Cisco Service Provider Presents at Tech Field Day Extra at Cisco Live EMEA

Automated Assurance with Cisco Crosswork and Accedian

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Rana El Desouky Kazamel and Tom Footit discuss the collaboration between Cisco Crosswork and Accedian, which is now part of Cisco, focusing on automated assurance for mass scale networks. Their goal is to help network operators monitor services, monetize SLAs, and deliver enhanced digital experiences. They explain how their solution provides a single pane of glass across multi-vendor and multi-domain networks, mapping services to network operations and enabling enhanced services.

They cover the end-to-end automation framework necessary for simplifying mass scale networks, including workflow definition, service provisioning, visibility, assurance, planning, and optimization. They emphasize the importance of intent-based assurance, which starts with the service intent and SLA metrics.

Tom details Accedian’s capabilities, including the use of sensors (probes) to generate test traffic and collect data for analyzing network behavior, predicting issues, and identifying SLA compliance. They also discuss how issues like fiber cuts can be managed and correlated with affected services, and how policies can be adjusted in real-time based on various constraints, including energy consumption.

Rana and Tom touch on integrations with other Cisco tools like Thousand Eyes for end-to-end assurance, and they demonstrate how their platform allows operators to drill down from a high-level view of network health to specific issues and devices causing problems.

Overall, the collaboration aims to provide network operators with the tools to proactively manage their networks, ensure service quality, and respond to issues efficiently.

Personnel: Rana El Desouky Kazamel, Tom Footit

Cisco Routed Optical Networking Automation

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Jochen van Guyse and Pedro Do Vale Brites from the automation team present a demo on routed optical networking (RON) and its automation. They explain the benefits of RON, which include simplifying network architecture by eliminating the need for separate transponders and reducing power consumption, space, and overall operational costs. They discuss the need for automation in RON due to the challenges it poses, such as the management of wavelengths across different teams (optical and IP networking teams).

The hierarchical controller architecture, which facilitates RON automation, is introduced. This architecture includes the top-level hierarchical controller, domain controllers for IP and optical networks, and the potential for integration across multiple vendors.

Pedro then demonstrates the system, highlighting the ease of setting up end-to-end IP links, including the provisioning within optical networks, and how to troubleshoot faults. He shows how the system can help operations teams by providing a single pane of glass view, correlating IP links with their optical paths, and simplifying fault management. The demo also covers inventory management, proactive maintenance planning through failure impact analysis, and historical data analysis for identifying trends in hardware failures.

The system is designed to fix inventory issues by relying on discovered data rather than user input, thereby serving as a single source of truth. The goal is to simplify operations for first-level network operations center (NOC) personnel by providing easy correlation of faults across layers and offering predictive maintenance insights. Some functionalities, like cross-launching into different domain controllers, are still in progress, but the main features demonstrated are generally available (G.A.) and currently shipping.

Personnel: Jochen van Guyse, Pedro Do Vale Brites