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This chapter describes how to import traffic and traffic growth rates into a plan file. It also describes the demand grouping traffic table that can be used in forecasting, as well as representative plan files, which combine traffic from multiple files.
You can import information in plan files using both the WAE Design GUI and the CLI tools.
You can import traffic from one plan file into another. You can also import traffic from other data sources using files containing tab-delimited traffic tables.
Note This section describes how to import traffic and growth for interfaces, nodes, LSPs, ports, demands, and flows. You can also import growth rates for demand groupings. For information, see the Demand Grouping Traffic section.
Following are a few rules that WAE Design requires or applies when importing traffic and growth. Refer to Table 4-1 for a list of required tables, depending on what you are importing.
The same is true for demands and flows if they are not new. If they are new and do not yet exist in the plan file, you must create an object table (Demands or Flows table) for them in addition to creating their traffic table.
Table 4-1 Required Tables for Importing Traffic and Growth Rates
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To import traffic, you must have a viable traffic table for each type of traffic you are importing ( Table 4-1 ). Possible sources for these tables are as follows.
Each traffic table must be tab-delimited and contain required “key” columns (see Table 4-2 through Table 4-7 ). You can modify the tables using Excel or another text editor.
Table 4-2 <InterfaceTraffic> Table
Table 4-6 Required Columns for <Demands> and <DemandTraffic> Tables
Table 4-7 Required Columns for <Flows> and <FlowTraffic> Tables
Using a growth table, you can apply growth rates to only tagged interfaces or tagged demands. The parameters identified in a growth table are applied to an associated traffic table, but are not directly imported as a table into a plan file.
There are two growth tables: <InterfacesGrowth> and <DemandsGrowth>. Each of these have only two columns.
Table 4-8 Columns in <InterfacesGrowth> and <DemandsGrowth> Tables
This is an efficient means of simultaneously applying growth rates to numerous interfaces or demands at one time. For example, if you have a 1,000 demands that used two tags, you could create a <DemandsGrowth> table with only two rows (one for each tag) versus creating a <DemandTraffic> table with 1,000 entries (one per demand).
Step 1 Select the File > Import > Traffic menu. The Import Traffic dialog box appears.
Step 2 Import traffic measurements.
a. In the Traffic File section, select whether to import from a plan or from a table file, and then enter or browse to the plan or table file name you are importing.
b. In the Traffic to Import section, select the traffic tables you want to import: interfaces, LSPs, nodes, ports, flows, and/or demands.
– If importing interfaces, LSPs, or nodes from a table, specify the columns to use as the table key. For example, for interfaces, select whether to identify the traffic imported based on the IP address or based on a combination of the node and interface name.
– For flows and demands, the “new” option imports flows or demands that do not exist in the plan file, including their traffic. The “in plan” option imports traffic only for flows or demands that currently exist in the plan.
Step 3 In the Growth Rates to Import section, select whether to import growth rates for interfaces and demands. This import is on a per-object basis. To import traffic on a per-tag basis, see the Import Growth Rates Based on Tags Using the GUI section.
Step 4 In the Traffic Levels section, select whether to import all the traffic levels or a single traffic level. If importing all, the traffic level names are kept on import. If importing a single traffic level when there are multiple levels available, you must specify a name. Optionally, the level can be renamed on import.
Step 5 To display a plan with the imported information, click Preview and then OK.
You can also import demands by creating a demand mesh table and then import it while creating a demand mesh. This is specified by the -demandmesh-table option of the dmd_mesh_creator tool. The DemandMeshGenerator table provides information on the demand mesh to create. It has the following columns:
Step 1 Select the File > Import > Growth menu. The Import Growth dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select whether to import demand or interface growth rates.
Step 3 If the interfaces or demands into which you are importing traffic have multiple tags, specify how to apply them.
Example: An interface has two tags: GrowthTrend and ExtraSales. Each tag is listed in the <InterfacesGrowth> table, but Peak has a growth of 10%, whereas Normal has a growth of 5%.
Step 4 Click Preview to see how many rows in the growth table apply to the interfaces and/or demands.
