The Nil-FEC ping and traceroute operations are extensions of regular MPLS ping and traceroute operations used for failure detection and trouble shooting in MPLS networks. Regular MPLS ping and traceroute requires at least one forwarding equivalence class (FEC) in the target FEC stack. In Nil-FEC ping and traceroute operations, an explicit FEC is not associated with the label.

For more information on Nil-FEC ping and traceroute, see MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS5500 Series Routers.

MPLS labels can be assigned statically or dynamically. Effective with this release, you can also assign static labels to IPv6 prefixes and set the next hop address in the static LSP as an IPv6 address. You can also configure multiple forward paths, back up path sets, and specify outgoing next hops that can resolve with RIB.

For more information about configuring MPLS static labels for IPv6 prefixes, see MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS5500 Series Routers.

BGP Labeled Unicast IPv6 Address-Family bascially distributes MPLS labels using BGP structures. Thus IPv6 reachability information is exchanged over an IPv4 MPLS core infrastructure. It relies heavily on multiprotocol Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) extensions in the IPv4 network configuration on the provider edge (PE) router to exchange IPv6 reachability information (in addition to an MPLS label) for each IPv6 address prefix.

Explicit BGP SR-TE uses an SR-TE policy that contains a list of explicit paths with SIDs that correspond to each explicit paths. A BGP speaker signals an explicit SR-TE policy to a remote peer, which triggers the setup of an TE tunnel with specific characteristics and explicit paths. The policy (identified by a unique color ID) contains a list of explicit paths with SIDs that correspond to each explicit paths.

For more information, see the Configure SR-TE Policies chapter in the Segment Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

The BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) feature enables monitoring of BGP neighbors (called BMP clients). Post inbound policy monitoring is available and configurable from this release.

Prior to this release, Cisco IOS XR did not support all flow types for LPTS. With the Dynamic LPTS Flows feature, users can configure LPTS flow types and maximum LPTS entries per flow type in the TCAM. This is enabled by configuring the lpts pifib hardware dynamic-flows location <node-id> command in the global configuration mode. The dynamic LPTS flow type configuration is per line card (LC). User can have multiple profiles configured across LCs.

For more information on Dynamic LPTS flow type configuration and commands, see the Defining Dynamic LPTS Flow Type section in the Multicast Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, and the respective commands in the Multicast Command Reference Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

Field-Programmable Devices (FPD) can be automatically upgraded by enabling the fpd auto-upgrade command in both Administration configuration and XR configuration mode. FPD images are automatically upgraded when a software upgrade is initiated or when a Line card is inserted / reloaded on a router.

This feature allows you to check whether the GRE tunnel destination is reachable using a prefix-list.

For more information about validating GRE tunnel destination using a prefix-list, see Interface and Hardware Component Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

This feature modifies the hashing algorithm to load balance deeper in the payload of the packet.

Effective with Cisco IOS-XR release 6.2.2, Cisco NCS5500 series router supports up to 128K MPLS TE mid-point tunnels. However, re-optimization is supported only for 64K MPLS-TE tunnels at a given instance. Since other MPLS features like LDP also share the same FEC resources, the number of node protected tunnels supported are limited by available FEC resources on the line card and router. Hence, you should take into account the distribution of link and node protected tunnels while deploying 128K MPLS-TE mid-point tunnels. For more information about MPLS-TE, see MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS5500 Series Routers.

Policy-Based Tunnel Selection (PBTS) is now supported on Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers. PBTS is a method to direct traffic into specific TE-tunnels based on classification criteria of the incoming packets based on Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) fields in the packets.

PBTS is implemented by enabling the forward-class command in the MPLS-TE configuration mode.

For more information on PBTS, see Implementing MPLS Traffic Engineering chapter in MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, Release 6.2.x.

The DMZ link bandwidth of the eBGP link is a community that is advertised to IBGP peers to be used for multipath load balancing. The DMZ Link Bandwidth community is an optional non-transitive attribute, so the community is not advertised to eBGP peers. The DMZ Link Bandwidth feature enables the advertising of the DMZ Link Bandwidth community to an external BGP peer, and also the receiving of the community by an eBGP peer.

For more information, see the BGP Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x.

The router support the marking of IP DSCP bits of all IP packets to zero, in the egress direction. This feature helps to re-mark the priority of IP packets, which is mostly used in scenarios like IP over Ethernet over MPLS over GRE. This functionality is achieved using the ingress policy-map with set dscp 0 option configured in class-default.

For more information about this feature, see the Implementing Access Lists and Prefix Lists chapter in the IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

You can configure an access control list (ACL) rule to filter packets by the fragment-offset value. Depending on whether a packet matches the criteria in a permit or deny statement, the packet is either processed or dropped respectively at the interface. Fragment-offset filtering is supported only on ingress direction with compression mode of an ACL.

You can configure an access control list to filter packets by the packet length at an ingress interface. Depending on whether a packet matches the packet-length condition in a permit or deny statement, the packet is either processed or dropped respectively at the interface.

For more information about this feature, see the Implementing Access Lists and Prefix Lists chapter in the IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.For complete command reference, see the Access List Commands chapter in IP Addresses and Services Command Reference for Cisco NCS 5500 Series and NCS 540 and NCS 560 Series Routers

Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) supports auto provisioning of router by running customized scripts using DHCP server over v6.

For more information about ZTP, see the Perform Disaster Recovery chapter in the System Setup and Software Installation Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x.

