Evaluate Impact of Traffic Growth

Cisco Crosswork Planning traffic forecasting tool (Create growth plans) lets you create plans containing estimates of future traffic based on projected growth of current measured or simulated traffic. From these new plans you can determine the impact of the new traffic on the network and plan for upgrades. The traffic growth estimates used in this process can be manually entered, for example, based on knowledge of new services being introduced. After creating these growth plans, you can analyze their capacity requirements using Simulation analysis, and use the UI to upgrade the network to meet these requirements.

One example use of growth plan tool would be to predict the effects of a certain percentage of increased traffic for each quarter of the coming year. You can generate a separate plan for each of these traffic predictions to forecast the impact of each quarter’s anticipated growth.

This section contains the following topics:

Demand Groupings


Important

In Cisco Crosswork Planning 7.0, you can only view the Demand grouping details if they are already present in your plan file. You cannot create, edit, or delete the Demand groupings from the UI.

Demand groupings define a group of demands. They provide a convenient way of specifying aggregated traffic in a plan, which can be used as a basis for traffic reports and growth plans. For example, you can use demand groupings to represent the following.

  • Total traffic sourced from one specific site

  • Total VPN traffic, or any defined service class, sourced from one specific site to another

  • Total traffic destined for a particular AS

Predict Future Traffic Using Growth Plans

The Create growth plans tool (Actions > Tools > Create growth plans) lets you generate new plan files containing predictions of future traffic, based on growth forecasts for the current plan. The predicted traffic growth can be generated in one of three ways.

Regardless of the method, the growth is compounded per period increment identified in the Create growth plans tool.

A series of plan files is created for each growth period, and each plan contains a report on the prediction process used to generate it. Each newly created plan shows the effects of the traffic growth visually in the plot using default traffic utilization colors, as well as in the Traffic column in the Demands table. By automatically running a simulation analysis on the new plans, you can incorporate worst-case performance into planning decisions.

Create Growth Plans

To create growth plans, do the following:

Procedure

Step 1

Open the plan file (see Open Plan Files). The plan file opens in the Network Design page.

Step 2

From the toolbar, choose any of the following options:

  • Preset workflows > Evaluate impact of traffic growth

    OR

  • Actions > Tools > Create growth plans

Figure 1. Create Growth Plans Settings

Step 3

Specify one of the following growth methods:

Step 4

In the following fields, enter the number of plans to create and the increment by which you want to create them. These options are not applicable, if you selected the Demand grouping traffic table option in Step 3.

  • Period increment—Number of percentage increments per period. For example, if a demand is set to grow at 10%, and the period increment is 2, the demand will grow by 21% in the first growth plan.

  • Number of periods—Number of growth plan files to create.

Plans are named using the period increment. For example, if you enter 4 as the increment and 2 as period, Cisco Crosswork Planning generates two growth plan files: one ending with _4 and one ending with _8.

Step 5

Click Next.

Step 6

On the Run Settings page, choose whether to execute the task now or schedule it for a later time. Choose from the following Execute options:

  • Now—Choose this option to execute the job immediately. The tool is run and changes are applied on the network model immediately. Also, a summary report is displayed. You can access the report any time later using Actions > Reports > Generated reports option.

  • As a scheduled job—Choose this option to execute the task as an asynchronous job. If you choose this option, select the priority of the task and set the time at which you want to run the tool. The tool runs at the scheduled time. You can track the status of the job at any time using the Job Manager window (from the main menu, choose Job Manager). Once the job is completed, download the output file (.tar file), extract it, and import the updated plan file into the user space to access it (for details, see Import Plan Files from the Local Machine).

    Note

     
    Ensure that you save the plan file before you schedule the job. Any unsaved changes in the plan file are not considered when you run the tool as a scheduled job.

Step 7

Click Submit.

Step 8

The generated growth plan is saved under Network Models > User space > Other files. To view the details, download the file (.tar file), extract it, and import the updated plan file to the user space (for details, see Import Plan Files from the Local Machine).

Create Growth Plans from Demand Grouping


Note
In Cisco Crosswork Planning 7.0, you cannot create, edit, or delete the Demand groupings from the UI. You can only view the Demand grouping details in the UI if it's already present in your plan file.

Growth plans for network traffic, such as those produced either by trending analyses, or by financial or sales forecasts, are typically created for traffic aggregates. You can specify these aggregate growth forecasts or trending estimates as demand grouping traffic growth information. The Create growth plans tool allocates traffic to demands to match the aggregate traffic growth specified for each demand grouping. If two demand groupings contain a common demand (for example, a grouping of demands sourced from one site, and a grouping of demands destined for another site), this demand traffic is balanced between the requirement to match each of the demand grouping traffic aggregates.

Create Growth Plans from Demand Growth

This method grows demand traffic based on the value identified in the Growth (%) column of the Demands table in the current network model. This approach is useful when all traffic in the network, all traffic within a given traffic level, or all traffic within a service class is forecast to grow at the same rate. When generating the plans, you have the option of how many plans to create, and each plan will show growth at the same specified rate relative to the previous plan.

Follow these steps to populate the Growth (%) column in the Demands table:

  1. Select one or more demands from the Demands table.

  2. Click Edit icon.

  3. In the Traffic section, enter the growth rate in the Growth % column.

Example

If traffic on a demand is 1000 Mbps, if the growth for that demand is defined as 10%, and if you create two growth plans, the first will show 1100 Mbps and the second will show 1210 Mbps on that same demand, representing 10% growth per period.

Create Growth Plans from Interface Growth

This method grows measured traffic based on the Growth (%) column in the Interfaces table in the current network model. It differs from demand-based growth methods because measured traffic, rather than demands (simulated traffic), is grown. This is useful for basic forecasting of the current network state, rather than worst-case failure states, which require simulation. When generating the plans, you have the option of how many plans to create, and each plan will show growth at the same specified rate relative to the previous plan.

You can also use this method in conjunction with the Demand deduction tool to create demands from the forecast measurements.

You can populate the Growth (%) column in the Interfaces table using the following steps:

  1. From the toolbar, click Network options. The Network Model Settings page opens.

  2. Choose Traffic from the left pane.

  3. Click the Measured traffic tab.

  4. For each applicable interface, click the Edit button and in the Growth (%) column, enter the percent by which you want to increase the interface traffic. Then, click the Save button.

Example

If the traffic on an interface is 525 Mbps, if the growth for that interface is defined as 5%, and you specify three growth plans, the first will show 551.25 Mbps, the second will show 578.81 Mbps, and the last will show 607.75 on the same interface, representing 5% growth per period.