Cisco 6400 Series Broadband Aggregators

This document provides some frequently asked questions for the Cisco 6400 Node Route Processor.

A. A Node Route Processor (NRP) is a router blade for the Cisco 6400. The NRP receives traffic from one or more Node Switch Processor (NSP) Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) switch ports, re-assembles the ATM cells into packets, routes the packets, segments the routed packets, and sends them back to the ATM switch.

A. The NRP supports RFC 1483 bridging, Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA), Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE), and RFC 1483 routing encapsulation.

A. The NRP1 is based on the 7200 Network Processing Engine (NPE)-200 core, but it does not use port adapters.

The NRP2 is comparable to the 7200's NPE-300.

A. The maximum number of NRPs that can be put into a Cisco 6400 is eight, but the recommended maximum is six.

A. The NRP1 has 64 MB or 128 MB of DRAM. Memory is in two SIMM slots. Each slot must contain the same size memory chip.

A. The NRP1 has 4 MB of SRAM packet memory which is the fast packet memory.

A. The NRP1 has 1 MB of L2 cache.

A. The NRP1 has 8MB or 16 MB of secondary flash memory, which stores the main Cisco IOS® image and large configurations.

The NRP2-SV has no onboard flash. All images and configuration data is stored on the NSP disks.

A. The NRP has 8MB or 16 MB of secondary flash memory, which stores the main Cisco IOS® image and large configurations.

The NRP2-SV has no onboard flash. All images and configuration data is stored on the NSP disks.

A. NRP has 4 MB of boot flash memory, which stores the Cisco IOS boot helper image.

The NRP2-SV has no onboard flash. All images and configuration data is stored on the NSP disks.

LED	Status	Condition
Status	Steady Green	NRP is active (primary)
	Blinking Green	NRP is standby (secondary)
	Steady Yellow	Cisco IOS is not running
	Blinking Yellow	System is booting
	Off	NRP has no power
Fail	Steady Yellow	NRP failed
	Off	Normal operation
ETH	Blinking Green	Packets are being transmitted and received
	Off	No activity
ACT (Activity)	Steady Green	Port is operational
LNK (Link)	Off	No carrier is detected
FE	Blinking Green	Packets are being transmitted and received
	Off	No activity
ACT (Activity)	Steady Green	Port is operational
LNK (Link)	Off	No carrier is detected

A. The processor used in the NRP1 is a MIPS R5K, as used in the NPE-200.

The NRP2-SV has two RM7000 RISC processors.

A. The internal clock speed of the NRP1's CPU is 200 MHz.

The internal clock speed of the NRP2-SV's CPU is 270 MHz.

A. The external clock speed for NRP1 is 50 MHz.

A. Yes, the NRP1 and NRP2-SV support OIR.

1. L2F and L2TP. These are some of the virtual private dial-up network (VPDN) tunneling features used by ISPs.
2. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) compliant PPP over ATM. This includes support for 1000 subscribers.
3. Subscriber bridging.
4. Web cache control protocol (WCCP) . This allows the router to divert HTTP packets, received in the data stream to a locally attached Web cache engine.
5. Unspecified Bit Rate (UBR) service.
6. ATM VC output shaping through TI1585.
7. IOS level 3 QOS features like Committed Access Rate (CAR), weighted fair queuing (WFQ), Random Early Detection (RED), Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED).

A. Yes, two NRPs can be configured for redundancy as long as they are in adjacent slots. Either NRP can be configured as primary, with the other in redundant fail-over mode. To configure redundancy between two NRP's, they must be in adjacent odd/even slots In other words, you can configure redundancy across NRP's in slots 1 and 2 or 3 and 4, but not 2 and 3 or 1 and 4.

Cisco IOS Software Release 12.0(3)DC added support for EHSA 1+1 redundancy for the Cisco 6400 Node Route Processor (NRP-1) card. Cisco IOS Software Release 12.2(13)T adds EHSA 1+1 redundancy support for the Node Route Processor 2 with Shaped Virtual Circuits (NRP-2SV).

A. To configure full-height adjacent slots for redundant operation, perform the following tasks:

Step	Command	Task
1	Configure [terminal]	At the privileged EXEC prompt, enter configuration mode from the terminal.
2	redundancy	Select the redundancy configuration submode.
3	associate slot [slot]	Configure the two cards installed in the specified slots as a redundant pair. You need only specify the first member of the redundant pair; the second member is assumed to be the device installed in the adjacent slot.
3	prefer slot [slot]	Define which of the two redundant devices acts as the preferred device.

The following example shows how to configure two NRPs installed in slots 7 and 8 for redundant operation, where the device installed in slot 8 is the primary device:

Switch# config term 
Switch(config)# redundancy 
Switch(config-r)# associate slot 7 
Switch(config-r-mc)# prefer 8 
Switch(config-r-mc)# end 
Switch#

A. To ensure that the configuration is consistent between redundant NSPs or NRPs, you can configure automatic synchronization between the two devices. You have the option of synchronizing just the startup configuration, the boot variables, the configuration register, or all three configurations. After the configuration is complete, you can disable auto-configuration using the no command. The default setting for individual synchronizable options is no auto-sync. However, the default for the auto-sync command is auto-sync standard. To set automatic configuration synchronization between redundant NSPs or NRPs, use the following command in redundancy configuration mode:

Command	Task
auto-sync [startup-config | bootvar | config-register | standard]	Synchronize the configuration between redundant NSPs/NRPs.

