Cisco Broadband Access Center Release Notes 3.8.1
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Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8 .1 Release Notes
New Features in Cisco BAC 3.8.1
Cisco BAC Integration with Prime Central
PAR changes to Push Grid ID to HNB gateway
Boot Notification Alarm and Value Change Inform for FAP
Broadband Access Center 3.8.1 Bugs
Accessibility Features in Broadband Access Center 3.8.1
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8.1
Release Notes
Revised: July 17, 2014, OL-27175-02
These release notes contain details on new software features, bug fixes, and documentation for Cisco Broadband Access Center (Cisco BAC), Release 3.8.1.
Introduction
Cisco Broadband Access Center (Cisco BAC) automates the tasks of provisioning and managing customer premises equipment (CPE) in a broadband service provider network. The product provides a simple and easy way to deploy high-speed data, voice technology, and home networking devices.
With the high-performance capabilities of Cisco BAC, you can scale the product to suit networks of virtually any size, even those with millions of CPE. It also offers high availability, made possible by the product’s distributed architecture and centralized management.
Cisco BAC enables you to provision and manage CPE by using the Broadband Forum’s CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP), a standard defined in the TR-069 specification. Cisco BAC integrates the capabilities defined in TR-069 to increase operator efficiency and reduce network-management problems.
Cisco BAC supports devices based on the TR-069, TR-098, TR-104, TR-106, and TR-196 standards. These devices include Ethernet and ADSL gateway devices, wireless gateways, VoIP ATAs, DLC, and other devices that are compliant with CWMP. For details about the features supported in Cisco BAC 3.8.1, see New Features in Cisco BAC 3.8.1 section.
System Components
- A Regional Distribution Unit (RDU) that is a software that you install on your server. The RDU is the primary server in a Cisco BAC deployment. Through its extensible architecture, the RDU supports the addition of new technologies and services.
- The Device Provisioning Engine (DPE) that is a software that you install on your server. The DPE server handles all device interactions for the RDU.
- An administrator user interface through which you can monitor and manage Cisco BAC.
- A Java provisioning application programming interface (API). You can use this to integrate
Cisco BAC into an existing operations support-system environment. You can use the provisioning API to register devices in Cisco BAC, assign device configuration policies, run CWMP operations on the device, and configure the entire Cisco BAC provisioning system.- Cisco Network Registrar extensions (CNR extensions), are the links between Cisco BAC and Cisco Network Registrar. You should install this component on all Cisco Network Registrar servers in your Cisco BAC environment. If you are deploying Cisco BAC in a failover environment, ensure that you install the extensions on the failover servers, as well.
- A STUN server that supports a UDP based Connection Request mechanism defined in TR069 Annex G to allow Cisco BAC to initiate a session with a CPE that is operating behind a NAT Gateway.
- The Cisco Prime Access Register (PAR) Extensions are the links between Cisco BAC and Cisco Prime Access Registrar. You should install this component on all Cisco Prime Access Registrar servers in your Cisco BAC environment. If you are deploying Cisco BAC in a fail-over environment, ensure that you also install the extensions on the fail-over servers.
System Requirements
You must have the Solaris 10 or 11, or Linux 5.x or 6.1 operating system installed on your system to use the Cisco BAC software. For information on installation, see the Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8.1 Installation Guide .
Licensing Requirements
You require a valid license key to successfully provision devices that use Cisco BAC. These licenses are specific to the:
Note
Feature Pack licensing is required only for Java based DPE Technology extensions. If you have not yet received your licenses, contact your Cisco representative. Feature Pack licensing is required only for Java based DPE Technology extensions. If you have not yet received your licenses, contact your Cisco representative.
New Features in Cisco BAC 3.8.1
The new features in Cisco BAC 3.8.1 are as follows:
- Cisco BAC Integration with Prime Central
- Adding DNPrefix in SNMP Traps
- Construction of DNPrefix
- Modified UMTS Flow
- PAR changes to Push Grid ID to HNB gateway
- Changes in DNB LV Method
- Changes in Other LV Method
- Chained Intra Grid (CIG)
- Configurable VSAs
- Boot Notification Alarm and Value Change Inform for FAP
- Additional Security Features
- SAC Allocation to Devices
Cisco BAC Integration with Prime Central
Cisco BAC can be integrated with Cisco Prime Central to receive EPM MIB OIDs traps in the Prime Central alarm browser. Each RDU and DPE component is registered as individual domain manager with Prime Central application.
