Nokia Networks

Open Multimedia Gateway,

Rel. Open MGW 16, Operating
Documentation, issue 2

Feature Description

L3 Connectivity and
Bidirectional Forwarding
Detection in MGW
DN0948196
Issue 2-0
 L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in MGW

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L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in MGW

Table of Contents
This document has 18 pages

Summary of changes..................................................................... 6

1 Introduction.................................................................................... 7
1.1 Layer 3 Connectivity (L3)............................................................... 7
1.1.1 L3 Connectivity for User Plane ......................................................7
1.1.2 L3 Connectivity for Control plane................................................... 7
1.2 Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)......................................8
1.2.1 BFD for User Plane........................................................................ 8

2 Benefits.......................................................................................... 9
2.1 Operator benefits .......................................................................... 9
2.1.1 Improvement of quality of service ................................................. 9
2.1.2 Improvement of resource management ........................................ 9
2.2 Subscriber benefits...................................................................... 10

3 Description of the feature............................................................. 11

3.1 Functionality................................................................................. 11
3.1.1 Description of Functionality.......................................................... 11
3.1.2 Functionality in MGW based on IPA2800..................................... 11
3.1.3 Functionality in Open Multimedia Gateway..................................12
3.1.4 Parameters...................................................................................14
3.2 Requirements for using the features............................................ 14
3.2.1 Software....................................................................................... 14
3.2.2 Hardware......................................................................................14
3.2.3 Products....................................................................................... 14
3.3 Capacity and Performance...........................................................14
3.4 Restrictions.................................................................................. 14
3.5 Related and Interworking Feature................................................15
3.6 Compliance.................................................................................. 15
3.7 Network compatibility................................................................... 15

4 Interfaces..................................................................................... 16
4.1 Operator interfaces ..................................................................... 16
4.1.1 MML............................................................................................. 16
4.1.2 SCLI............................................................................................. 16
4.1.3 Web UI......................................................................................... 16
4.1.4 NetAct Interface........................................................................... 16
4.1.5 Alarms.......................................................................................... 16
4.1.6 Statistics....................................................................................... 16
4.2 External interfaces ...................................................................... 17

5 Changes in the feature.................................................................18

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 L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in MGW

List of Figures
Figure 1 L3 Connectivity for User Plane in MGW based on IPA2800............... 11
Figure 2 BFD in MGW based on IPA2800........................................................ 12
Figure 3 L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in Open MGW
............................................................................................................13

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L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in MGW

List of Tables
Table 1 Summary of changes............................................................................6

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Summary of changes L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
in MGW

Summary of changes
Table 1 Summary of changes
VERSION CHANGES
2-0 Sections Benefits and Description of the feature have been updated
for some editorial updates.

1-2 Section Web UI has been updated for some editorial updates.

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L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection Introduction
in MGW

1 Introduction
This document introduces L3 connectivity and Bidirection Forwarding Detection (BFD)
feature for MGW (Multimedia Gateway) based on IPA2800 and Open MGW.
There is slight difference between the MGW based on IPA2800 and Open MGW ,
because they are using different plug-in units and supporting platforms.
These features are designed in view to control growing data traffic and to control the
data by detecting and routing it to the best possible alternate way.
Those features are user friendly to configure and operate on system level.
The implementation of these features in the network elements requires a simplified and
unified connectivity solution in MGW based on IPA2800 and Open MGW.

1.1 Layer 3 Connectivity (L3)

Nokia offers a network layer (L3) connectivity solution, which integrates advanced IP
routing capabilities in MGW for user plane, control plane, and operation and
maintenance (O&M) traffic.
L3 Connectivity provides simple and stable connectivity towards any IP network. This
means that MGW can be directly connected to IP/MPLS backbone or Ethernet over SDH
transmission network.
L3 Connectivity is a future-oriented mean of building new sites and a necessary update
for sites with outdated IP infrastructure.
Nokia products within the same ecosystem (for example, SGSN, BSC, MSS, MGW,
HLR, CDS, and RNC) either already support or will support L3 Connectivity in the future.

1.1.1 L3 Connectivity for User Plane

L3 connectivity, the MGW can easily be connected directly to IP/MPLS backbone or
Ethernet over SDH transmission network without any other site connectivity solution.
This solutions gives more cost savings structure for the operators.

