Broadband Provisioner Reference

Broadband Provisioner is compliant with more than 50 IETF standards, as well as standards from the Cablelabs® Consortium and various other entities. This list is not exhaustive, as new standards are added regularly.

The software ships as a single tar.gz file containing RPMs for each daemon. You may install all of the packages, or any combination for the services you require.

To install the packages, first untar the distribution file, then install the prerequisites, and afterwards install the services and plugins you require.

The daemons are registered automatically during installation, but the services are not automatically started. Use the /etc/init.d scripts to start the services.

Before installing this product you must ensure that the libgcc and firebird packages are installed. The libgcc package can be obtained from www.sunfreeware.com, and the firebird package is distributed with this software.

The software ships as a single tar.gz file containing Solaris package files for each service. You may install all of the packages, or any combination for the services you require.

To install the packages, first untar the distribution file. Then install the prerequisites, and afterwards install the services and plugins you require using the pkgadd command.

You may want to create a startup script to launch the daemons (todtd, tftptd, syslogtd and dhcptd, located in /usr/local/sbin) each time the machine is started.

When you first start the user interface, Broadband Provisioner will ask you to activate your product. If you are deploying the product yourself, mail your activation code to activation@weird-solutions.com to receive a product serial number, otherwise obtain the serial number from your local support representative.

Broadband Provisioner uses a domain system for provisioning the devices on your network. A domain is simply a logical grouping to which resources and device accounts are assigned. An easy way to understand how domains work is to view a domain as a partition in the server’s configuration. Two different devices having identical properties on your network, but belonging to different domains, may "see" Broadband Provisioner as having two completely separate configurations.

By tailoring the domain classifications for your network, Broadband Provisioner allows you to:

A resource is anything that Broadband Provisioner is configured to manage. Resources are carefully guarded by the server, and provisioned for use by devices on your network using a system of domain memberships.

Examples of resources include:

Address provisioning is what happens when Broadband Provisioner decides which IP address a device can use. When a device first boots in your network, Broadband Provisioner classifies the device, associates it with one or more domains, then determines which address pools are available to the domain(s) with which the device is associated. Although the device’s domain membership determines the set of pools available, additional checks may limit this set of pools based on the network topology and other factors.

After the device has obtained its address, it must periodically extend the lease on that address. If the binding and the pool belong to domains to which the device has access, the lease can be extended. If, however, the device has been moved to a different domain, the lease cannot be extended. In this case the device may attempt to get another address from a different pool.

The Cablelabs® Data-Over-Cable-Service-Interface-Specification, DOCSIS®, defines a standard whereby a modem operating over cable-tv cabling can support a TCP/IP network. Broadband Provisioner fully supports DOCSIS cable modems by being able to automatically classify new cable modems on your network, assign them to domains, lease them addresses and build dynamic configuration files that configure all aspects of the modem.

Provisioning a cable modem takes place in two steps: first the modem receives an IP address, and second it receives a configuration file dictating its operating parameters, including settings such as upstream and downstream bandwidth and quality of service.

Cable modems can be automatically provisioned by configuring the DHCP server to first recognize the new devices as a cable-modem, then to assign the device to a domain that delivers the necessary DHCP options for the modem to download its configuration file. Once the cable modem has a working IP address, the TFTP server identifies the cable modem and proceeds to build and deliver a DOCSIS configuration file for the device.

Most fiber modems, like every other device on your network, require an IP address to operate.Broadband Provisioner can manage the IP addresses of every fiber-modem on your network, and can provision DHCP options to fiber modems using the same account/domain model that’s used for your other network devices.

Some fiber modems also support the ability to download a configuration file over TFTP. For these modems, Broadband Provisioner can be configured to easily manage the modem configurations by simply moving the modem accounts into and out of a domain. Modem configuration files are dynamically generated based on the domains to which the subscriber belongs.

Broadband Provisioner can be configured to automatically classify new devices when they first come online. You can use site-specific logic to probe for information about the new device and, based on the results, classify the new device into one or more domains.

See the individual module references for details about configuring automatic provisioning.

A self-provisioning system is one in which the subscriber actively chooses the services to which he or she wishes to subscribe. Broadband Provisioner ships with a rich web-services gateway that can be used to easily implement a web-based self-provisioning system.

The web-services gateway is covered in detail the Web-Services reference section.

Manual provisioning can be tedious for human operators. To manually provision a new device:

For more information on manual provisioning, see the section covering the web-services gateway.

The expression syntax in Broadband Provisioner provides unlimited flexibility for configuring devices on your network. Instead of simply defining static values, expressions allow you to calculate values at runtime using many different criteria.

You can supply expressions in many places where you would normally use a literal value. For example, instead of defining option 12, Hostname as a literal string, you can write an expression that generates a unique host name from information the device sent to the server.