To integrate BAC with the Prime Central alarm browser, use the primeIntegration.sh script that is available under <BAC_HOME>/prime_integrator directory, as part of RDU/DPE installation.
Adding DNPrefix in SNMP Traps
BAC supports adding DNPrefix as part of SNMP Trap. For some Access Points, DNPrefix value is not constructed as a part of alarm; BAC converts the alarms into SNMP trap which needs to be sent to EMS (Element Management System).
The below properties are used to add DNPrefix:
These properties should be configured on the device hierarchy level and are also available in /IPDevice/properties/available/pg property.
Construction of DNPrefix
BAC supports construction of DNPrefix (FC-DN-PREFIX) based on a new custom property, FC-DN-PREFIX-FORMAT.
FC-DN-PREFIX-FORMAT supports any property, including discovered data. You can configure value for this property for constructing DNPrefix.
Modified UMTS Flow
BAC provides an option to configure list of RAT for which provisioning flow should wait for location check. This feature assumes that the device may support 2G, 3G or 4G REM scans, for location verification methods. The DPE script extension looks for 2G, 3G and 4G lastscantime parameters based on the configurations.
This affects the following LV (Location Verification) methods:
BAC provides the following configuration for each RAT, which you can set on the device record using the Admin UI.
- FC-2G-REM-SCAN - Defualt value is true
- FC-3G-REM-SCAN - Defualt value is true
- FC-4G-REM-SCAN - Defualt value is false
The provisioning flow waits for REM scan only for those RAT for which you have configured the value as true . For location verification methods, the extension looks for 2G, 3G and 4G lastscantime parameters based on the configurations in the inform message.
PAR changes to Push Grid ID to HNB gateway
BAC provides USC Access Point grid ID to the HNB-Gateway in AAA RADIUS Access-Accept.
BAC constructs grid ID by combining Enterprise ID, Site ID and Group ID.The BAC extension in Prime Access Registrar (PAR) performs an "authenticate" request against the DPE, passing along the RADIUS request data. The DPE provides an HTTPS based interface to support authentication and authorization.
The DPE will pass the request to an internal authentication/authorization extension mechanism which will perform the checks such as running a lease query. This returns back any formatted data such as the white-list and Grid-ID, if the authenticate requests passes both authentication and authorization.
BAC supports a new custom property, FC-GRID-ID-FORMAT, to define the Grid-ID (FC-GRID-ID).
Changes in DNB LV Method
DNB updates the bench mark if any of previous location verification method does not have any failures. Typically, DNM will pass in most of the cases; and hence, in the previous BAC releases, DNB always updates bench mark information.
In this release, the DNB algorithm is modified in following way to ensure that it is working correctly:
- GPS (configurable list) has passed since the last reboot of the Access Point.
- Look up only the configured LV (Location Verification) methods in FC-DNB-LV-METHODS-LIST.
BAC considers only those REM results for macro-3G-neighbor for which PICHPower is greater than FC-DNB-TX-PW-THRESHOLD.
This custom property, FC-DNB-TX-PW-THRESHOLD, is defined as Integer and has a range from
-10 to 50.Changes in Other LV Method
If the detected neighbors’ count is not zero and no neighbors are matched [which means, there are macros detected and they do not match with configured list], the location verification method returns Unknown . If no valid neighbors are matched and the detected neighbor count is zero, the location verification method returns Failure .
This change is done in all the following location verifivation (LV) methods.
This supports showing a different result on failure for some of the methods. To achieve this, the following custom properties are introduced:
Chained Intra Grid (CIG)
This is a newly introduced location verification method in GA provisioning flow.
This location method will return "success" when anchor FAP (Femtocell Access Point) is present in connected FAP's list, otherwise it will return "unknown".
The first FAP passes GPS location in a group known as anchor FAP. The anchor FAP details are updated at group when FAP passes GPS location at very first time in a group or anchor AP reports different GPS location.
The anchor FAP details are removed from group when anchor FAP is deleted or anchor FAP is blocked or anchor FAP location verification method is invalid.