1.1.2 L3 Connectivity for Control plane

L3 for control plane offers possibility to connect directly to IP/MPLS backbone or
Ethernet over SDH transmission network, which is suitable in many cases where
operator can minimize the risk due to false network configuations, which already have a
greater impact in switched L2 networks.
Implementing L3 connectivity do not affect the protocols used, it work on the IP routing
functionality in MGW.

g Note: L3 connectivity for O&M is not supported in Open MGW.

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Introduction L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
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1.2 Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)

Nokia Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is a fault detection mechanism that is
independent from the transmission media in use and a network protocol used to detect
faults between two forwarding engines.
In MGW based on IPA2800 single-hop BFD is supported and handled as an optional
sales item MGW L3 connectivity funationality.
In Open MGW first-hop BFD is supported where L3 for User plane with BFD is an
optional sales item.

1.2.1 BFD for User Plane

g Note: This section is only valid for Open MGW.

BFD for the user plane connections in MGW provides the functionality for better
transmission network monitoring and faster recovery in case of link failure.
BFD funcationality is used to detect that the user plane first hop to site router is working
properly.
BFD provides more flexibility in the network, supports IP version 6 and provide
traceroute logs in case of BFD link failure.

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L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection Benefits
in MGW

2 Benefits
This chapter describes the benefits of L3 Connectivity and BFD for both MGW based on
IPA2800 and Open Multimedia Gateway.

2.1 Operator benefits

This section describes the benefits of L3 Connectivity and BFD in MGW for the operator.

2.1.1 Improvement of quality of service

L3 connectivity brings the following improvements to quality of service:

• It provides quick way to connect, secure and reliable connectivity with the network
elements, which provides more effective approach to troubleshoot with the network
problems.
• It reduces the chance of operating errors.
• It separates network elements' link layer (L2) domains. This means that any
configuration changes or potential error conditions in one network element do not
affect other elements at the site.
• It provides easier management compared to L2/Ethernet connectivity
• The transmission protection between networks and network elements providing, As
an example primary and secondary user plane path between MGWs with end-to-end
supervision.

BFD for user plane connections in MGW provides the medium for transmission network
supervision and faster fail-over in case of failure.This improves network compatability,
,availability and provides reliable end-user communication.

• It provides necessary detection of faults even on physical media that does not
support failure detection of any kind, such as Ethernet, virtual circuits and tunnels.
• It detects that the user plane first hop to the site router is working properly.
• It provides better interoperability in multi-vendor site infrastructure.

2.1.2 Improvement of resource management

L3 Connectivity in MGW brings the following significant improvements to resource
management:

• It enables faster network planning and integration, simpler connectivity, as well as

easier operation and maintenance. These generate OPEX and CAPEX savings.
• It removes the need for advanced L2 protocols (such as RSTP/MSTP) in site
switches, as L3 connectivity in MGW ensures better resilience and loop-free
topology.
• Less site cabling required needed for O&M and control plane.
• There is no need for Ethernet capability requirements (RSTP/MSTP, Root Guard,
Loop Guard, Broadcast storm detection, OAM-EFM, etc.) which results in more
stable networks by reducing configuration work.

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Benefits L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
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• It eliminates the need for separate site IP switching equipment at small and remote
sites. This generates CAPEX and OPEX savings.
• It allows the operator to configure the physical separation of different traffic types on
different uplink ports more flexibly.
• It enables more flexible connectivity towards IP/ multi-protocol label switching
(MPLS) and Ethernet/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) equipment through the
use of small form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceivers. This enhances interoperability
in multivendor site infrastructure.
• It enables support for integrating MGW LAN devices as part of O&M management
framework.

BFD brings the following benefits to resource management:

• The BFD establishes a session between two endpoints over a particular link. If more
than one link exists between two systems, multiple BFD sessions may be
established to monitor each one of them. The session is established with a three-way
handshake, and is torn down the same way.
• It can be used over any physical transmission technology even if the technology itself
does not support failure detection and recovery. Because of this, BFD allows greater
flexibility in choice of transmission technology and topology while retaining high
system availability.

2.2 Subscriber benefits

Subscriber have no direct benefit from these features, but indirectly L3 connectivity and
BFD in MGW enhance reliability and stability of the network, ensuring sufficient capacity
for calls.
BFD and L3 connectivty feature are providing more flexible connectivity to network
infrastucture, where resolution of configuration and network problems is faster and
easier.

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L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection Description of the feature
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3 Description of the feature

This chapter describes L3 Connectivity and BFD features for both MGW based on
IPA2800 and Open Multimedia Gateway. This covers the features derived from hardware
and software side.
These features are designed by keep in view of scalability, performance, capacity and
flexibility to the network.

