This feature deals with Layer 2 Control Protocols (L2CP) tunneling that helps initiate control packets from a local customer-edge (CE) device to a remote CE device. Layer 2 Control Protocol Tunneling (L2PT) is a Cisco proprietary protocol for tunneling Ethernet protocol frames across layer 2 switching domains.

For more information, see the Configuring Link Bundling section in the Interfaces and Harware Component Configuration Guide for NCS 5500 Series Routers.

This feature introduces support for CFM Maintenance Points for Up and Down MEPs, and MIP. The Up and Down MEPs and MIPs are routed over bundle interfaces that include the L2 bundle main and sub interfaces.

For more information, see the Configuring Ethernet OAM chapter in the Interfaces and Hardware Component Configuration Guide for NCS 5500 Series Routers.

This feature introduces support for Y.1731 monitoring for DMM and DMR. Recommendation ITU-T G.8013/Y.1731 provides mechanisms for user-plane OAM functionality in Ethernet networks according to the requirements and principles given in Recommendation ITU-T Y.1730. This Recommendation is designed specifically to support point-to-point connections and multipoint connectivity in the ETH layer as identified in Recommendation ITU-T G.8010/Y.1306.

For more information, see the Configuring Ethernet OAM chapter in the Interfaces and Hardware Component Configuration Guide for NCS 5500 Series Routers.

BGP provides a mechanism for authenticating a TCP segment between two BGP peers by using a clear text or encrypted password. The mechanism is known as Message Digest 5 (MD5) authentication. BGP peers using MD5 authentication are configured with the same password. MD5 authentication is configured at the BGP neighbor level. If the password authentication fails, then the packets are not transmitted along the segment. Cisco IOS XR Release 6.3.1 supports the use of MD5 authentication for BGP peers.

For more information, see the BGP Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

To prepare for the eventual exhaustion of 2-byte Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs), BGP has the capability to support 4-byte ASNs. The 4-byte ASNs are represented both in asplain and asdot notations. The BGP 4-byte ASN capability is used to propagate 4-byte-based AS path information across BGP speakers that do not support 4-byte AS numbers.

For more information, see the BGP Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

Cisco IOS XR Release 6.3.1 supports the configuration of multiple VRFs and multi-VRF docker containers on XR. The applications hosted in third-party LXCs can communicate with VRFs configured on XR, after east-west communication has been enabled on the VRFs.

For more information, see the Configuring Multiple VRFs for Application Hosting, and Configuring a Docker with Multiple VRFs sections in the Cisco IOS XR Application Hosting Configuration Guide .

Hierarchical QoS (H-QoS) allows the user to specify QoS behavior at multiple policy levels. This enables the users to have a high degree of granularity in traffic management.

For more information on this feature, see the Configuring Hierarchical Modular QoS chapter in the Modular QoS Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x

IP multicast static routes (mroutes) allow you to have multicast paths diverge from the unicast paths. When using PIM, the router expects to receive packets on the same interface where it sends unicast packets back to the source. This expectation is beneficial if your multicast and unicast topologies are congruent. However, you might want unicast packets to take one path and multicast packets to take another.

For more information, see the Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x.

IPv6 Stateless Address Auto Configuration (SLAAC) is supported on management interface. This feature enables automated provisioning of the routers.

To see how to enable IPv6 SLAAC, see Advanced Configuration and Modification of the Management Ethernet Interface chapter in the Interface and Hardware Component Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

This feature allows you to enable Unequal Cost Multipath (UCMP) functionality locally between Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP) paths based on the bandwidth of the local links.

When the capacity of a bundle interface changes because a link or line card goes down and then comes back up, traffic continues to use the affected bundle interface regardless of how many of the provisioned bundle members are available. If some bundle members are not available due to the link or line card up/down event, the bundle interface could become overloaded. To address the bundle capacity changes, bandwidth-based local UCMP uses the bandwidth of the local links of a Layer 2 bundle interface to load balance traffic when bundle capacity changes. Bandwidth-based local UCMP is performed for prefixes and manual adjacency SIDs.

For more information on this feature, see the Configure Segment Routing for IS-IS Protocol chapter in the Segment Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers

This feature allows you to manually configure explicit adjacency segment identifiers (SIDs) from the segment routing local block (SRLB). In contrast to dynamically allocated adjacency SIDs, explicit adjacency SIDs can be applied to a set of parallel links (allowing traffic to be load-balanced across these links), and different adjacency SIDs can be applied to a given link. Explicit adjacency SID label values are retained over reloads.

For more information on this feature, see the Configure Segment Routing for IS-IS Protocol chapter in the Segment Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers

The Segment Routing Local Block (SRLB) is a range of label values preserved for the manual allocation of adjacency segment identifiers (SIDs). These labels are locally significant and are only valid on the nodes that allocate the labels. The default SRLB range is from 15000 to 15999.

For more information on this feature, see the Configure Segment Routing Global Block and Segment Routing Local Block chapter in the Segment Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers

With this enhancement, you can specify the FLEX CLI configuration group definition, and apply-group and exclude-group in any order as long as the entire commit has all the group definitions needed.

For more information, see Apply Groups Priority Inheritance chapter in the System Management Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

This feature allows you to configure DHCP IPv6 proxy mode for Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) sessions. After applying the configuration, the link local address field of SOLICIT message will include the IPv6 address along with the Router Advertisement prefix.