You can use expressions in the following places:

Refer to the individual protocol engine references for a complete description of the expression syntax.

An address pool is a resource that identifies a range of addresses that the server can lease to your devices. This is the primary means of automatically managing the IP addresses on your network.

To create an address pool, choose File→New→Address Pool in the user interface.

The fields for an address pool are:

For each pool there is also a pool-specific policy that can hold configuration information specific to the network on which this pool resides. The most common use of the pool-specific policy is to define the Gateways option (default gateway).

The server chooses a pool for a DHCP client device by using a four stage process of reduction.

If a pool belongs to the All devices domain (the default), step 2 will not discard the pool. By moving the pool from the All devices domain to a more restricted domain you can effectively allow or deny access to the pool based on the domains to which the DHCP client belongs.

Dynamic address bindings are resources that are automatically created by the DHCP server using the information provided from your address pools. A dynamic address binding is a DHCP lease that allots an IP address to a specific device for a certain amount of time.

A dynamic address binding contains these fields:

The DHCP server automatically associates dynamic address bindings with one or more domains. If a device is able to obtain a lease from an address pool, it will be able to extend the lease created from that pool as long as the device belongs to the same domain used to obtain the original lease.

A fixed address binding is a specific kind of DHCP lease that guarantees that the recorded IP address will always be associated with the device named in the lease. Once a fixed address binding is made, the DHCP server will never use the binding’s address with another client until you delete the binding or convert it to a dynamic binding.

You can create fixed address bindings manually or you can convert a dynamic binding to a fixed binding. To convert a dynamic binding to fixed, simply change the Fixed field in the binding to true.

When creating a fixed address binding you must specify the relay agent address to be associated with the binding. You can create different bindings for the same device on different network segments by specifying different relay addresses.

The following fields are not required when creating a fixed address binding:

Network pools are an emerging IPv6 standard and are currently under development.

Network bindings are an emerging IPv6 standard and are currently under development.

Network bindings are an emerging IPv6 standard and are currently under development.

DHCP options are operational settings that the DHCP server can distribute to devices on your network. The system is pre-configured with a wide array of IETF-standard DHCP options, as well as a set of Control Options that can alter the DHCP server’s runtime behavior. In addition, the system allows you to define your own site-specific options.

DHCP options are defined in a policy, address pool or network pool.

Because policies belong to domains, it’s easy to provision a set of DHCP options to a device: simply associate the device account with the domains that contain the policies the device should use.

Of course, a network device may belong to as many domains as you require, so you are free to mix and match domains to suit your provisioning model. Having Class-of-Service domains combined with geographical domains is one approach.

Assigning a device to a domain isn’t the only way to provision DHCP options. Each option has an associated value, and that value can be a literal, such as 192.168.1.1 or it can be an expression that’s dynamically calculated based on criteria you choose. For example, the "TFTP server" option could be calculated as:$RELAY.ADDRESS() + 1. This expression simply assumes that the address of a client’s closest TFTP server is the next address in sequence after the relay agent’s address.

A DHCP policy, which is simply a collection of DHCP options, is the primary means for giving a device extra configuration settings. A policy can hold any number of DHCP options, and any number of policies can be applied to a given device. There are two basic kinds of policies: Enforced and Optional.

When a DHCP client device contacts the server, the provisioner module determines the domains the device belongs to, and the DHCP engine uses this information to locate all policies for the device.

For every enforced policy applicable to the device, the DHCP server provides the device with every option in all enforced policies.

Devices are only provided with options from optional policies when the device explicitly requests values for those options.

Every domain you create with the web-based interface has one enforced policy and one optional policy. Having these two policies associated with the domain creates a set of common response options for devices using this domain, with certain options only provided when asked for.

For example, suppose you do the following:

With this configuration, every will be given the Time servers option, but only cable modems that request the Domain name servers option will receive that information.

Since policies are associated with domains, it’s straightforward to cause a device to receive one set of options or another by moving the device account between domains.

Option types are declarations of DHCP options. They are not actual options, merely descriptions of options the server should be prepared to encounter. Option types specify a full range of details for DHCP options, including the tag number, data type, value limits, etc.

For every DHCP option the server receives there should be a corresponding Option Type that describes the option. If the DHCP server receives a packet that contains an unknown option, processing for that option is skipped.

Option types are quite complex because they describe in detail the complete characteristics of DHCP options. The fields of an option type are described below, with descriptions for each field.

An option may be declared as one of the following types:

Vendor classes are a convenient way of organizing the different kinds of devices that may appear on your network.

DHCP packets typically contain information that describes the kind of device communicating with the server. Instead of writing an expression to fully analyze all possible combinations of a DHCP packet, you can call the $DEVICE.TYPEID() function. This function returns a number that indicates the exact type of device communicating with the server.

The $DEVICE.TYPEID() function uses vendor classes to determine the type of device that is requesting DHCP service.