This article provides information on available licenses and deployment solutions on Cisco Ultra Packet Core (UPC) .

Cisco's Ultra Packet Core licensing is designed to provide flexibility and scalability to meet the diverse needs of service providers.

The Cisco Ultra Packet Core (UPC) is the Virtual Packet Core (VPC) solution that brings together Cisco's UPC and Service Functioning Chaining (SFC) technology into a single, integrated virtual network function (VNF). It also brings a set of tools to automate and simplify the on-boarding, instantiation, and operation of this tightly coupled collection of technologies.

In compliance with 3GPP standard architectural enhancements, Cisco enhanced the operation of the EPC through the separation of Control and User Plane functions. As part of CUPS, Packet Gateway application is split into independent components—Control Plane and User Plane.

• CUPS Control Plane: CUPS Control Plane (CUPS CP) is deployed on either VPC-Distributed Instance (VPC-DI) or VPC-Single Instance (VPC-SI) .

• CUPS User Plane: CUPS User Plane (CUPS UP) is deployed on VPC-SI.

The Cisco UPC (CUPS) solution is based on the StarOS-based VPC platforms.

Cisco Ultra Packet Core offers licensing solutions for you to manage your licenses.

• Traditional Licensing: A model that involves purchasing of a perpetual license for a specific feature set. The license is activated with a license key that is tied to the hardware device. You can activate all available software packages on your network devices and enable all the bundled features. For more information, see Traditional Licensing.

• Smart Licensing: A flexible and convenient cloud-based software licensing model that simplifies the management of software licenses across your organization. It automatically creates a pool of licenses or entitlements for use throughout the organization. With Smart Licensing, you only pay for the features you currently need, with the option to upgrade as necessary, ensuring the security of your investment. For more information, see Smart Licensing.

• Specific License Reservation (SLR): A solution specifically designed for classified environments where electronic communication is restricted. In such environments, routers are unable to communicate directly with the Cisco Smart Software Manager (CSSM) or through SSM On-Prem. SLR enables the use of all entitlements on the router without the need for communication with Cisco.

Smart Licensing enables all Parent and Child Licenses based on the Product type. However, the reporting is done only for Parent Licenses.

• Reporting Licenses (Parent Licenses): The Parent Licenses report to CSSM and account for usage of licenses. Each Parent Licenses creates the entitlement tags to identify the type service or feature.

• Non-Reporting Licenses (Child Licenses): The Child Licenses do not report to CSSM. Child licenses are enabled by default with the Parent Licenses and do not have Entitlement tags.

Cisco's license enforcement policy outlines how on/off feature licenses are managed and enforced. These licenses are tied to service licenses, which may use the on/off features. The policy also describes the handling of compliance, evaluation periods, and out-of-compliance (OOC) scenarios.

A 90-day evaluation period is granted for all licenses in use. You can use all feature licenses without any limitation, and up to one counting license. The evaluation period ends when the system registers successfully with the CSSM.

Handling Out of Compliance

If there are not enough licenses in the virtual account for a given SKU, CSSM sends an Out Of Compliance (OOC) message to the device. The system stops allowing extra sessions until the OOC state is cleared. The OOC state is cleared when the device receives an authorized response

A 90-day grace period is granted when the account in OOC state. The the system generates SNMP traps to inform of the unavailability of valid licenses.

You can view the enforcement policy on your device with the show license enforcement policy command.

You can view the enforcement status with the show license enforcement status command.

If the feature license is in...	then...
90-day grace period	purchase and register licenses for the feature, or disabe the feature.
90-day grace period expires	OOC is enforced for each license and new calls for the corresponding services to the on/off licenses are dropped. cleat the OOC message by authorizing the licenses.