Configurable VSAs
This feature is introduced to push the newly added VSA (Vendor Specific Attribute) information to HNB GW as part of Radius accept. A new script file, addCustomVSA.sh is introduced to configure the custom VSA details in the PAR Server and update the custom VSA information in car_ep.properties.
This script configures the custom VSA to the CAR sever if it is not existing. Otherwise, the script removes the existing VSA and configures the new custom VSA.
Boot Notification Alarm and Value Change Inform for FAP
This feature supports sending a Boot Notification alarm to NMS whenever it receives Boot/Bootstrap informs from FAP. This helps to auto clear all outstanding alarm of an FAP whenever FAP reboots. Whenever DPE receives event named "1 BOOT" or "0 BOOTSTAP" from FAP, then the Boot Notification SNMP alarm is raised with severity as "Cleared" for those corresponding events.
If the FAP sends both queued and expedited event in “4 Value Change” Inform, the DPE processes both the events and convert them into traps. This is achieved by setting the value of the new custom property - FC-ENABLE-CPE-ALARM - to true . This property also needs to be added in /IPDevice/properties/available/pg.
Additional Security Features
The following additional security features have been implemented in this release:
- A new mandatory input field, Current Password, is shown during the Change Password operation, along with the New Password and Confirm Password fields.
- Cross site scripting (XSS) scripts are eliminated by providing strong input validation in blocking all invalid inputs. It is done by passing all the requests through a filter.
- To eliminate Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF), all the POST requests get validated for the valid token. If the token in request matches with the token available in token cache, then it is a valid user request and the page is processed; else the session becomes invalid.
SAC Allocation to Devices
During GA Provisioning flow, Cisco BAC pushes the SAC (Service Area Code) values to devices based upon mapping files (.csv) with comma separated list. The list can include any of the following comma separated values:
Updating the SAC value to the device takes the below precedence:
1.
If macro CELLID is present in 3G SAC mapping file, then the device is updated with the SAC value corresponding to 3G macro CELLID of the device.
2.
3.
4.
Broadband Access Center 3.8.1 Bugs
For more information on a specific bug or to search all bugs in a particular Broadband Access Center release, see Using the Bug Search Tool.
Resolved Bugs
Table 1 lists bugs that are resolved in Broadband Access Center 3.8.1.
Open Bugs
Table 2 lists the open bugs in Broadband Access Center 3.8.1. To view more details and possible workaround information for a particular bug, see Using the Bug Search Tool.
Using the Bug Search Tool
Use the Bug Search tool to search for a specific bug or to search for all bugs in a release.
Step 1
Step 2
Note If you do not have a Cisco.com username and password, you can register for them at http://tools.cisco.com/RPF/register/register.do.
Step 3
Step 4
a.
b.
Tip To export the results to a spreadsheet, click Export Results to Excel.
Related Documentation
For details, see the Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8.1 Administration Guide and the
Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8.1 Installation Guide .The following document gives you the list of user documents for Cisco Prime Network Registrar 8.1:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/prime/network_registrar/8.1/doc_overview/guide/
CPNR_8_1_Doc_Guide.htmlThe following document gives you the list of user documents for Cisco Prime Access Registrar 6.0:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/net_mgmt/prime/access_registrar/6.0/roadmap/guide/PrintPDF/ardocgd.html
Accessibility Features in Broadband Access Center 3.8.1
For a list of accessibility features in Broadband Access Center, see the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) on the Cisco website, or contact accessibility@cisco.com .
Note
Obtaining Documentation and Submitting a Service Request
For information on obtaining documentation, using the Cisco Bug Search Tool (BST), submitting a service request, and gathering additional information, see What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation at: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/general/whatsnew/whatsnew.html .
Subscribe to What’s New in Cisco Product Documentation , which lists all new and revised Cisco technical documentation, as an RSS feed and deliver content directly to your desktop using a reader application. The RSS feeds are a free service.
Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. To view a list of Cisco trademarks, go to this URL: www.cisco.com/go/trademarks . Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. (1110R)
Any Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and phone numbers used in this document are not intended to be actual addresses and phone numbers. Any examples, command display output, network topology diagrams, and other figures included in the document are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any use of actual IP addresses or phone numbers in illustrative content is unintentional and coincidental.
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