3.1 Functionality
This describes the functionality for MGW based on IPA2800 and Open MGW.

3.1.1 Description of Functionality

The features in both the releases are the same but functionalities are differ with
interfaces and platform.

3.1.2 Functionality in MGW based on IPA2800

L3 Connectivity
When L3 connectivity is used in MGW based on IPA2800, traffic of different domains
(User Plane, Control Plane, O&M) goes through ESA40-A units. Number of needed
ESA40-A pairs (min1, max. 3) depends from the possible requirements for the physical
separation and User Plane capacity.
L3 connectivity can be implemented independently for each traffic domain.
By using L3 connectivity, MGW can directly be connected with the IP/MPLS backbone or
Ethernet over SDH transmission networks.
L3 connectivity provides DiffServ codepoint (DSCP) marking and jitter buffer to provide
quality management to the network.
The multi-layer site switch or router should also support traffic classification and DSCP
marking by using QoS access control lists. The signaling packets may be used for traffic
prioritization.

Figure 1 L3 Connectivity for User Plane in MGW based on IPA2800

ESA40A-1
SFU/MXU

TPG-0 ESA40A-1
UserPlan e

NP2GE-0
TPG-1 Backbone,SDH
NP2GE-1
TPG-2
Router

MGW

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Description of the feature L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
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Bidirectional Forwarding Detection

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) is a network protocol used to detect faults
between two forwarding engines.
It provides low-overhead detection of faults even on physical media that don't support
failure detection of any kind, such as Ethernet, virtual circuits, tunnels and MPLS LSPs.
BFD can be controlled by BFD software which is licensed to operate. It provides ON/OFF
function to control plane level.
The destination and source IP addresses for the BFD sessions are configured in the
MGW's NPGEP IP interface cards.

Figure 2 BFD in MGW based on IPA2800

ESA40

Trafficswitch-overto IPBackbone
thealternativepath

ESA40
Traceroutecanbeusedfor
troubleshootingoftraversed
MGW MGWBFDsupervisionfor Router path
thefirsthop

3.1.3 Functionality in Open Multimedia Gateway

L3 Connectivity
With L3 Connectivity in MGW, user plane traffic goes to the IP network interface units
(IPNIU), and control plane traffic goes through the switching unit (HUB) to the interface
signaling units (ISU).
O&M traffic goes to the Operation and Maintenance Unit (OMU). The purpose of the
HUB is to aggregate traffic from multiple signaling and control units to fewer Ethernet
links towards the site's multi-layer switch or site router
With L3 Connectivity, MGW can be directly connected to IP/MPLS backbone or Ethernet
over SDH transmission network.
This makes it possible to use differentiated services code point (DSCP) in IP networks
for Quality of Service (QoS) management. L3 connectivity provides two transmission
links (STM-1 or Gigabit Ethernet) for redundancy.
Using L3 Connectivity enables flexible connectivity through SFP transceivers. These
transceivers allow the operator to use various different kinds of cable materials, such as
copper and both single-mode and multi-mode optical fibre.
Implementing L3 connectivity does not affect the protocols used, it only implements IP
routing functionality in MGW. This means that LAN ports are routed instead of located in
the same L2 domain.
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is used between switch pairs for UDP/TCP
traffic, and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) traffic applies multi-homing to
ensure resilience.
Static routing is used with L3 connectivity. Open shortest path first (OSPF) protocol is not
supported.

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The following figure illustrates L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in

MGW:

Figure 3 L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection in Open MGW