To see how to configure the link local address at proxy level, see Establishing Subscriber Sessions chapter in the Broadband Network Gateway Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

In NetFlow configuration a sampler map specifies the interval at which packets (one out of n packets) are sampled. On high bandwidth interfaces, applying NetFlow processing to every single packet can result in significant CPU utilization.

In Cisco IOS XR Release 6.3.1, the sampling interval of 1:1000 packets is supported.

For more information on how to configure sampler map, see the Netflow Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x.

For information on commands used in NetFlow, see the Netflow Command Reference for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

A NetFlow flow is a unidirectional sequence of packets that arrive on a single interface, and have the same values for key fields.

From Cisco IOS XR Release 6.3.1 Netflow is supported on sub-interfaces.

For more information on how to configure NetFlow on sub-interfaces, see the Netflow Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x.

For information on commands used in NetFlow, see the Netflow Command Reference for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

The Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP) defines a flexible method for measuring round-trip IP performance between any two devices. TWAMP enables complete IP performance measurement and supports all devices in the network And thus, it helps the users to ensure IP Service Level Agreement compliance.

For more information on this feature, see the Implementing IP Service Level Agreements chapter in the System Monitoring Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers,IOS XR Release 6.3.x

Segment Routing Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) helps service providers to monitor label-switched paths (LSPs) and quickly isolate forwarding problems to assist with fault detection and troubleshooting in the network. This feature extends the MPLS-OAM functionality for segment routing and allows to perform network perform connectivity verification (ping), trace routing, tree tracing, and fault isolation on segment routing network over MPLS data plane.

For more information about configuring MPLS OAM for segment routing, see Segment Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

Lawful intercept is the process by which law enforcement agencies conduct electronic surveillance of circuit and packet-mode communications, authorized by judicial or administrative order. Service providers worldwide are legally required to assist law enforcement agencies in conducting electronic surveillance in both circuit-switched and packet-mode networks.

For more information on benefits of this feature, see the Benefits of Lawful Intercept section of the Implementing Lawful Intercept chapter of the System Security Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x.

For more information, see the Implementing Lawful Intercept chapter of the System Security Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.x.

The Ethernet Data Plane Loopback feature provides a means for remotely testing the throughput of an Ethernet port. You can verify the maximum rate of frame transmission with no frame loss. This feature allows for bidirectional or unidirectional throughput measurement, and on-demand or out-of-service (intrusive) operation during service turn-up.

For more information on this feature, see the Configure Gigabit Ethernet for Layer 2 VPNs chapter in the L2VPN and Ethernet Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.1.

The Cisco NCS 5500 Series Router supports the Ethernet Local Management Interface (E-LMI) protocol as defined by the Metro Ethernet Forum, Technical Specification MEF 16, Ethernet Local Management Interface (E-LMI), January 2006 standard.

E-LMI runs on the link between the customer-edge (CE) device and the provider-edge (PE) device, or User Network Interface (UNI), and enables the CE device to auto-configure or monitor the services offered by the PE device.

For more information on this feature, see the Configure Gigabit Ethernet for Layer 2 VPNs chapter in the L2VPN and Ethernet Services Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.3.1.

Telemetry provides a mechanism to stream data from the router at regular intervals. Event-based telemetry is used to collect data when a state transition occurs. This feature optimises the need to collect state information even when a change in the state does not occur, thus eliminating the data overhead at the router and the receiver.

For more information about state transitions, and collecting event-based telemetry data, see Configure Event-based Telemetry chapter in the Telemetry Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

To see the list of actions and an example to use a System Admin action, see Components to Use Data Models chapter in the Programmability Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

gRPC supports confirmed-commit operation where a configuration change requires an explicit confirmation from the user before the configuration takes effect on the router. This feature helps in verifying that the change in the configuration works correctly and does not cause fluctuation in the management connectivity. If the configuration change causes loss of management connectivity, the configuration is automatically rolled back to the previous committed configuration after the default timeout period of 600 seconds.

For more information about the confirmed-commit RPC, see Using Data Models chapter in the Programmability Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

gRPC supports the IOS XR and System Admin actions related to YANG data models.

For a list of actions supported, see the Components to Use Data Models chapter in Programmability Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers.

The PIM bootstrap router (BSR) provides a fault-tolerant, automated RP discovery and distribution mechanism that simplifies the Auto-RP process. This feature is enabled by default allowing routers to dynamically learn the group-to-RP mappings.

For more information, see the PIM Bootstrap Router section in the Multicast Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, Release 6.3.x.

For more information, see the Reverse Path Forwarding section in the Multicast Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers, Release 6.3.x.

This feature pre-loads the ARP cache when an IS-IS adjacency is established, which eliminates packet loss on Ethernet interfaces when the adjacency is first used.

The enhancments to model-driven telemetry (MDT) includes:

• Support for JSON encoder

For more information, see Configure Model-based Telemetry chapter in the Telemetry Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 5500 Series Routers .

This feature enables increase in number range for BVI interfaces from <1-65535> to <1-4294967295>.

For more information, see the Bridge-Group Virtual Interface section in the Interfaces and Hardware Component Configuration Guide for NCS 5500 Series Routers.