DSC SWe Network Connections

A DSC VM contains several virtual network devices that are used for different types of traffic. For example, the pkt0 interface is intended for Diameter or SS7/IP traffic, while the mgt0 interface is intended for management traffic. The virtual network devices must be integrated into your IP infrastructure to provide IP connectivity to the appropriate systems while taking into account operational requirements such as redundancy, throughput, and latency.

DSC SWe (on VMware and on KVM) Network Connections

The following provides a brief overview on integrating a DSC SWe into your IP network infrastructure.

Each DSC VM has virtual network devices for:

• routing Diameter or SS7/IP traffic
• inter-process communications with other DSC VMs
• monitoring using Integrated Monitoring Feed (IMF)
• management (DSC VMs 1 and 2)

The naming of these devices within the VMs depends on their intended function. It is up to you to provide appropriate network connectivity between a VM and your IP network, using your Host OS configuration and IP port cabling. Each configured virtual network device on a VM needs its own unique IP address and appropriate network labels or names. Additionally, a shared management IP address is provisioned; this shared management IP address migrates from one management device to the other, depending on available IP connectivity with the management gateway.

For additional information on configuring a DSC VM for your network connections, refer to

• Configure and Initialize the DSC SWe on VMware (on VMware)

• DSC SWe and vSP2000 Network Engineering

The following table summarizes the virtual network devices configured on a DSC SWe (on VMware and on KVM).

Virtual Network Devices on a DSC SWe (on VMware and on KVM)

DSC SWe (on OpenStack) Network Connections

The DSC SWe (on OpenStack) deployment expects to have one management network and two packet networks. These networks are as follows:

• Management Network - provisioning network for Web/SSH communications
• Packet Network - payload traffic network

The IP Networks used by the DSC SWE Platforms must be of high quality so these platforms can meet their throughput and latency requirements. See the Customer Network Requirements for the DSC SWe for more specific requirements and see Creating an IP Plan on OpenStack for detailed information about planning the IP network.

For provider networks, the IP addresses are assigned from the subnet allocation pools. These IP addresses for a network are assigned to each interface. ha0 is statically assigned. 

Supported IP Network Interfaces

Creating an IP Plan

It is recommended that you create an IP Plan before installing the DSC SWe. IP plan is generally created using an Excel spreadsheet and is intended to capture information such as hostname, logical IP addresses, and so on which help in configuring the DSCsystem. It is important to create the IP plan even for simple networks so that the system information is available during installation, also this information acts as a reference for future configuration changes.

The naming of the network devices within the VM depends on the intended function. Each configured VM virtual network device requires its own unique IP address. Additionally, a shared management IP address is provisioned; this shared management IP address migrates from one management device to the other depending on available IP connectivity with the management gateway.

For more information about creating an IP plan, see the following:

• for DSC SWe (on KVM) - Create an IP Plan on the KVM Hypervisor
• for DSC SWe (on VMware) - Creating IP Plan on the VMware ESXi
• for DSC SWe (on OpenStack) - Creating an IP Plan on OpenStack