Cisco Service Control Product Overview, Release 3.5.5
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Table Of Contents
Cisco Service Control Product Overview, Release 3.5.5
Service Control Value Propositions
Application Granularity Usage Analysis
Content Filtering and Parental Control
Advertising: Behavioral Targeting
Value Proposition Implementations
Application Granularity Usage Analysis
Content Filtering and Parental Control
Advertising: Behavioral Targeting
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Cisco Service Control Solution Guide
Cisco Service Control Product Overview, Release 3.5.5
Revised: March 26, 2010, OL-18875-031 About this Guide
This Cisco Service Control Product Overview is a solution-oriented overview of the Cisco Service Control platform, its functionality, and components. It describes common value propositions that you can implement with Cisco Service Control and provides the high-level steps to implement these value propositions.
This document is intended for service provider system administrators or network engineers.
2 Service Control Overview
The complete Cisco Service Control solution is delivered through a combination of purpose-built hardware and specific software and ecosystem components.
The Service Control Engine (SCE) platform supports classification, analysis, and control of Internet/IP traffic; all of which it achieves through the use of deep packet inspection (DPI).
This Service Control solution enables service providers to create profitable new revenue streams while capitalizing on their existing infrastructure. With the power of Cisco Service Control, service providers can analyze, charge for, and control IP network traffic at multigigabit and 10-gigabit wire line speeds. The solution also provides the tools needed to identify and target high-margin content-based services and enable their delivery.
Deep Packet Inspection
Packet inspection technology inspects traffic as it travels past an inspection point. Whereas standard networking equipment looks only at the packet TCP/IP header information, DPI looks at the applications delivered over these packets as they pass the inspection point. DPI enables the following:
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Allows service providers to classify all IP applications
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Service Control Value Propositions
You can use DPI to create many value propositions that may be implemented by service providers using the Cisco Service Control solution. This section describes some common value propositions. However, many more possible value propositions exist.
Each of these value propositions is a single use-case scenario for the Cisco Service Control solution. The high-level steps to implement each value proposition are provided in the Value Proposition Implementations chapter.
Application Granularity Usage Analysis
You can use the Cisco Service Control solution to understand how the network is used at a level that provides information that is more granular than packet-level statistics or general bandwidth statistics.
The Cisco Service Control solution can provide:
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The motivation for understanding network use at this level may include:
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To implement this value proposition, see the "Application Granularity Usage Analysis" section.
Capacity Control
You can use the Cisco Service Control Solution to manage subscribers and applications such that high-bandwidth users can be limited to enable the implementation of a fair-use policy for all subscribers and applications. The solution can be used to implement the following capacity control scenarios:
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The Cisco Service Control solution includes the FairUsage traffic management scheme to facilitate the above capacity control scenarios. The FairUsage traffic management scheme enables service providers to:
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The FairUsage traffic management scheme:
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To implement this value proposition, see the "Capacity Control" section.
Quota Management
Application-based quota products normally apply application-based limits on the volume-quotas that a subscriber may consume on a per application basis or over some period of time.
Application-based volume-quota products can serve two complementary service provider objectives:
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Several business use-cases that are based on application-quota management exist:
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The Cisco Service Control solution enables you to offer application-based volume-quota products. To implement this value proposition, see the "Quota Management" section.
Application Based Billing
This value proposition uses the Cisco Service Control solution to create records at an application granularity level that are sent to a collection or mediation system that then feeds a billing system. This is similar to the "Quota Management" value proposition where service providers use Service Control to enable application-based volume-quota products or other quota products that use Service Control to create billing records for these quota products.
It is also possible to use Service Control only for the creation of these records. The records can include data on bandwidth, volume, duration of application sessions, or instances of use of specific application items.
To implement this value proposition, see the "Application Based Billing" section.
Content Filtering and Parental Control
Many subscribers are concerned with the content that appears on their computers when a user browses the Internet. This is especially important, but not limited, to subscribers with children for whom there are a large number of sites and types of content that are unsuitable.
You can use the Cisco Service Control solution to control applications and content:
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This content filtering can be executed in a number of ways:
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To implement this value proposition, see the "Content Filtering and Parental Control" section.
Tiered Subscriber Services
You can use the Cisco Service Control solution to create tiered subscriber services including, turbo buttons, self provisioning, and other advanced product offerings.
An example of a possible tiered policy is shown in the following table.
The tiering of services is defined by quota used within a given time period. For example, when a subscriber uses up the quota allocation, the bandwidth allocation is reduced to dial-up speed. The subscriber can be given the option to continue at the reduced speed or to upgrade the quota level until the end of the quota period (typically one month).
