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Manual Chapter : Enforcing Bandwidth Control Provisioned by PCRF

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BIG-IP LTM

  • 16.0.1, 16.0.0, 15.1.8, 15.1.7, 15.1.6, 15.1.5, 15.1.4, 15.1.3, 15.1.2, 15.1.1, 15.1.0, 15.0.1, 15.0.0

BIG-IP PEM

  • 16.0.1, 16.0.0, 15.1.8, 15.1.7, 15.1.6, 15.1.5, 15.1.4, 15.1.3, 15.1.2, 15.1.1, 15.1.0, 15.0.1, 15.0.0
Manual Chapter

Enforcing Bandwidth Control Provisioned by PCRF

Overview: Enforcing bandwidth control provisioned on PCRF

Policy Enforcement Manager™ (PEM) can enforce bandwidth limits provisioned by the PCRF using dynamic PCC rules. You do this by creating a dynamic bandwidth controller with the name
dynamic_spm_bwc_policy
. This bandwidth controller must be created on the BIG-IP system® using this predefined name. It does not need to be associated with an enforcement policy in PEM. Subscribers are assigned bandwidth in proportion to their configured rates. So for example, if subscriber A is assigned 4Mbps, and B is assigned 8Mbps, B will always get twice the bandwidth that A gets.

Task Summary

Creating a dynamic bandwidth control policy for PCRF

To set up bandwidth control through PCRF, you must have bandwidth control rules configured on the PCRF.
You can create a dynamic bandwidth controller so that PEM can enforce the maximum bit rate configured on the PCRF. You must follow the steps exactly as described here using the specified name for the bandwidth controller, and you must create the associated categories.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Acceleration
    Bandwidth Controllers
    .
  2. Click
    Create
    .
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type the name
    dynamic_spm_bwc_policy
    .
  4. In the
    Maximum Rate
     field, type a number and select the unit of measure to indicate the total throughput allowed for the resource you are managing.
    The number must be in the range from
    1 Mbps
     to
    1000 Gbps
    . This value is the amount of bandwidth available to all the connections going through this static policy.
  5. From the
    Dynamic
     list, select
    Enabled
    .
    The screen displays additional settings.
  6. In the
    Maximum Rate Per User
     field, type a number and select the unit of measure.
    For example, use
    50Mbps
    .
    The number must be in the range from 1Mbps to 2Gbps. However, the value you use is just a place holder and is never used by the system. For this example, the value is overridden by the PCRF.
  7. Enable the
    Measure
     setting, if you want to measure bandwidth on all future instances of this bandwidth control policy.
    The system measures bandwidth with the frequency you specify in the
    Log Period
     setting, and sends it to the log publisher you specify using the
    Log Publisher
     setting.
  8. Leave the
    IP Marking (TOS/DSCP)
     and
    L2 Marking (802.1p)
     values set to
    Pass Through
    , the default value.
  9. Click
    Finished
    .
  10. After you finish configuring the bandwidth controller, the
    Bandwidth Controllers
     screen opens.
  11. Click the Bandwidth Control policy name, that you configured.
    The Bandwidth Controllers policy page opens.
  12. In the
    Categories
     field, add up to 32 categories of traffic that this bandwidth control policy manages.
    All the categories share the specified bandwidth, in accordance with the rate specified for each category.
    Use the
    Categories
     setting only if you have not set values for the
    IP Marking (TOS/DSCP)
     or the
    L2 Marking (802.1p)
     setting.
  13. In the
    Category Name
     field, type a descriptive name for the category.
  14. In the
    Max Category Rate
     field, type a value to indicate the most bandwidth that this category of traffic can use, and select the unit of measure from the list, or select
    %
     and type a percentage from
    1
     to
    100
    .
    If you specify a rate, the number must be in the range from
    500 Kbps
     to the rate specified for the
    Maximum Rate Per User
     setting. A percentage indicates that this category can use up to the specified percentage of the maximum per-user rate. These values are upper limits (not minimum or guaranteed), so the sum can exceed the value you specified for the
    Maximum Rate Per User
     setting.
  15. From the
    IP Marking (TOS/DSCP)
     list, select
    Specify
     and type a number between
    0
     and
    63
     to assign a Type of Service (ToS) level to packets that exceed the
    Max Category Rate
    .
    If you do not want to set a ToS level, maintain the default setting,
    Pass Through
    .
  16. From the
    L2 Marking (802.1p)
     list, select
    Specify
     and type a number between
    0
     and
    7
     to assign a Quality of Service (QoS) level to packets that exceed the
    Max Category Rate
    .
    If you do not want to set a QoS level, maintain the default setting,
    Pass Through
    .
  17. Click
    Finished
    .
If this is the first bandwidth control policy created on a BIG-IP device, the system also creates a default static bandwidth control policy named
default-bwc-policy
 to handle any traffic that is not included in the policy you created. If you delete all bandwidth controllers, this policy is also deleted.
For PEM to enforce bandwidth control, you need to create a listener (Policy Provisioning and Online Charging Virtuals) with a Gx interface configured.

