Cisco Service Control Capabilities - Cisco SCE 8000 Installation And Configuration Manual

Chapter 1 Cisco Service Control Overview

Cisco Service Control Capabilities

The core of the Cisco service control solution is the network hardware device: the Service control engine
(SCE). The core capabilities of the SCE platform, which support a wide range of applications for
delivering service control solutions, include:
•
•
•
•
•
Subscriber and application awareness—Application-level drilling into IP traffic for real-time
understanding and controlling of usage and content at the granularity of a specific subscriber.
– Subscriber awareness—Ability to map between IP flows and a specific subscriber to maintain
the state of each subscriber transmitting traffic through the SCE platform and to enforce the
appropriate policy on this subscriber's traffic.
Subscriber awareness is achieved either through dedicated integrations with subscriber
management repositories, such as a DHCP or a RADIUS server, or through sniffing of RADIUS
or DHCP traffic.
Application awareness—Ability to understand and analyze traffic up to the application protocol
–
layer (Layer 7).
For application protocols implemented using bundled flows (such as FTP, which is implemented
using Control and Data flows), the SCE platform understands the bundling connection between
the flows and treats them accordingly.
Application-layer, stateful, real-time traffic control—Ability to perform advanced control functions,
including granular bandwidth (BW) metering and shaping, quota management, and redirection,
using application-layer, stateful, real-time traffic transaction processing. This requires highly
adaptive protocol and application-level intelligence.
Programmability—Ability to quickly add new protocols and adapt to new services and applications
in the service provider environment. Programmability is achieved using the Cisco Service Modeling
Language (SML).
Programmability allows new services to be deployed quickly and provides an easy upgrade path for
network, application, or service growth.
Robust and flexible back-office integration—Ability to integrate with existing third-party systems
at the service provider, including provisioning systems, subscriber repositories, billing systems, and
OSS systems. The SCE provides a set of open and well-documented APIs that allows a quick
integration process.
Scalable high-performance service engines—Ability to perform all these operations at wire speed.
Cisco SCE8000 GBE Installation and Configuration Guide
Cisco Service Control Capabilities
1-3