Numerous other tiering plans can be designed and implemented according to your needs. DPI within the SCE enables you to identify many different applications and services and to create custom tiers.
To implement this value proposition, see the "Tiered Subscriber Services" section.
Mitigating Outgoing Spam
The need for protection from various types of attacks and malicious traffic that originate from the Internet has gained focus. Denial of Service (DoS) and Distributed DoS (DDoS) attacks, worms, viruses, malicious HTTP content, and multiple types of intrusions are common.
SCE platforms are deployed inline and are stateful and programmable. These features position the SCE platform to detect and mitigate the effect of malicious traffic on service providers and their customers.
The Cisco Service Control solution includes service security functionality comprising anomaly detection, outgoing spam and mass-mailing detection, and signature detection. This functionality allows the SCE platform to address many of the threats that exist in current networks.
The Cisco Service Control solution uses the Mass-Mailing activity detection approach to detect and mitigate outgoing spam.
This mechanism is based on monitoring Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) session rates. It uses the SCE platform's subscriber-awareness and can work in subscriber-aware or anonymous subscribers mode. SMTP is a protocol used for sending email; an excess rate of such sessions originating from an individual subscriber is usually indicative of a subscriber creating outgoing spam, who is either deliberately sending spam or is infected by a spam zombie.
This detection approach provides operators with several possible courses of action to be implemented based on their business needs.
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To implement this value proposition, see the "Mitigating Outgoing Spam" section.
Advertising: Behavioral Targeting
Online advertising is a growing segment within networks, and ISPs have a large amount of behavioral data from their subscribers. The ability of ISPs to translate their knowledge into a profit-generating share of the online advertising market is described in this section.
The Cisco Service Control solution can enable behavioral targeting based on an analysis of subscriber usage patterns. The SCE mirrors a user's browsing traffic to profiling servers, or it analyzes user browsing sessions, detects the significant events (ClickStream), and generates RDRs. To avoid compromising subscriber privacy, the RDRs can be configured not to include any Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The Cisco Service Control solution also supports advanced Opt In and Opt Out functionality that allows subscribers to protect their privacy by preventing their traffic from being analyzed.
ClickStream detection is a fundamental capability of the solution, as it can detect which specific requests (out of the enormous number of HTTP requests generated throughout the subscriber web activity) are triggered by the subscriber. This greatly reduces the number of requests to be analyzed, which is necessary to enable a scalable analysis solution.
To implement this value proposition, see the "Advertising: Behavioral Targeting" section.
3 Service Control Components
The Cisco Service Control Application for Broadband (SCA BB) is the Cisco Service Control solution that allows broadband service providers to gain network-traffic visibility, to control the distribution of network resources, and thereby to optimize traffic in accordance with their business strategies. It enables service providers to reduce network costs, improve network performance and customer experience, and create new service offerings and packages.
System Components
The Cisco Service Control solution consists of four main components:
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For more information about the installation and operation of the SCE platform, see the Cisco SCE Platform Installation and Configuration Guides.
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For more information about the installation and operation of the SCA BB, see the Cisco Service Control Application for Broadband User Guide.
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For more information about the installation and operation of the SCA Reporter, see the Cisco Service Control Application Report User Guide.
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For more information about the installation and operation of the Collection Manager, see the Cisco Service Control Management Suite Collection Manager User Guide.
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For more information about the installation and operation of the Subscriber Manager, see the Cisco Service Control Management Suite Subscriber Manager User Guide.
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For more information about the installation and operation of the Quota Manager, see the Cisco Service Control Management Suite Quota Manager User Guide.
Together, the SCE platform, the SCA BB Console, the SCMS Collection Manager, and the SCMS Subscriber Manager are designed to support detailed classification, analysis, reporting, and control of IP network traffic. The SCMS Collection Manager and the SCMS Subscriber Manager are optional components; not all deployments of the Cisco Service Control solution require them.
Service Control Engine
The Service Control Engine (SCE) platform, which is the hardware component of the Cisco Service Control solution, is designed to support observation, analysis, and control of Internet/IP traffic. The following table summarizes model information for the Cisco SCE8000 platform.
Model number
Cisco SCE8000 GBE
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Gigabit Ethernet
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8 or 16
Number of Links
4 or 8
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Cisco SCE8000 10GBE
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10 Gigabit Ethernet
Number of Ports
2 or 4
Number of Links
1 or 2
The following table summarizes model information for the Cisco SCE 2000 platform.
The Cisco SCE platform offers a number of basic implementation options that permit the user to tailor the SCE platform to fit the needs of a particular installation. An understanding of the various issues and options is crucial to designing, deploying, and configuring the topology that best meets the requirements of the individual system.