WAE Design lets you specify traffic growth per demand grouping, which in turn lets you create growth plans that use estimates of aggregate traffic growth. Demand grouping traffic can be entered into WAE Design in several ways.
create_growth_plans
CLI tool.The <DemandGroupingTraffic> table specifies traffic growth for demand groupings, over one or more periods. You can then import the traffic growth values for a single period or use the entire table to create growth plans for multiple periods.
Each row within the <DemandGroupingTraffic> table specifies forecasts for a demand grouping that must already exist in the plan file into which this table is being imported. (These demand groupings need to exist in a table called <DemandGroupings>.)
WAE Design calculates the expected traffic based on a combination of columns and periods where the <period> variable specifies the time period. Table 4-9 describes the columns; the examples are for the simplest forecast calculation possible where only one column and one period are used.
Table 4-9 <DemandGroupingTraffic> Columns
The TrafficTotal, TrafficIncrement, and GrowthPercent columns enable you to generate forecasts for multiple time periods, and each column defines a different manner in which traffic will be increased. Each column uses a <period> variable that serves several purposes. See Example <DemandGroupingTraffic> Table.
If multiple columns use the same <period> name, WAE Design uses all of those columns to generate one forecast for that <period>. For example, if both GrowthPercent:Q1 and TrafficIncrement:Q1 are defined, then both columns are used in the calculation.
Columns can be (and likely are) repeated, each time with a different <period> variable. For example, if GrowthPercent:Q1 and GrowthPercent:Q2 are both defined, they are used for the creation of two separate plan files.
It is the combination of the columns and their use of <period> that WAE Design uses to generate growth plans, or expected traffic, for the sum of all demands within each demand grouping. For each period associated with a demand grouping the growth plan is determined using the following algorithm. See Example <DemandGroupingTraffic> Table.
Step 1 If TrafficTotal is specified, the expected traffic is set to this value.
If TrafficTotal is not specified and if this is the first period listed in table, the expected traffic is the total traffic in the demand grouping in plan file into which it is being imported ( base plan).
If TrafficTotal is not specified and if this is not the first period, the expected traffic is the total traffic in the demand grouping for the previous period.
Step 2 If GrowthPercent is specified, the traffic growth is according to this percentage.
Step 3 If TrafficIncrement is specified, this value is added to the expected traffic after GrowthPercent is applied.
Table 4-10 is an example <DemandGroupingTraffic> table. Each row identifies a unique demand grouping in the ACME plan file, together with forecast data for future periods.
Table 4-10 Example <DemandGroupingTraffic> Table
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Table 4-11 identifies the results of applying this example <DemandGroupingTraffic> table to the ACME plan file. The newly created plan files are named ACME_Q1 and ACME_Q2.
Example: SEL to All demand grouping is 1,500 Mbps increment + 3,000 Mbps of existing traffic = 4,500 Mbps.
Example: SEL to All demand grouping is (5% growth of 4,500) + 2,000 Mbps increment = 6,725 Mbps.
Table 4-11 Expected Q1 and Q2 Traffic Growth
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The WAE Design Create Growth Plans tool can use traffic growth information that is in the Demand Grouping table. You can import this traffic in two ways.
Step 1 Select the File > Import > Demand Grouping Growth menu. The Import Traffic dialog box appears.
Step 2 Select the option to import from a file.
Step 3 Either enter or browse to the file containing the <DemandGroupingTraffic> table.
Step 4 To import only traffic for a specific period, enter that Period name and then click OK. Alternatively, leave the field empty, and when you click OK you are prompted with a list of periods from which to choose.
The WAE Design Create Growth Plans tool can create growth plans based on WAE Live traffic trends that are imported into the Growth Traffic (%) column of the Demand Grouping table.
Example: Figure 4-1 shows an example of a traffic report on interfaces that are grouped by node. These nodes match the names of demand groupings in WAE Design.
The percentage growth rates calculated in WAE Live for these interface aggregates can then be imported into WAE Design and used as a percentage growth rate for the demand groupings from each node.
Figure 4-1 Example Demand Groupings in WAE Design Correlation with Grouped Objects in WAE Live
Step 1 In WAE Live, generate a traffic report for interfaces, LSPs, or demands. For information on how to create these reports, see the WAE Live User Guide.
Step 2 After running the report, note its Job ID# from the Analytics, Report Log page.
