Prototype Participation / Topology Information
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Required Topology Information for Prototype
This page contains topology information which has to be provided by partners intending to contribute to the prototype.
Topological information (overview)
A partner might be willing to provide (layer 3) information about a part of his network. It would be desirable if this part could also comprise the link to Geant.
In this case, some topological information is needed, i.e. information about network nodes (routers, switches), interfaces, and interface connections (see corresponding topology tables in the JRA1_D1.4_Database_Schema). For the prototype the information can be provided in a static way. This means to just send a list of nodes, interfaces, and connections (relationships between connected the interfaces).
The next section describe the general data required in more detail and give an example how to provide it.
Topological information (general pieces of data)
The file format is not important, the data contained in the file are. Every partner can choose its own format suitable for his information sources and information retrieval methods (for an example see the following section). What is needed at the moment is the following:
- the list of routers (no specific attributes necessary, maybe a name would be nice)
- for each router: the list of interfaces (only one attribute really necessary at the moment: the ip interface address which allows to link the interface to the metric values in a MA, maybe the link capacity of the interface)
- the relationship of inter-connected interfaces, i.e. which interface of which router is connected to a interface of another router by network point-to-point-links or (if necessary) multi-point-links.
- (To allow for an easy generation of the CNM/Nemo maps, geographical locations of the routers could be
provided if possible.)
The tables below additionally illustrate the above described, required data:
Node information
| name | e.g. DNS name or some other key identifier |
| information | remark (optional) |
| geographical coordinates (optional) | allow for easy map creation |
Name has to be unique in network; node can be a router or a switch.
Interface information
| node name | name of the equipment to which the interface is attached to |
| name | e.g. if_decr MIB variable or some other key identifier, unique within the containing router |
| IP address | needed for mapping to MA measurent data |
| information | remark (optional) |
Connection information (relationship of connected interfaces)
| Links/Connection information | remark |
| router name/interface name1 | |
| router name/interface name2 | |
| router name/interface name3 ... | optional, allow for multipoint links |
Topological information (example)
There is no specific format how to provide this information to leverage information access from different sources and different retrieval methods without to much effort for the partner. E.g., the topology of GEANT network is provided by DANTE in the following form:
- A file containing the output of a SHOW-ISIS (show isis database extensive) command of one router of GEANT. It provides the list of routers, how they are inter-connected and the IP addresses.
- A file containing the output of a SHOW-CONFIGURATION (show configuration interface) command for each router.It allows to map the IP address of each link found with the SHOW-ISIS with the interface IPv6 IP address, the interface name (so-7/0/0) and the link capacity (though, this one can be retrieve with the SHOW-ISIS).
Utilisation metric data
For the provided network topology information to be fully useful for visualization purposes, also an corresponding MA should exist which contains utilization data for the interfaces of the network.
Confirmed partners
Those partners have confirmed to provide data to the prototype:
- DANTE
- Uninett
- GRNet
- SWITCH
- Abilene
- ESnet