A. The three major steps in configuring PPP over ATM are:

1. Configuring ATM
2. Configuring PPP
3. Configuring the router to use AAA

A. You can configure the ATM permanent virtual circuit (PVC) by using any of the following methods:

1. Directly in the virtual circuit (VC) configuration
2. Using VC-class inheritance
3. PVC discovery mechanism

A. The following example shows a typical direct VC configuration for the Cisco 6400 NRP:

router(config-if)#pvc 0/40 
router(config-if-atm-vc)#encapsulation aal5mux ppp 
  virtual-Template 1 
router(config-if-atm-vc)#ubr 384 
router(config-if)#exit

A. The following example shows a typical VC class configuration for the Cisco 6400 NRP:

router(config)#vc-class atm ppp-atm 
router(config-vc-class)#encapsulation aal5mux ppp 
  virtual-Template 1 
router(config-vc-class)#ubr 384 
router(config-vc-class)#exit 
router(config)#interface atm 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#class ppp-atm 
router(config-if)#pvc 0/40 
router(config-if)#exit 
router(config-if)#pvc 0/41 
router(config-if)#exit

A. The following example shows a typical PVC discovery configuration for the Cisco 6400 NRP:

router(config)#vc-class atm ppp-atm 
router(config-vc-class)#encapsulation aal5mux ppp 
  virtual-Template 1 
router(config-vc-class)#exit 
router(config)#interface atm 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#class ppp-atm 
router(config-if)#atm ilmi-enable 
router(config-if)#atm ilmi-pvc-discovery 
router(config-if)#exit

1. The first step in per-user configuration occurs when a virtual access interface is cloned from the virtual template. A virtual template is a configuration that is applied to each user as the user logs in. This virtual access inherits all the configuration specified in the virtual template and, when the virtual template is changed, the changes are automatically propagated to all virtual accesses cloned from that particular virtual template.
2. The second step in per-user configuration occurs when the user is identified. At that point, user-specific information, such as IP address authorization and user-specific route-maps, is downloaded from the authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server and applied to the virtual access belonging to the user.

A. The following example shows a typical virtual template configuration for the Cisco 6400 NRP:

router(config)#interface Virtual-Template 1 
router(config-if)#ip unnumbered ethernet 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#peer default ip address pool telecommuters 
router(config-if)#ppp authentication chap 

router(config)#ip local pool telecommuters 10.36.1.1 10.36.1.254

In the configuration above, it is assumed that all PPP over ATM VCs (users) cloned from virtual template 1 will use Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) authentication and will be allocated an IP address from the pool named "telecommuters" configured on the router. In addition, the local end of the PPP over ATM connection is running without an IP address (recommended). Instead, the IP address of the e1/0 interface is used for addressability.

A. The following example shows a typical different-class configuration for a virtual template where addresses are allocated from a DHCP server.

router(config)#ip dhcp-server  
router(config)#interface Virtual-Template 2 
router(config-if)#ip unnumbered ethernet 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#peer default ip address dhcp 
router(config-if)#ppp authentication pap

A. Up to 25 virtual templates can be configured.

A. The following example shows a typical AAA for PPP configuration for the Cisco 6400 NRP:

router(config)#aaa new-model 
router(config)#aaa authentication ppp [name][method]

The name option here refers to the name of this particular method list (or default, if it is the default list), and the method option is a list of methods, for our purposes either radius or tacacs+. For example, to configure virtual template 1 to use TACACS+ before RADIUS, and virtual template 2 to use RADIUS before TACACS+, you need to issue the following configuration commands:

router(config)#aaa new-model 
router(config)#aaa authentication ppp list1 tacacs+ radius 
router(config)#aaa authentication ppp list2 radius tacacs+ 


router(config)#interface Virtual-Template 1 
router(config-if)#ip unnumbered ethernet 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#ppp authentication chap list1 


router(config)#interface Virtual-Template 2
router(config-if)#ip unnumbered ethernet 0/0/0 
router(config-if)#ppp authentication chap list2

Occasionally, it is useful to keep a local database of user names and passwords, in which case the router should be configured to check the local database first before checking the AAA servers. The command to enable this is:

router(config)#aaa authentication local-override

For either TACACS+ or RADIUS, the router must be configured with the name or IP address of the server:

router(config)#radius-server host [server-name-or-ip] auth-port 1645 
acct-port 1646 
router(config)#radius-server key <radius-password>

A. An example of configuring IRB on the NRP:

bridge irb 
! 
interface ATM2/0 
  no ip address 
  no ip directed-broadcast 
  no ip route-cache 
  no ip mroute-cache 
! 
interface ATM2/0.10032 point-to-point 
no ip directed-broadcast 
no ip route-cache 
no ip mroute-cache 
atm pvc 32 1 32 aal5snap 
bridge-group 1 
! 
interface ATM2/0.10033 point-to-point 
  no ip directed-broadcast 
  no ip route-cache 
  no ip mroute-cache 
  atm pvc 33 1 33 aal5snap 
  bridge-group 1 
! 
interface BVI1 
ip address 10.1.1.1 255.255.255.0 
ip directed-broadcast 

bridge 1 protocol ieee 
bridge 1 route ip 
bridge 1 aging-time 3602