Creating a listener for subscriber discovery and policy provisioning

You can create listeners that specify how to handle traffic for policy enforcement. Creating a listener does preliminary setup tasks on the BIG-IP system for application visibility, intelligent steering, bandwidth management, and reporting. You can also connect with a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) over a Gx interface.
  1. On the Main tab, click
    Subscriber Management
    Control Plane Listeners
    .
    The Control Plane Listeners page opens.
  2. In the Policy Provisioning and Online Charging Virtuals area, click
    Add
    .
    The New Configure Diameter Endpoint Provisioning and Online Charging screen opens.
  3. In the
    Name
     field, type a unique name for the listener.
  4. In the
    Description
     field, type a description of the listener.
  5. For the
    VLANs and Tunnels
     setting, move the VLANs and tunnels that you want to monitor from the
    Available
     list to the
    Selected
     list.
  6. To connect to a PCRF, from the
    Diameter Endpoint
     list, select
    Enabled
     and select
    Gx
     or
    Sd
    from the
    Supported Apps
     options.
  7. In the
    Product Name
     field, type the product name which is used to communicate with the PCRF.
  8. In the
    Origin Host
     field, type the fully qualified domain name of the PCRF or external policy server, for example,
    ocs.xnet.com
    .
  9. In the
    Origin Realm
     field, type the realm name or network in which the PCRF resides, for example,
    xnet.com
    .
  10. In the
    Destination Host
     field, type the destination host name of the PCRF or external policy server, for example,
    pcrfdest.net.com
    .
  11. In the
    Destination Realm
     field, type the realm name or network of the PCRF, for example,
    net.com
    .
  12. For the
    Pool Member Configuration
     setting, add the PCRF servers that are to be members of the Gx endpoint pool. Type the
    Member IP Address
     and
    Port
     number, then click
    Add
    .
  13. In the
    Message Retransmit Delay
     field, type the number of milliseconds to wait before retransmitting unanswered messages in case of failure from the BIG-IP system to the PCRF over the Gx interface. The default value is
    1500
    .
  14. In the
    Message Max Retransmit
     field, type the maximum number of times that messages can be retransmitted from the BIG-IP system to the PCRF. The default value is
    2
    .
  15. In the
    Fatal Grace Time
     field, type the time period in seconds that a diameter connection can remain disconnected before the system terminates all sessions associated with that diameter endpoint. The default value is
    500
    .
  16. Click
    Finished
    .
    The Policy Enforcement Manager creates a listener.
When you create a listener, the Policy Enforcement Manager also creates virtual servers for each type of traffic (TCP, UDP, or both), and a virtual server for HTTP traffic. The system sets up classification and assigns the appropriate policy enforcement profile to the virtual servers. The system also creates a virtual server for the Gx interface with a diameter endpoint profile. If you are connecting to a RADIUS authentication server, a virtual server for RADIUS is also added.

Implementation result

When traffic flows through the BIG-IP system, the system limits the aggregated bandwidth for all subscribers to the
Maximum Rate
 specified in the
dynamic_spm_bwc_policy
 bandwidth control policy. The PCRF provides the
Maximum Rate Per User
 for each subscriber, overriding the value in the bandwidth control policy. Policy Enforcement Manager™ restricts subscribers to the maximum user rate, and bandwidth is spread among subscribers fairly, on a best effort basis.
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