Traffic Engineering has become an integral part of an MPLS network for routing traffic in tunnels to ensure uninterrupted flow of information in a network. Configuration of tunnels to automatically handle re-routing of traffic flow helps minimize the effect of congestion and communication failures in a network. Traffic engineered networks provide efficient rerouting based on automatic calculation based on criticality and the requirement (in terms of bandwidth etc) of the data transferred through the network paths. During node or link failure, or high burst of traffic, the Fast Re-Route(FRR) mechanism allows the network to handle the traffic elegantly.?

The WebNMS MPLS solution provides a comprehensive system for optimized traffic management using FRR mechanism. The configuration wizards simplify the configuration and management of TE LSP tunnels on a network for efficient routing.? Apart from LSPs, the network components such as Provider Edge(PE), Provider(P), Explicit Path, and LSP Hops are discovered automatically by the software. The main feature highlights are provided below:

Traffic Engineering Management Highlights

• Automatic discovery of Provider Edge(PE), Provider(P), Label Switched Path (LSP), Explicit Path, and LSP Hops
• Relationship mapping between
  • LSP and the devices
  • Explicit Path and the LSP
  • LSP and Hops
• Template driven scripts to create LSP
• Provisioning for creating LSP, Explicit Path, dynamic routing, and static routing using GUI templates
• Network topology view as well as individual tunnel view
• Continuous traffic monitoring
• Support for troubleshooting device and LSP failure

Discovery of TE devices

The discovery process, automatically discovers the objects and associates the discovered components.? Rediscovery is triggered on any configuration change to ensure that MMMS is always in sync with the network. The discovery flow in the MPLS software is provided below:

1. Discovers the devices in the MPLS network.
2. Discovers the Provider Edge and Provider present in the network.
3. Discovers the Label Switched Path configured on the device.
4. Discovers the Explicit Path and LSP Hops which comprises the Label Switched Path.
5. Discovers interfaces associated with PE and P and uses CLI protocol(Telnet) to discover the interfaces that are MPLS enabled.
6. Associates the logical components so that the user can see a unified view.
   

Discovered devices as seen in the inventory list view.

Topology View

The main topology map of the MPLS solution provides an enhanced view of the discovered devices in the MPLS network with status indication and link connectivity. Other topology maps include LabelSwitchedPath and LSP Hops present in the network and their association with PE and P. Individual LabelSwitchedPath maps are captured in the view to depict the traffic flow and connectivity of the Label Switched Path.

Fault Management

The software continuously monitors the status of PE, P, interfaces, LabelSwitchedPath, ExplictPath, and LSP Hops, and raises alarms in case of any failure in the physical components, and propagates the same to the logical components and vice versa. It also listens for traps with relation to link connectivity, and the corresponding alarms are propagated to the LabelSwitchedPath associated with the link. The LabelSwitchedPath traps that are listened to determine status update include Tunnel up, Tunnel Down, Tunnel Rerouted, and Tunnel Reoptimized Traps.

Configuration

GUI based provisioning wizards facilitate point and click provisioning of LabelSwitchedPath , Explicit Path, and Static Routes. The solution supports template based configuration for multiple devices deployment. MPLS Monitoring solution provides options to audit log all configuration changes and provisioning actions performed on the MPLS services.

Performance

The MPLS software helps track the traffic traversing in the MPLS network by collecting specific data corresponding to interface and LSP. Based on a set threshold level, alarms are generated when the collected data violates the performance policy. The collected statistics provides inputs for generating various performance reports to view statistics such as Bandwidth Usage, No of packets forwarded and dropped by the interface and respective tunnels.