Summary Data

Revision History

The Pilot Packet feature provides key information about a subscriber session, such as subscriber identity and subscriber IP address, to an external element. When the subscriber allocates or deallocates IP address during an event trigger, a “pilot” packet is generated. Using this information new service such as Subscriber Analytics are enabled and sent in UDP transport.

Pilot Packet consists of the following information in the form of Type Length Values (TLVs):

• Allocation/De-allocation Flag

• Access Point Name (APN)

• MSISDN (MDN)

• IMSI

• Allocated Address-IPv4

• Allocated Address-IPv6-Address

• Allocated NAT IPv4 Address

• NAT Address Port Chunk Start

• NAT Address Port Chunk Size

• Serving Network Identifier

• Foreign Agent IP Address

• NAI

• RAT Type

• Virtual APN Name (vAPN)

The operator enables the network element with Pilot packet to gain and report enterprise-level information through the Flexible-Services-Container TLV on SGi interface.

Flexible-Services-Container consists of the following enterprise-level information:

• Enterprise Customer Profile Database Identification (ECPD ID)

• Account Number

For example: ECPD ID = 3458312; Account Number = 0442058164-00001

Notes

Following are the important notes:

• P-GW adds new TLV to the Pilot packet for subscribers, only if configured through CLI and received on S6b in AAA message.

• P-GW ignores Flexible-Services-Container received in the Re-Auth procedure.

• The contents and interpretation of the enterprise information (ECPD ID and Account Number) is not required for P-GW or GGSN services. The data is not parsed by P-GW or GGSN and passed transparently in Pilot packet.

In Pilot packet configuration, the operators can configure a maximum of eight pilot packet servers. Gateways can send pilot packets to up to eight IPv4 destination servers.

Note	Operators cannot configure IPv6 address as pilot packet servers.

You can configure up to eight pilot packet servers for an APN under context configuration mode. Use these configuration commands to configure a pilot packet server.

configure 
   context context_name 
      [ no ] pilot-packet namename source-ip-address ip_address destination-ip-address ip_address
      destination-udp-port port_number dscp-marking dscp_value  
   end 

NOTES:

• no : Disables the usage of Pilot packets.

• pilot-packet : Configures the Pilot packet.

• name : Configures Pilot packet server name.

• source-ip-address ip_address : Configures source ip address for sending Pilot packets.

• destination-ip-address ip_address : Configures source ip address for sending Pilot packets.

• destination-udp-port port_number : Configures destination UDP port number for sending Pilot packets.

• dscp-marking dscp_value : Configures DSCP value for Pilot packets.

Sample configuration

This is an example configuration.

[local]laas-setup# configure
[local]laas-setup(config)# context ISP1
[ISP1]laas-setup(config-ctx)# pilot-packet name SRV_01 source-ip-address xxx.xxx.xxx.1 destination-ip-address xxx.xxx.xxx.2 destination-udp-port 00000 
… 
… 
 [ISP1]laas-setup(config-ctx)# pilot-packet name SRV_08 source-ip-address xxx.xxx.xxx.1 destination-ip-address   xxx.xxx.xxx.2 destination-udp-port 32000
[ISP1]laas-setup(config-ctx)# end
[local]laas-setup#
[ISP1]laas-setup(config-ctx)# no pilot-packet name SRV_01
[ISP1]laas-setup(config-ctx)# end

To configure Pilot Packets containing key information about a subscriber session to third-party network elements, use the following configuration:

configure 
   context context_name 
      pilot-packet { attribute { foreign-agent-ip-address | nai | rat-type | serving-nw-id | flexible-services-container | apn-name | virtual-apn-name } | name server_name source-ip-address source_ip_address | trigger rat-change generate { nat-info-only | user-info-and-nat-info | user-info-only } } 
      default pilot-packet { attribute { foreign-agent-ip-address | nai | rat-type | serving-nw-id | flexible-services-container } | trigger rat-change } 
      no pilot-packet { attribute { foreign-agent-ip-address | nai | rat-type | serving-nw-id | flexible-services-container | apn-name | virtual-apn-name } | name server_name | trigger rat-change } 
      end 

NOTES:

• pilot-packet { attribute apn-name} : Includes the Access Point Name (APN) in the pilot packets.

• pilot-packet { attribute virtual-apn-name} : Includes the Virtual Access Point Name (VAPN) in the pilot packets.

• pilot-packet { attribute flexible-services-container} : Sends the optional flexible-services-container in Pilot packets.

• default pilot-packet { attribute flexible-services-container } : Does not send the optional flexible-services -container in Pilot packets.

• no pilot-packet { attribute flexible-services-container } : Disables flexible services container information in Pilot packets.