Controlling Process Related QCI on S6A

In Release 20.0, MME has been enhanced to support new standardized QCIs 65, 66, 69 and 70. Also, MME also supports operator specific (non-standard) QCIs from 128 to 254. The non-standard QCIs provides Operator Specific QoS for M2M and other mission critical communications.

The operator-defined-qci command under the QoS profile configuration is provisioned to enable or disable Operator Specific QCI. When enabled, MME accepts Operator Specific QCI values (128-254) both from HSS and PGW. If not enabled, MME will reject the procedure on receiving any Operator Specific QCI value.

Additionally, this chapter describes the mapping of operator specific QCIs to Pre-Release8 QoS parameters during a handover to UTRAN/GERAN.

The Operator Specific QCI Support feature is license controlled. Contact your Cisco Account or Support representative for information on how to obtain a license.

The Operator Specific QCI feature provides the following functionalities:

• MME provides a CLI to enable/disable 'operator-defined-qci' under QOS-Profile.

• Operator Specific QCI value ranges from 128 to 254.

• The new standardized QCI values 65, 66, 69 and 70 is accepted for configuration under all existing CLIs that involves QCI.

• QCI validation is performed during configuration to avoid invalid values.

• Existing QOS control on all bearers is extended to the new QCIs values. A specific QCI or a range of QCIs can be associated to a Bearer Control Profile under QoS-Profile. An operator specific QCI can be re-mapped to another QCI using this Bearer Control Profile. Bearer level parameters such as ARP, MBR, GBR values can be configured independently for default/dedicated bearer along with action such as prefer-as-cap or pgw-upgrade in the Bearer Control Profile.

• MME rejects the default/dedicated bearers with QCIs that are configured to be rejected under QoS-Profile.

• MME provides CLI configuration under the Bearer Control Profile to map Operator Specific QCI to Pre-Release8 QoS parameters or a standard QCI.

• The standardized QCI mapping is defined according to the TS 23.401 3GPP specification.

• Every Standard QCI GBR/Non-GBR is associated with a priority level as shown below:

  QCI	Resource Type	Priority
  1	GBR	2
  2	GBR	4
  3	GBR	3
  4	GBR	5
  5	Non-GBR	1
  6	Non-GBR	6
  7	Non-GBR	7
  8	Non-GBR	8
  9	Non-GBR	9
  65	GBR	0.7
  66	GBR	2
  69	Non-GBR	0.5
  70	Non-GBR	5.5

  • Priority Level 1 has the highest priority and in case of congestion lowest priority level traffic would be the first to be discarded.

  • The operator specific QCIs from 128 to 254 shall have the lowest priority. These priority values are considered while deriving resultant QoS values for the Minimum and Reject-if-exceed actions configured in prefer-as-cap or pgw-upgrade

• The paging-map CLI is enhanced to accommodate QCI values - 65, 66, 69 and 70.

• The qci-reject CLI under QoS-Profile is modified to accept Operator Specific QCI values.

Note	MME supports standardized QCIs from 1 to 9. It accepts the new standardized QCI values 69 and 70 for default bearer creation and 65, 66, 69 and 70 for dedicated bearer creation. Any other QCI value is considered invalid.

Standardized Non-GBR QCI values 69 and 70, and operator specific QCI values in the range 128 to 254 enabled using the operator-defined-qci CLI under QoS-Profile is accepted from the subscription (HSS). If the CLI is not enabled, MME will reject all Operator Specific values.

Standardized QCI values 65, 66, 69 and 70, and operator specific QCI values in the range 128 to 254 enabled using the operator-defined-qci CLI under QoS-Profile is accepted from the S-GW. If the CLI is not enabled, MME will reject all Operator Specific values.

Note	The qci-reject CLI under QoS profile can be used to reject any specific QCI value or a range of QCI values. Standardized QCI values are accepted even if the operator-defined-qci CLI is not enabled.

Mapping of Operator Specific QCIs to Pre-Release8 QoS parameters is supported for successful handover of bearers to UTRAN/GERAN during handoff

A new CLI is implemented in MME to map standard or non-standardized QCI's to PreRelease8QoS parameters so that the bearers are transferred during a handover to Gn-Gp SGSN. The mapped QoS values would be sent in GTPv1 SGSN-Context-Response or Forward-Relocation-Request messages to peer SGSN.

To support mapping, a new CLI is added in the Bearer Control Profile Configuration Mode. If this configuration is not available, MME uses background class values as default, and maps the QCIs to the background class and its associated QoS parameters.

This section documents the configuration procedures for the Operator Specific QCI feature.

The following CLI enables Operator Specific QCI in MME. If this CLI is enabled, MME accepts the QCI range 128 - 254 from HSS and P-GW.

configure 
   quality-of-service-profile profile_name 
      [ remove ] operator-defined-qci
      end

Note	By default, this command is disabled. operator-defined-qci enables Operator Specific QCI values. remove disables the Operator Specific QCI configuration.

The following CLI maps non-standardized QCIs to PreRelease8QoS parameters for transferring bearers during a handover to Gn-Gp SGSN:

configure
   bearer-control-profile profile_name
      [ remove ] { pre-rel8-qos-mapping { { class { background | conversational | interactive | streaming } } { thp thp_value } { sig-ind indicator_value }  { src-stat-desc value } { min-transfer-delay value } { sdu error-ratio value } } | qci value }
      end

Note

pre-rel8-qos-mapping defines (MME) mapping of EPC QOS (non-standard QCIs) to 3GPP PreRelease8 QoS parameters. qci indicates the QoS class. Its value ranges from 1 to 9. When QCI is configured, the corresponding mapping takes place based on 3GPP TS 23.401. class indicates the UMTS traffic classified into the following categories: background conversational interactive streaming thp Traffic handling priority specifies the relative importance of handling all SDUs that belong to the UMTS bearer compared to the SDUs of other bearers. The priority value ranges from 1 to 3, where the value 1 holds the highest priority. The predefined thp value is 3 sig-ind toggles the state of the signal. The values are either 0 or 1. src-stat-desc toggles the state of the signal. The values are either 0 or 1. sdu error-ratio Service Data Unit (SDU) Error ratio indicates the fraction of SDUs lost or detected as error packets. SDU error ratio is defined only for conforming traffic. The range is an integer ranging from 1 to 7. The ratio ranges from 10^-1 to 10^-6. Allowed values are 1(10^-2), 2(7*10^-3), 3(10^-3), 4(10^-4), 5(10^-5), 6(10^-6) and 7(10^-1). The predefined minimum value is 1. min-transfer-delay defines the maximum delay for 95th percentile of the delay distributed for all delivered SDUs during the lifetime of a bearer service. The delay value ranges from 10 to 40,000 milliseconds. The predefined minimum value is 100. The delay for an SDU is defined as the time from request to transfer and SDU at one SAP to its delivery at the other SAP.

Non-Standard and Operator Specific QCI Support Show Command(s) and/or Outputs

This section provides information on how to monitor and troubleshoot the Non-Standard and Operator Specific QCI Support feature.

For information on troubleshooting, please refer to the Monitoring and Troubleshooting section in the QoS Profile Support chapter in the MME Administration Guide

Monitor the configuration of Non-Standard and Operator Specific QCI feature, by using the following command:

show quality-of-service-profile full all

On executing the above show command, the following new field is displayed:

show bearer-control-profile full all

This command is used to display QoS parameters configured for mapping Operator Specific QCI to 3GPP Pre-Release8 parameters

On executing the above command, the following new fields are displayed:

• pre-rel8-qos-mapping

  • Class

  • traffic handling priority

  • sdu error ratio

  • minimum transfer delay

  • source stats descriptor

  • signaling indication

  • QCI value

show mme-service statistics esm-only verbose

A new counter is added to monitor Operator Specific QCIs. This command is used to display the total number of bearers using Operator Specific QCIs.

On executing the above command, the following fields are displayed:

Bearer Statistics:

All Bearers: 0 Connected Bearers: 0

Idle Bearers: 0

Bearers Using Operator-Specific QCI:

All Bearers: 0 Connected Bearers: 0

Idle Bearers: 0