Subject: [ipfix-eval] IPFIX protocol: Suitability Matrix for CPE - CSU/DSUs

From: "Malcolm Gillespie" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 09:16:48 -0500

Being a player in a fiercely competitive CPE market, QuickEagle would like
to share its views, requirements and real-world experience to help the
IPFIX group to evaluate the various proposed protocols.

Some critical attributes of a CSU/DSU are:
1.   Reliability
2.   Low cost of ownership over product lifetime

We are using CRANE to deliver QoS and other metrics from our CSU/DSUs.
Despite the low initial cost of such devices, one thing everyone takes for
granted from their CSU/DSUs is reliability, and hence low recurring cost of
ownership over the life of the product. As a result, our choice of technology
was driven by these factors.  CRANE also ensures us a level of flexibility
and scalability in an ever-changing IP community that allows us to adapt
quickly.

Many carriers have expressed a need to standardize on flow collection from
multi-vendor CPE, such as the CSU/DSUs, without compromising reliability or
being locked into expensive proprietary/closed solutions.

From our point of view, CRANE was a good choice because it offers:

1. Reliability - meets the carrier's requirements (congestion
   handling, zero data loss, minimal bandwidth). Our data is
   multiplexed onto the same network as regular traffic but
   with lower priority, so it is important that the protocol
   be able to handle this situation.

2. Low cost to integrate into our devices - this was achieved
   in a manner of a few engineering weeks and tested successfully
   by both us and a major carrier.

3. Small footprint - very important for us because of the
   highly competitive pricing in our market, and the need for
   feature richness without inordinate overhead.

4. Ease of adding new record types for export - just by adding
   a few new definitions in our code, CRANE's template
   negotiation takes care of everything else.
   Also, we can perform rolling version upgrades in the field
   without disrupting service enabled by its version and
   capability negotiation features.

5. Data push - CRANE data is much easier to process and scales
   better than SNMP (SNMP would have required keeping history
   data in case of missed polls, increasing our development cost
   and time)

In summary, for what we needed, CRANE was the best solution on the market
that meets our and our customers' requirements. So far we haven't found
anything better for our purposes.

Malcolm Gillespie
Director of Software Development
Quick Eagle Networks

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