Automated steering (AS) allows service traffic to be automatically steered onto the required transport SLA path programmed
by an SR policy.
With AS, BGP automatically steers traffic onto an SR Policy based on the next-hop and color of a BGP service route. The color
of a BGP service route is specified by a color extended community attribute. This color is used as a transport SLA indicator,
such as min-delay or min-cost.
When the next-hop and color of a BGP service route matches the end-point and color of an SR Policy, BGP automatically installs
the route resolving onto the BSID of the matching SR Policy. Recall that an SR Policy on a head-end is uniquely identified
by an end-point and color.
When a BGP route has multiple extended-color communities, each with a valid SR Policy, the BGP process installs the route
on the SR Policy giving preference to the color with the highest numerical value.
The granularity of AS behaviors can be applied at multiple levels, for example:
-
At a service level—When traffic destined to all prefixes in a given service is associated to the same transport path type.
All prefixes share the same color.
-
At a destination/prefix level—When traffic destined to a prefix in a given service is associated to a specific transport path
type. Each prefix could be assigned a different color.
-
At a flow level—When flows destined to the same prefix are associated with different transport path types
AS behaviors apply regardless of the instantiation method of the SR policy, including: