the server group level. Throttling
configured

for the server group will take precedence

configuration:

radius-server throttle access 100 access-timeout 3 accounting 150

aaa group server radius my-grp

server 1.74.11.103 auth-port 1812 acct-port 1813

server 1.76.30.103 auth-port 1812 acct-port 1813

throttle access 200 access-timeout 3 accounting 120

Subscriber Services
Services constitute a set of features under a common umbrella.
These features are enabled together constituting the service defintion.

For instance you can allow users to access or deny parts of the network, or modify
its qos parameters.

Services are defined via the dynamic template in IOS-XR.

dynamic-template type { ppp | ipsubscriber | service } <tmpl_name>
<attribute-list>

There are 3 types of templates:

ppp: for configuration on PPP sessions (both PTA and LAC)
ipsubscriber: for configuration on IpoE sessions
service: contains configuration commands for all types of sessions

Dynamic templates allow for inline modifications, changes take effect immediately on
all sessions using template, with the exception: unmutable config options (e.g
session IP address)

The following is an example of a service definition:

dynamic-template

type service SERVICE_1

service-policy output testme

ipv4 access-group lab-video ingress

The following set describes a few RADIUS/COA templates to activate or deactivate

services on a subscriber.

Operation RADIUS attributes set to achieve that operation

attribute 44 “<string>”
Account Logon
attribute 1 "<username>
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:password=<subscriber
password>
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:command=account-logon"
attribute 44 “<string>”
Account Logoff
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:command=account-logoff"
 attribute 44 “<string>”
Account Update
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:command=account-update”

<radius attributes to set/update>

attribute 44 “<string>”
Service Activate
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:command=activate-service"
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:service-name=<service-name>”

attribute 44 “<string>”
Service De-activate
Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:command=deactivate-service"

Cisco-avpair = "subscriber:service-name=<service-name>”

Attribute 44, or accounting session ID is always used for fastest lookup of the
subscriber session.

The subscriber password is a special encoded string by providing a seed

authenticator together with a hashed MD5 password of that seed.

COA tool is available on the forum for Windows, MAC/OSX and Linux.

Redundancy and fan out

Redundancy is obviously very important these days and while IOS-XR supports
process restart and process crashes without affecting the subscribers there are
additional options available to increase your density and protect against failures.

Cluster and Satellite are part of the ASR9000's nV concept (Network Virtualization).

Cluster
Cluster is the concept of binding two physical chassis together into 1 logical unit. The
control plane is extended via RSP on board 1 or 10G interfaces while the data plane
is extended via 1 or more physical interfaces on the linecards.

So when building a bundle from the access side, if you link them to each individual
chassis you'll have an active active bundle with failover between chassis!
Also the physical ASR's don't need to be on the same location. Only the control
plane extension needs to have minimum latency (~<20msec).
Satellite
Allows for port extension into a simple 1RU chassis with large 1G port fan out.

The Satellite connects via 1 or multiple 10G uplinks ot the ASR9000 host.

You can statically pin ports to an uplink or share an uplink via a bundle to multiple
ports.

Satellite interfaces appear in teh ASR9000 config as if they were physically on the
ASR9000.

Satellite interconnection options:

Configuration example:

nv
satellite 100 •ß define satellite ID
description my lovely satellite
type asr9000v

satellite 101 •ß define satellite

description your lovely satellite
type asr9000v

interface TenGigE 0/2/0/2

nv
satellite-fabric-link satellite 100
remote-ports
GigabitEthernet 0/0/0-9
interface bundle-ethernet 10
nv
satellite-fabric-link satellite 101
remote-ports
GigabitEthernet 0/0/10-19

On top of these bundle interfaces you can enable BNG.

Cluster and Satellite together

Wholesale Models
Most of the documentation here has been talking about locally terminating the
subscribers on the BNG for regular access. Obviously there deployment models
whereby a provider may like to just provide the initial termination on behalf of the
wholesale provider.

Per access technology there are different options available.

PPP
PPP sessions can either be locally terminated, also known as PTA, or forwarded to
the wholesale provider with 2 main options:

● L2TP tunneling
● RAMPLS

IP sessions
IP sessions only have one option for wholesaling which is inserting the subscribers in
a VRF and using MPLS VPN to transport the data traffic to the wholesale provider.

RAMPLS
(Remote Access into MPLS-VPN) Is the concept of terminating the subscriber
sesisions locally on the BNG and insert them in a specific vrf. This vrf is a separate
routing context and using MPLS-VPN to transport the users traffic to the wholesale
provider.

L2TP
Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol is the concept of transporting the PPP session over to
the wholesale provider's LNS.

ASR9000 can only function as LAC which basically means that after authentication
we are creating a tunnel or inserting the user into an existing tunnel over to the LNS.

Doubledip
L2TP has as key advantage that the subscriber's PPP session is sent over to the
LNS. This allows the LNS to have full control over the PPP session including
authentication.

RAMPLS doesn't have such an option as the only Authentication stage is done on
the BNG one time.

The concept of "double dip" is a phenomenal extension allowing you to use a local
radius server on teh BNG and then contact the wholesale provider's AAA server and
merge the profiles together:

On the ASR9000 BNG you can filter the attributes from the retailer to make sure that
they don't override the user's vrf for instance like this:
radius-server attribute list RETAILER_X_ATTR_LIST
attribute <accepted or rejected attribute-list>
!
aaa group server radius RETAILER_X_SG
authorization reply { accept | reject } RETAILER_X_ATTR_LIST
vrf RETAILER_X_VRF
server-private 10.10.10.100 auth-port 1645 acct-port 1646
!
!

This server group referenced can be used in a control policy as an additional

authenticate/authorize action under the session-start event for instance.

High Scale Deployment Best Practices

If your BNG deployments is high scale, these are some of the best practices to
follow:

ICMP Unreachables
ICMP unreachables can significantly increase the CPU utilisation on line cards,
especially if security access lists are enabled on seubscriber interfaces. You can
disable the generation of ICMP unreachables in subscriber access interface
configuration or dynamic template configuration:

ipv4 unreachables disable

or in radius profile:
Cisco-avpair="ipv4-icmp-unreachable=1"

ARP
In deployment scenarios with IP unnumbered and loopback interfaces with multiple
secondary IP addresses, the ARP table size grows very quickly. Since on subscriber
interfaces the MAC to IPv4 mapping is known through either DHCP or PPPoE, ARP
entries are not required. On XR release 5.3.3 and later you can prevent the creation
of ARP entries associated with subscriber interfaces by configuring:

subscriber arp scale-mode-enable