CNC SR-MPLS Core Networking Guided Lab

The CNC SR-MPLS Core Networking Guided Lab is a comprehensive and innovative physical environment that models a WAN Core Network and demonstrates several aspects of Cisco's Crosswork Network Controller (CNC). CNC is a Segment Routing SDN Controller for Core networks. CNC allows an operator to create and manage VPN and Transport services with diverse SLAs, such as disjointness, bandwidth awareness, or low latency. This briefing will give you an overview of the CNC lab environment, discuss our capabilities, and develop a high-level plan to meet your needs.

Details

CNC is a Segment Routing software-defined networking (SDN) controller for transport networks. Segment Routing replaces traditional MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), often referred to as SR-MPLS, which dramatically simplifies MPLS by eliminating protocols and reducing complexity, making it easier to monitor and manage your network leveraging existing hardware. This results in reduced operational costs and greater user satisfaction. It also offers topology-independent fast reroute and traffic engineering (SR-TE).

CNC provides for creating engineered transport paths using SR-TE parameters and provisioning and linking VPN services to these paths. CNC performs real-time network optimization based on current network conditions utilizing the Crosswork Optimization Engine in conjunction with Cisco's IOS-XR-based Segment Routing Path Computation Element or SR-PCE. Cisco NSO is also included and tightly coupled to CNC as the Provisioning engine.

Fast reroute provides sub-50ms fast reroute for any topology. That translates to fewer outages, shorter downtimes, and better end-user experience. SR-TE can steer traffic along any desired path in the network, enabling the network operator to use disjoint paths or constrain traffic to a low-latency forwarding path. Doing so provides end-to-end application service level agreements (SLAs) that enhance user experience, especially for voice, video, and real-time applications.

Benefits and technologies demonstrated in this guided lab include (but not limited to):

Segment Routing (SR) for both advanced autonomous and future AI/ML based Traffic Engineering (TE)
Modern routing technologies such as Cisco SR-PCE (Path Computational Engine) for SDN programmability
Fast reroute provides sub-50ms fast reroute for any topology
BGP EVPN L2VPN and L3VPN Services for L2-based or L3-Based
Virtual Private Network (VPN) services for security segmentation
NCS 5500 series Routers with IOS-XR
NCS 540 series Routers with IOS-XR

Goals and Objectives

Familiarize the user with Crosswork Network Controller (CNC)
Get hands-on experience using CNC, NSO, and SR-PCEs,
Understanding the integration of technologies and orchestrations that unlock the architecture
Use CNC for automation and provisioning of transport networks as a Bandwidth broker
Familiarize user with Local Congestion Mitigation and Bandwidth on Demand

Hardware:

5 - NCS 540 Routers
4 - NCS 55A2 Routers
4 - XRv9000 Routers for SR-PCE and BGP RR

Software:

Cisco NCS Routers running IOS-XR 7.10.2
BGP RR's running 7.5.1
SR-PCEs running 7.11.1