Introduction; Background; Benefits - Avaya ERS 45 Series Technical Configuration Manual

1. Introduction

The defining characteristic of the Quality of Service (QoS) support on the Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS)
stackable platforms and Virtual Services Platform 7000 has always been flexibility. Hardware capabilities
have been fully exposed and exploited to give the user a plethora of knobs with which to manipulate the
system's QoS capabilities. Over time, this has resulted in a sometimes dizzying array of options being
made available. This, in turn, has steepened the learning curve, making it more time-consuming to initiate
even the most basic of QoS operations.
While there will always be a demand for comprehensive and advanced configuration options, a
streamlined and easy-to-learn QoS configuration mechanism has become a necessity. The support must
provide a reasonable amount of filtering and action options while requiring no more than a few intuitive
configuration steps to achieve the desired result. The Traffic-Profile Filter Set support has been
introduced to satisfy this need.

2. Background

The process of defining filters, meters, actions and policies using the standard set of Command Line
Interface (CLI) commands and advanced web pages is tedious at best. Developed nearly a decade ago in
accordance with the emerging IETF standards and closely aligned to the QoS Management Information
Base (MIB) data model, the command set is quite flexible but bulky and onerous to use. Access Control
List (ACL) support was introduced to provide some process improvement in this area. Unfortunately, the
ACL support by definition lacks the flexibility necessary for it to assume the role of a general-purpose
configuration mechanism.
Filter set templates were introduced to support Nortel Secure Network Access (NSNA) and User Based
Policy (UBP) applications. Based on the templates, filter set data (i.e., a named collection of filters,
actions, meters and policies) is associated with a port under the direction of a non-QoS application (e.g.,
NSNA, UBP). Allowing the customer to leverage this functionality directly, in a fashion similar to ACL
usage, could provide the flexibility and ease-of-use necessary of the configuration mechanism being
sought.

2.1 Benefits

Traffic-profile filter set support offers several advantages over the standard QoS CLI support, as well as
the deployed ACL functionality:

Streamlined command set: filter set definition and installation can be completed in as few as 2
commands, replacing potentially 7 standard CLI QoS commands.

Combined IP and L2 options: deployed ACL support forces the user to define IP or L2 ACLs.
Filter set classifier options include both IP and L2 data.

Meter availability: a filter set may be associated with metering criteria that is applied to all filter set
policies (individual filters or blocks of filters). Metering is currently not supported with ACLs.

No implicit drop: an ACL is terminated by an implicit 'drop all' prohibiting ACL layering on a port.
This limitation is eliminated with filter sets.

Addition/deletion support: filter set classifier elements (i.e., filters/actions) may be added/deleted
while the filter set is in-use (i.e., associated with a port). This type of manipulation is not
supported with ACLs.

Additional filtering options: latest IP/L2 filters options are available in conjunction with filter sets.
September 2015
Avaya Inc. – External Distribution
avaya.com
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