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General
Q. What is Cisco® Network Registrar®?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar solution provides comprehensive Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) administrative functions to help customers automate and streamline IP networking services, including business-critical tasks such as client configuration and provisioning. It also supports Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), which can be used to download and upload data.
Q. Is Cisco Network Registrar a service provider grade product?
A. Cisco Network Registrar was designed from the start as a scalable, customizable, highly available, and easy to integrate product. Cisco Network Registrar is deployed today on some of the largest networks in the world supporting millions of DOCSIS® and DSL subscribers.
Licensing
Q. What licensing mechanism is used in Cisco Network Registrar 7.1?
A. Cisco Network Registrar implements FlexLM as the licensing mechanism for version 7.1 and later.
Q. Why FlexLM?
A. FlexLM provides a better way to monitor the number of licenses used compared to the number of purchased licenses. FlexLM also provides better reporting to alert users when they are about to reach the maximum number of devices covered by their right-to-use (RTU) licenses. Cisco standardizes FlexLM as the licensing mechanism for software applications to ease software licensing management. Users can query a central server for details of a software license in the event the licensing information is lost.
Q. What is the Cisco Network Registrar licensing model?
A. Cisco Network Registrar continues to be licensed based on the number of IP nodes, the same model it has been supporting over the years. To order Cisco Network Registrar, users first order the base license, which includes the software media kit and a license for 1000 IP nodes. If the network has more than 1000 IP nodes, users can order additional licenses to cover the remaining IP nodes. Similarly, when upgrading to Cisco Network Registrar, users can upgrade the base license and then add additional licenses if necessary.
Q. Do I need to purchase licenses for each server I deploy?
A. No, only the total number of IP nodes counts. You may deploy Cisco Network Registrar on as many servers as you need, including features such as redundancy, regional cluster, and so on.
Features
Q. What are the features introduced in Cisco Network Registrar 7.1?
A. New features in Cisco Network Registrar 7.0 include Dynamic Lease Notification, a Discriminating Rate-Limiter performance and usability improvements, support for 64-bit OS, and additional platform support.
Q. What is Dynamic Lease Notification?
A. With Dynamic Lease Notification, customers can have external systems notified whenever Cisco Network Registrar issues a lease. This feature is used in lawful intercept solutions and long-term storage of customer data for regulatory compliance and operational efficiency.
Q. Does Cisco Network Registrar suffer from the DNS vulnerability that was recently announced?
A. Cisco Network Registrar has responded quickly to the Kaminsky DNS vulnerability with patch versions. Cisco Network Registrar 7.1 also includes specific performance improvements that may arise from applying the patch.
Q. What is the Discriminating Rate-Limiter?
A. The patent-pending Discriminating Rate-Limiter reduces downtime after outage in very large service networks by restricting the rate of Discover requests while still honoring all Renew requests.
Q. Were there any improvements to the DNS implementation?
A. In addition to query performance improvements, the DNS server can now be configured to avoid interaction with misbehaving or unresponsive remote name servers and clients (blackholing). Also Cisco Network Registrar now supports Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0) as defined in RFC 2671 (not including request forwarding).
Q. What are the usability improvements in 7.1?
A. The fine-grained role-based system now includes the ability to define administrative roles at the scope/prefix and link levels of DHCP. Also administrator password changes are now synched between regional and local clusters. In addition to that, Cisco Network Registrar now provides end users the ability to select and persist dashboard default chart types.
Q. What are the performance improvements in 7.1?
A. Protocol implementation improvements that enhance query performance of the DNS server, improvements to the DNS vulnerability fix that enhance query performance, and DHCP reservation system improvements that enhance reliability and performance of this mechanism.
Q. What are the new platforms that are introduced in 7.1?
A. Cisco Network Registrar is now optimized to use multicore processors. It is certified to run on 64-bit variants of the supported OS versions, and Red Hat version 5 was added to the list of supported OSs.