For more information on generating traffic reports in WAE Live, see the WAE Live User Guide.
Step 1 In WAE Design, select the File > Import > Demand Grouping Growth menu.
Step 2 Select the option to import a traffic report from WAE Live.
Step 3 Enter the WAE Live Job ID number for the traffic report you are importing.
Step 4 Click the Location button.
a. Enter a fully qualified path or IP address for the server name.
b. Identify how to connect to the server by selecting the appropriate protocol and entering the port number (for example, 8443).
c. Enter an administrative username and password that gives you access to the server.
d. To save all settings except for the password for future use, click Save Settings.
e. To save the password for future use, click Save Password. This option is not available unless you save settings.
Step 5 Click OK in the Import Demand Grouping Traffic dialog box.
Step 6 To verify the import was successful, show the Demand Groupings table, Growth Traffic Total column and notice the traffic is there.
A representative plan file is created by combining the traffic from multiple plans into a single plan based on specified times and intervals. For instance, you could collect and combine plan file snapshots for each hour of a day. These plans are representative of the current network state, and are useful for incremental planning or design purposes.
Plan files created by WAE Collector are snapshots of a network state at a point in time. Transitory events, such as failures, are captured in the snapshot if they occur during this time. The traffic collected is the specific traffic that occurred during that collection window, which can be five minutes or less. As such, a snapshot usually does not represent the network state over the course of a typical day or week of network operation, and thus, is inadequate to use as the basis for long-term design and planning tasks. To address these needs, the create_representative_plan
tool uses multiple snapshots from an archive to construct a single plan that is more representative of the general network state.
A representative plan file is particularly useful when planning networks where peak utilizations occur at unknown or different times of the day across different interfaces. A simulation analysis performed over all traffic levels identifies the time intervals when peaks occur.
You can fine-tune the results to include specified snapshots for multiple traffic levels across specific intervals. These time parameters are divided into two sets.
-time-period
, -time-interval-length
, and -time-interval-starts
. These parameters define time intervals during a day or during a week (defined by -time-period
) that are created for the resulting plan file. -sample-time-end
, -sample-time-length
, and -time-zone
. These parameters define which periods of data in the archive are used to populate the specified time intervals. Following is the sequence of steps the create_representative_plan
tool uses to create the representative plan file.
Examples: 03:00-04:00 and Fri17:00-Fri18:00
– If a snapshot demand matches one existing in the base plan, then WAE Design uses that demand and the snapshot demand traffic for it.
– If there is no matching demand, WAE Design creates the demand with 0 traffic.
– If a demands exists in the base plan, but not in the snapshot, the demand is used with 0 traffic.
Note that multicast demands are imported with the required multicast flows and multicast destinations.
Each representative plan file includes a report section where each traffic level is defined per row. Refer to the Examples section to see the information included per traffic level.
In this first example, the network peak time is between 4 PM and 7 PM daily. To better understand this peak traffic, we could create a representative traffic level for each hour of this range, which includes 4 PM, 5 PM, and 6 PM. For weekly forecast purposes, we are interested in sampling the last 5 days to construct the traffic levels. We are naming the output file “representative_day.pln.” We are choosing to use the latest snapshot in the time period, 110502_0347_UTC.pln, as the base plan, and it is located in the archive that is named “backbone.” Following is the command and sample output.
create_representative_plan -out-file representative_day.pln -archive backbone -time-interval-length 60 -sample-time-length 1 -time-interval-starts 1600,1700,1800
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In this second example, we know the network peak times are around 4 PM daily, as well as 8 PM on Fridays. We need to get a representative traffic level for each of these six periods for the last two weeks. Today is Tuesday, so yesterday’s 4-5 PM range and last week’s Monday 4-5 PM range are used to construct the 4 PM traffic level. The name of the representative plan file we are creating is “weekly_peak.pln.” The base plan, 110407_0423_UTC.pln, is in the acme directory. Following is the command and sample Traffic Levels output.
create_representative_plan -plan-dir acme -base-plan 110407_0423_UTC.pln -outfile weekly_peak.pln -time-period week -time-interval-length 60 -sample-time-length 14 -time-interval-starts Mon1600,Tue1600,Wed1600,Thu1600,Fri1600,Fri2000
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