Data models are a programmatic and standards-based way of configuring and collecting operational data of a network device, replacing the process of manual configuration.

The enhancements includes support for:

• Netconf OC Models

• OC RPC

For more information, see the Programmability Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x .

Flexible packaging is an enhancement that modularizes and delivers the Cisco IOS XR operating system as RPM packages.

Flexible packaging supports a customized ISO that includes ISO, RPMs, SMUs and configurations. This customized ISO, called the Golden ISO (GISO) eases installation and eliminates multiple install operations when installing additional packages. To build the customized ISO, use the gisobuild.py tool available in the box location at /pkg/bin in IOS XR mode.

For more information, see the Customize Installation using Golden ISO chapter in the Flexible Packaging Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x.

Model-driven telemetry supports UDP protocol for dial-out configuration where the router initiates a session to the destinations based on the subscription.

For more information, see the Configure Model-driven Telemetry chapter in the Telemetry Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x .

Internet Protocol Flow Information Export (IPFIX) is an IETF standard export protocol for sending Netflow packets. IPFIX is based on Netflow version 9.

The IPFIX feature formats Netflow data and transfers the Netflow information from an exporter to a collector using UDP as transport protocol.

For more information, refer Netflow Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

The IEEE8021-SECY-MIB provides Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) access to the MAC security entity (SecY) MIB running with IOS XR MACsec-enabled line cards. The IEEE8021-SECY-MIB is used to query on the SecY data, encryption and decryption, and the hardware statistics. The SecY MIB data is queried only on the Controlled Port.

The object ID of the IEEE8021-SECY-MIB is 1.0.8802.1.1.3. The IEEE8021-SECY-MIB contains the following tables that specifies the detailed attributes of the Controlled Port interface and are indexed by the ifindex pointing to the Controlled Port. All of these tables have a read-only access.

For more information, see the SecY IEEE MIB at the following URL:

http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/MIBs/IEEE8021-SECY-MIB-200601100000Z.txt

Using the Type 6 password encryption feature, you can securely store MACsec plain text key string (CAK) in Type 6 encrypted format.

The primary key is the password or key used to encrypt all plain text MACsec key strings (CAK) in the router configuration with the use of an Advance Encryption Standard (AES) symmetric cipher.

The primary key is not stored in the router configuration and cannot be seen or obtained in any way while connected to the router.

The Type 6 password encryption is effective only if a primary key is configured.

For more information, see the Implementing MACsec Encryption Chapter of the System Security Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.2.x.

Cisco Network Convergence System 5500 Series supports the use of URPF in loose mode. URPF loose mode is enabled when the router is configured to validate only the prefix of the source IP address in the FIB and not the interface used by the packet to reach the router. By configuring loose mode, legitimate traffic that uses an alternate interface to reach the router is not mistaken to be malicious. URPF loose mode is very useful in multi-homed provider edge networks.

For more information, see the Configuring URPF Loose Mode section of the Implementing Cisco Express Forwarding chapter in the IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

In Cisco IOS XR, the control packets, which are destined to the Route Processor (RP), are policed using a set of ingress policers in the incoming ports. These policers are programmed statically during bootup by LPTS components. The policers are applied based on the flow type of the incoming control traffic. The flow type is determined by looking at the packet headers. The policer rates for these static ingress policers are defined in a configuration file, which are programmed on the route processor during bootup. You can change the policer values based on the flow types of these set of ingress policers. You are able to configure the rate per policer per node.

For more information on Configurable LPTS Policers configuration, refer IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers

Converged networks carry voice, video and data. Users may need to route certain traffic through specific paths instead of using the paths computed by routing protocols. This is achieved by specifying the next-hop address in ACL configurations, so that the configured next-hop address from ACL is used for fowarding packet towards its destination instead of routing packet-based destination address lookup. This feature of using next-hop in ACL configurations for forwarding is called ACL Based Forwarding (ABF).

From Release 6.2.1.1, IPv4 ABF nexthops routed over GRE interfaces are supported.

For more information on ABF with GRE Tunnel as Destination configuration and commands, refer IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers

This feature allows you to configure a back up path for a static LSP to forward traffic if the primary path is not reachable or fails.

For more information about configuring backup paths for MPLS static LSPs, see MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS5500 Series Routers.

This feature allows you to specify the next hop address for the incoming label in a static LSP with out specifying the interface.

For more information about configuring static LSP next hop resolve, see MPLS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS5500 Series Routers.

Cisco IOS XR supports the use of QoS groups in an ACL to classify traffic based on a match condition. Before you can configure QoS groups in an ACL, the QoS peering profile must be enabled on the router or the line card.

For more information on this feature, see the Configuring ACLs with QoS Groups section in the IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

Cisco IOS XR provides an option to create object-group ACLs to classify users, devices, or protocols into groups, so you can have a group-level access control policy. Instead of specifying individual IP addresses, protocols, and port numbers in multiple ACEs, a single the object group in a single ACL.

This feature is very beneficial in large scale networks which currently contain hundreds of ACLs. By using the object-group ACL feature, the number of ACEs per ACL are significantly reduced. Object-group ACLs are also more readable, and easier to manage than conventional ACLs. Using object-group ACLs instead of conventional ACLs optimizes the storage needed in TCAM.

For more information on this feature, see the Understanding Object-Group ACLs section in the IP Addresses and Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.