About traffic types, network interfaces and traffic schemes

A traffic type is a particular classification of network traffic. It may include more than one protocol, but generally all traffic of a particular traffic type serves exactly one purpose, such as Diameter signaling or VM management.

A network interface is a virtual NIC (vNIC) on the VM. These are mapped to physical NICs on the host, normally one vNIC to one physical NIC, but sometimes many vNICs to one physical NIC.

A traffic scheme is an assignment of each of the traffic types that a VM uses to one of the VM’s network interfaces. For example:

  • First interface: Management

  • Second interface: Cluster

  • Third interface: Diameter signaling and Internal signaling

  • Fourth interface: SS7 signaling

Applicable traffic types

For SGC VMs only the traffic types defined in the node parameters file are available. The following table lists the traffic types that can be present on SGC VMs.

Traffic type Name in SDF Description

Management

 
management

Used by Administrators for managing the node.

Cluster

 
cluster

Used by Rhino and the OCSS7 SGC for inter-node communication.

SS7 signaling

 
ss7

Used for SS7 traffic.

Internal signaling

 
internal

Used for signaling traffic between a site’s Rhino VM Automation nodes.

SS7 Multihoming

 
ss7_multihoming

This is an optional interface used for SS7 (M3UA/SCTP) multihoming. You only need to specify the configuration for this interface if you plan to use SS7 multihoming.

Defining a traffic scheme

Traffic schemes are defined in the SDF. Specifically, within the vnfcs section of the SDF there is a VNFC entry for each node type, and each VNFC has a networks section. Within each network interface defined in the networks section of the VNFC, there is a list named traffic_types, where you list the traffic type(s) (use the Name in SDF from the table above) that are assigned to that network interface.

Note

Traffic type names use lowercase letters and underscores only.

Specify traffic types as a YAML list, not a comma-separated list. For example:

traffic_types:
  - diameter
  - sip
  - internal

When defining the traffic scheme in the SDF, for each node type (VNFC), be sure to include only the relevant traffic types for that VNFC. If an interface in your chosen traffic scheme has no traffic types applicable to a particular VNFC, then do not specify the corresponding network in that VNFC.

Currently only one traffic scheme is supported for SGC nodes.

Traffic scheme description First interface Second interface Third interface

Standard traffic scheme

 
- management
 
- internal
 
- ss7
Important

  • Choose a single traffic scheme for the entire deployment. All VMs in a deployment must use the same traffic scheme (apart from differences caused by particular traffic types only being present on some VM types).

  • The various IP addresses for the network interfaces must each be on a separate subnet. In addition, each cluster of VMs must share a subnet for each applicable traffic type (e.g. all management addresses for the VMs must be on the same subnet).

    The recommended configuration is to use one subnet per network interface. If your deployment has multiple sites, use one subnet per network interface per site.

  • It is not possible to add or remove traffic types, or change the traffic scheme, once the VM has been created. To do so requires the VM to be destroyed and recreated.

SCTP multihoming

SCTP multihoming is currently supported for M3UA connections to/from the OCSS7 SGC. Use of multihoming is optional, but recommended (provided both your network and the SS7 peers can support it).

To enable SCTP multihoming on SGC VMs, include the traffic type ss7_multihoming in the VNFC definition for those VMs in your SDF. SCTP connections will then be set up with an additional redundant path, such that if the primary path experiences a connection failure or interruption, traffic will continue to flow via the secondary path.

Multihoming traffic schemes

The ss7_multihoming traffic type must be assigned to a separate interface to any other traffic type.

As with the standard network interfaces, you must configure any multihoming network interface(s) on a different subnet(s) to any other network interface.

Warning

Due to a product limitation, for multihoming to function correctly the device at the far end of the connection must also be configured to use multihoming and provide exactly two endpoints.
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