Implementation Considerations
There are several issues that must be considered in order to arrive at the optimum configuration of the topology-related parameters:
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These issues determine three important aspects of system deployment and configuration:
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Functionality
The SCE can serve one of two general functions:
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In order to perform control functions, the SCE must be physically installed as an inline installation and the connection mode must be inline.
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Either an inline installation or an optical splitter installation may be used for monitoring only. In the latter case connection mode must be receive-only.
Number of Links
The SCE platform can be deployed to provide single or multiple complete traffic links depending on chassis and shared port adapter (SPA) configuration. The SCE 1000 supports a single Gigabit Ethernet (GBE) link. The SCE 2000 supports up to two GBE links. The SCE8000 GBE supports up to eight GBE links. The SCE8000 10GBE supports up to two 10 GBE links. The 2-link topology may implement load-sharing and the SCE in this case is able to process both directions of a bidirectional flow even if they split to both links.
Links Bandwidth
The bandwidth capacity of the SCE has a finite limit that varies depending on the configuration. When installing the SCE, you must ensure that the bandwidth capacity of the links that connect to the SCE do not exceed the bandwidth capacity of the SCE.
Redundancy
When a high degree of reliability is desired, a second SCE platform should be installed to provide backup operation capabilities. The combination of two SCEs guarantees uninterrupted functioning in case of a failure of one of the platforms. The two SCEs are cascaded so that, although all processing is performed only in the active SCE, the standby SCE is constantly updated with all necessary information so that it can instantly take over processing the traffic on the data links should the active SCE fail.
If only preservation of the network links is required, and uninterrupted functionality of the SCE is not required, one SCE is sufficient.
Link Continuity
The bypass mechanism of the SCE allows traffic to continue to flow, if desired, even if the device is not functioning.
Note that when the SCE is connected to the network through an optical splitter, a failure of the SCE does not affect the traffic flow, as the traffic continues to flow through the optical splitter.
SCA BB Console
The SCA BB Console is a GUI application that you can use to edit and distribute traffic management policies to the SCE.
Using the GUI, you control how classification, reporting, and control are performed by editing service configurations and applying them to the SCE platform.
There are three stages of traffic processing:
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The SCA BB Console also includes the following tools:
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Service Configuration
A service configuration defines the way the SCE platform analyses and controls traffic. In general terms, service configuration defines the following:
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The service configuration is contained in a file with a .pqb extension. Service Configuration files are commonly referred to as PQB files.
Figure 1 Service Configuration
Service configuration is accomplished using one of the following:
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Service Configuration Utility
The SCA BB Service Configuration Utility (servconf) is a command-line utility that you can use to apply PQB configuration files onto SCE platforms or to retrieve the current configuration from an SCE platform and save it as a PQB file. The utility configures SCE platforms with the service configuration defined in a PQB file. You can install and execute it in a Windows or Solaris environment.
Service Configuration API
The Service Configuration API is a set of Java classes that communicate with the SCE platform and can be used to:
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This allows service providers to automate and simplify management and operational tasks.
The Service Configuration API is documented in the Cisco SCA BB Service Configuration API Programmer Guide.
SCA Reporter
The Cisco Service Control Application Reporter (SCA Reporter) is the Cisco Service Control Application tool that allows you to produce reports based on the traffic analysis performed by the Service Control Engine (SCE) platform. The information is sent from the SCE platform to the Collection Manager and is stored in a database. The SCA Reporter can query and retrieve information from the database and present the results in a comprehensive range of reports, including global monitoring, subscriber monitoring, P2P, and traffic discovery statistics reports.
The SCA Reporter is a valuable tool for understanding the habits and resource consumption of the applications and subscribers that use your network. It can also be used to judge the efficacy of various rules and the possible impact of their implementation on the network. The SCA Reporter is available only in a deployment with a Collection Manager. You can generate reports using any of the following methods:
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The available reports can be displayed in a variety of chart renderings (for example, stacked-bar or area) or in tabular form. You can adjust the chart display for various presentation options (for example, 3D). You can export both tabular and chart reports to files. You can also modify the reports by changing the values assigned to the properties (for example, time boundaries). You can duplicate, export, and save reports.
You can also generate reports using the SCA Reporter Command-Line Interface (CLI) without using the GUI.
Collection Manager
The Collection Manager software package:
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The Collection Manager can use either a bundled database or an external database (Oracle, MySQL, or Sybase) to store RDRs supplied by the system's SCE platforms. The Collection Manager bundled database is the Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise database, which supports transaction-intensive enterprise applications. The database allows you to store and retrieve information online and can warehouse information as needed.