MGWuserplane userplane(BFD)
IPNIMP
failover
IPNIMP

ISU
ISU SWU
HUB
MGW
control
...
plane
ISU IPnetwork

CLA HUB
SWU
MGWO&M(BFD) HUB
router

Bidirectional Forwarding Detection

BFD provides low-overhead detection of faults on any channel such as Ethernet, direct
physical link, virtual circuit, tunneling, MPLS label-switched path (LSP) and indirect
channel.
The BFD protocol is a simple Hello protocol. It is based on two systems transmitting BFD
packets periodically over each path between the systems. If one of the systems does not
receive BFD packets from the adjacent system for a certain period of time, one of the
components in the bidirectional path is assumed to have failed.
The BFD packets are carried as the payload of whatever encapsulating protocol is
appropriate for the medium and network, for example intermediate system to
intermediate system routing protocol (IS-IS) and other protocols supporting some form of
adjacency setup.
The protocols use BFD in turn to receive notification of failing links faster than they
normally would using the protocol's own keep-alive mechanism.
The BFD session is both established and torn down with a three-way handshake. The
source and destination IP addresses are explicitly configured for the BFD sessions into
MGW's IP interface line cards.
The BFD protocol supervises single hop paths between systems that allow using BFD.
MGW supports the asynchronous mode, which means that control packets are sent
along the path with fixed periodicity, as opposed to the demand mode, in which the
endpoints are assumed to verify connectivity with other methods after the session has
been established.
BFD supervision interval is configurable by 50 ms steps, and the minimum supervision
interval is 50 ms. Either host may also initiate an echo function to test the forwarding
path on the remote system by sending a stream of echo packets back and forth. The
operator can use BFD simultaneously with trace-route.
Differentiated services code point (DSCP) for BFD is configurable.

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3.1.4 Parameters
In MGW based on IPA2800 all the configuration is handled from ESA40-A trough CLI
(Command Line Interface).

3.2 Requirements for using the features

This chapter describes the hardware and software requirements for using L3 connectivity
and BFD in MGW based on IPA2800 and Open MGW.

3.2.1 Software
L3 Connectivity with BFD requires a licensed sales items in MGW based on IPA2800
and Open MGW. There is no software requirement for L3 connectivity feature.

• 3GNLIC0068 MGW L3 with BFD for user plane

If you need additional information on license purchasing contact your local Nokia
representative.

3.2.2 Hardware
MGW based on IPA2800
L3 type connectivity is only supported with ESA40-A LAN SWU’s.
Open MGW
There is no additional hardware required for using these features.

3.2.3 Products
L3 connectivity and BFD in MGW do not require support from other network elements.

3.3 Capacity and Performance

L3 connectivity and BFD do not have capacity effects in MGW.

3.4 Restrictions
BFD usage requires L3 connectivity and is mandatory for achieving resilience.
All IP devices do not support BFD with static routes, support must be ensured before
deploying L3 connectivity in MGW.

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3.5 Related and Interworking Feature

L3 and BFD features do have interworking with internal connectivity and high availability
features related to traffic resiliency.

3.6 Compliance
L3 connectivity in MGW based on IPA2800 complies with the ISO model standard
ISO/IEC 7498-4:1989.
In MGW based on IPA2800 the BFD implementation is done according 2007 I-Ds
(50246, /41/).There exist updated I-Ds /HREQ15-HREQ19/ from the BFD protocol.
Those I-Ds are proposed to be standards, but those I-Ds might have revisions needed.
In Open MGW BFD standardization is ongoing (latest IETF draft, base-09).

3.7 Network compatibility

These features are compatible with IP based network elements.
In case of static routing, all the routers can not support BFD routing in static routing. It is
required to check the compatibility of router for BFD in static mode.
To enable BFD with IPv6. check that the router also supports IPv6 structure.

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Interfaces L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
in MGW

4 Interfaces
This chapter describes the interfaces related to this feature.

4.1 Operator interfaces

In MGW, there are several means for the operator to do operation and maintenance:

• using a web user interface operated locally at the site or remotely through a virtual
terminal
• using MGW command line interfaces (CLI) locally or remotely
• using CLI via SSH connection, or opening MGW graphical user interfaces (GUI) from
NetAct.

4.1.1 MML
Not applicable

4.1.2 SCLI
This section is only valid for open MGW

4.1.3 Web UI
Web UI is a graphical web user interface for doing operation and maintenance. Web UI
can be operated locally at the site or remotely through a virtual terminal.

4.1.4 NetAct Interface

From NetAct, operator can configure all the IP address and routing settings on GUI,
which gives more convenience to the operator.

4.1.5 Alarms
Not applicable

4.1.6 Statistics
L3 statistic will use Ethernet statistic which are collected according to IETF RFC 2819
RMON1 specification.
There is no own statistic (measurements or counters) for BFD, but BFD statistic is
included to Ethernet statistics.

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4.2 External interfaces

This feature uses the IP interfaces in MGW and connected network elements. operator
can connect with the MGW by initiating telnet session or remote- IP based applications.
Impact on External interfaces
When L3 connectivity is used for O&M and User plane then there is needed BFD and
back up static routing in next hop devices.

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Changes in the feature L3 Connectivity and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection
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5 Changes in the feature

There are no changes in this feature for Multimedia Gateway based on IPA2800 and
Open Multimedia Gateway.

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