The Collection Manager uses adapters (software modules) to transform RDRs to match the target system's requirements and to distribute the RDRs upon request. The Collection Manager contains the following adapters:
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Some of the adapters send data to the database or write it to CSV files. The structures of the database tables, and the location and structures of these CSV files are described in the Cisco Service Control Application for Broadband Reference Guide.
When the Collection Manager is used in the Cisco Service Control solution, the SCA Reporter queries the Collection Manager database to create charts and graphs of the subscriber network use.
The Collection Manager is an optional component. You can create a solution with the Collection Manager, without the Collection Manager, or with a third party collection manager implementation.
Subscriber Manager
The Subscriber Manager is a middleware software component that supplies subscriber information for multiple Service Control Engine (SCE) platforms in deployments where dynamic subscriber awareness is required. It does this in one of two ways:
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The SCE platforms use subscriber information to provide subscriber-aware functionality, per-subscriber reporting, and policy enforcement.
To implement a subscriber-aware solution, you must include a subscriber manager. You can install the Cisco SCMS Subscriber Manager, or you can create your own subscriber management module and use the SCE Subscriber API to integrate with the SCE platform. For further information, see the Cisco SCMS SCE Subscriber API Programmer Guide.
Some Cisco Service Control solutions can also operate without subscriber awareness:
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In these three modes, the SCE platform handles all subscriber-related functionality a Subscriber Manager module is not required.
Managing Subscribers
The Subscriber Manager addresses the following issues in allowing dynamic subscriber awareness:
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The Subscriber Manager uses a commercial relational database from TimesTen, optimized for high performance and with a background persistency scheme. The In-Memory Database efficiently stores and retrieves subscriber records.
The Subscriber Manager database can function in one of two ways:
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4 Value Proposition Implementations
This chapter provides an overview of how to implement the value propositions that are offered by the Cisco Service Control solution within your network. Each implementation points to the relevant documentation on how to install additional components (if required), how to configure the system, and how to monitor the system.
Prerequisites
To implement any of the value propositions it is necessary to install the following Service Control components:
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The system should be set up such that:
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For further information about installing and setting up your system, see the Cisco Service Control Product Installation Guide.
Figure 2 shows the topology of the solution when it is installed and set up.
Figure 2 Service Control Solution Setup
Application Granularity Usage Analysis
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Application Granularity Usage Analysis" section.
The main functionality for this value proposition is contained in the SCA Reporter. The SCA Reporter is available as a component of the SCA BB Console or it can be installed as a standalone application.
To start using the SCA Reporter to create reports, see the Cisco Service Control Usage Analysis and Reporting Solution Guide, which provides an introduction to using the SCA Reporter and a description of a number of the most commonly used reports, how to create them, and sample outputs from these reports. The reports used highlight the capabilities of the SCA Reporter to identify application, bandwidth, and subscriber use.
Capacity Control
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Capacity Control" section.
The capacity control value proposition requires only the SCE and the SCA BB Console and can be provisioned in two ways:
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Quota Management
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Quota Management" section. You can implement this value proposition with the SCE API or with the Quota Manager component of the Subscriber Manager. The following implementation uses the Quota Manager component:
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The Cisco Service Control Management Suite Quota Manager User Guide also contains a number of quota manager use-cases to help when initially deploying a quota management system.
To implement quota management that uses the SCE internal quota functionality with the SCA BB, see the Cisco Service Control Application for Broadband User Guide, the "Using the Service Configuration Editor: Traffic Control" chapter, the "Managing Quotas" section.
Application Based Billing
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Application Based Billing" section.
A solution that provides application based billing requires a billing system that is connected to the Cisco Service Control solution.
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For further information about managing and using RDRs see the following guides:
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Content Filtering and Parental Control
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Content Filtering and Parental Control" section.
You can implement the content filtering and parental control value proposition in three ways:
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Tiered Subscriber Services
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Tiered Subscriber Services" section.
This value proposition requires the SM module.
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Mitigating Outgoing Spam
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Mitigating Outgoing Spam" section.
To mitigate outgoing spam, it is first necessary to determine that you have an outgoing spam problem. After you identify the problem, you can use the SCE and the SCA BB Console to mitigate the outgoing spam.
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Advertising: Behavioral Targeting
For a description of this value proposition, see the "Advertising: Behavioral Targeting" section.
Targeting advertising based on the behavior of subscribers can be implemented using the SCE and the SCA BB Console.
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5 Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
For information on obtaining documentation, submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see the monthly What's New in Cisco Product Documentation, which also lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, at:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html
Subscribe to the What's New in Cisco Product Documentation as a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and set content to be delivered directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service and Cisco currently supports RSS Version 2.0.
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