Cisco® Network Registrar® 6.2 is an IP address management application from Cisco Systems® that supports scalable network deployment, configuration, service-assurance monitoring, and on-demand service delivery. It supports Cisco Intelligent Information Network architecture, and its advanced features add intelligence in the network and give service provider and enterprise customers a flexible deployment of an IP address solution that meets their dynamic business needs. Furthermore, Cisco Network Registrar is a carrier-class solution, proven through deployments by thousands of customers worldwide. Its rich interfaces help users reduce operational costs through automation of manual procedures.
Q&A
GENERAL
Q. What is the Cisco Network Registrar solution?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar solution provides comprehensive Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) administrative functions to help customers automate and streamline IP networking services, including business-critical tasks such as client configuration and provisioning. It also supports Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP), which can be used to download and upload data.
Q. What is a cluster?
A. A cluster is a Cisco Network Registrar instance consisting of DNS, DHCP, and TFTP server protocols running on the same computer.
NEW FEATURES
Q. What are the major new features in Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. Following are the major new features offered in Cisco Network Registrar Release 6.2:
• DHCPv6 and DNSv6 to support IPv6 deployment-As more and more devices are connected to the Internet, they consume more and more of the remaining available IPv4 public addresses, creating a demand for IPv6 addresses. Besides solving the IP address scarcity issue, IPv6 also helps users focus on rolling out services to meet their customer and business needs, hence improving revenue, rather than spending the effort on IP address allocation.
• Dynamic scope management-This feature allows the Cisco Network Registrar administrator to make dynamic changes to the scopes and have the changes become effective immediately without a server reload. It increases the Cisco Network Registrar DHCP server uptime to handle critical applications that are intolerable to slow response. The feature can also help increase operational efficiency, especially in the case where changes to scopes are frequently made. The reload time compounded over a period of time can become significant and result in low customer satisfaction.
• Full DNS administrative operations from the regional cluster-This feature includes complete management of forward and reverse zone, resource records, host records, and full access to the local cluster DNS server. Although DNS administration is possible from the regional cluster, the local administrator can still have custom configuration of the DNS for specific zones. This feature gives the regional cluster administrator full access to configure the DNS servers deployed in the network and provides the administrator a more efficient way to manage DNS servers from a central location, hence reducing operational cost.
• High-Availability DNS to improve service reliability-With High-Availability DNS, users can deploy a hot-standby backup primary server to ensure the namespace information can be updated at all times. This feature is critical to minimizing service outage.
• DHCP load-balancing failover-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 supports DHCP load-balancing failover deployment in which the backup DHCP server can offload a percentage of the DHCP request population. With this support, users can take better advantage of the CPU resources on both servers; this support also can result in shorter response time when processing DHCP requests.
• Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) manageability-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 helps users manage the DNS and DHCP server through a built-in SNMP agent. Users can retrieve solicited information in addition to traps from DHCP and DNS servers. With a single console to manage various applications, users see a dashboard displaying the health of all the critical applications and resources.
• Extended lease reservation-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 allows users to configure lease reservation using information other than MAC address. If the device breaks down and has to be replaced, users can replace the broken device with a new one without having to reconfigure the lease reservation for the new device.
• Enhanced option handling-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 reduces the complexity of creating a user's own DHCP option definition by allowing the user to easily add, modify, and delete option and suboption definitions from the base DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 specification using the Web interface.
• Flexible DNS update policy-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 provides a policy-based mechanism to update resource records. Rather than solely relying on access control lists (ACLs), the solution allows users to create a policy to specify the criteria used to process update requests. In each policy, the user indicates the type of resource record, ACL, grant or deny access, and additional information used to match the resource records.
• Central backup and restoration of configuration-To help users protect the configuration information maintained on the local cluster, Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 helps them back up the configuration data and archive this information in the regional cluster database. If a catastrophic incident occurs, users can recover the configuration data from the regional cluster. If the configuration is common across the local clusters, users can quickly configure a new server by replicating the archived configuration data on the new server.
• Shared WHOIS (SWIP) report for American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)-Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 provides tools for users to generate address space reports and submit these reports to regional Internet Registries that govern the allocation and use of IP address space. The report support format is mandated by the SWIP process. Each report contains the following:
– Information to identify the organization using the subdelegated address blocks
– Registration information for each IP address block
– Tracking information about the use of allocated IP address blocks to determine if additional allocations may be justified
Q. What is a typical deployment scenario for Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. A typical deployment consists of one regional cluster at the customer network operations center (NOC) or data center and one or more local clusters deployed throughout the network. A NOC can be considered the headquarters for all network operations, while a local cluster is under the management of a corporation division or a data center managing a portion of the network.
Q. What is a regional cluster?
A. A regional cluster provides central-management capability in the Cisco Network Registrar application. Each regional cluster consists of one or more of the following: central configuration management (CCM) server, router interface configuration (RIC) server, Tomcat Web server, servlet engine, and server agent. The regional cluster operates as the aggregate management server for up to 100 local clusters, each of which is a collection of DNS, DHCP, and TFTP servers deployed in the network. Interaction with the regional cluster is made through the Web user interface. With regional clusters, administrators can configure and control the local clusters from a centralized location, enabling coordination of local cluster management across multiple network domains to provide a consistent and unified IP address-policy implementation.
Q. What is a local cluster?
A. A local cluster is a Cisco Network Registrar instance consisting of DNS, DHCP, and TFTP server protocols running on the same computer.
IPv6
Q. What DHCPv6 addressing features are supported in Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 supports stateful and stateless addressing and prefix delegation configuration. In the stateless configuration, it returns the configuration parameters to the client without allocating an IP address. With stateful configuration, the solution returns both the IP address and the configuration parameters.
Q. What is prefix delegation?
A. The prefix delegation mechanism is intended for delegation of prefixes from a delegating router or DHCP server to requesting routers. It is appropriate for situations in which the delegating router or DHCP server has no knowledge about the topology of the networks to which the requesting router is attached, and the delegating entity requires no other information except the identity of the requesting router to choose a prefix for delegation.
Q. How is prefix delegation applied?
A. For example, a service provider can assign a prefix to a customer premises equipment (CPE) device acting as a router between the subscriber's internal network and the service provider's core network. Prefix delegation also eases IP address renumbering by changing only the prefix.
Q. What other DHCPv6 capabilities are supported in Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 also provides the following capabilities:
• Links and prefixes configuration; these links and prefixes are analogous to network and scope that define the network topology
• Setting up policies and options for links, prefixes, and clients
• Multiple address spaces to support VPN deployment
• Client-class processing to differentiate client types
• Lease reservation
• Server activity monitoring through statistics collection and logging
Q. What IPv6 deployment does Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 support?
A. Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 supports dual stack deployment, meaning that it can be deployed in a network that supports both IPv4 and IPv6.
Q. What DNSv6 features does Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 offer?
A. Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 has been supporting AAAA resource records, which are used to resolve to an IPv6 address.
DHCP ENHANCEMENTS
Q. Why is dynamic scope management important?
A. For some reason, users need to create many scopes, each of which can represent a subnet. In the past, the Cisco Network Registrar solution required users to reload the Cisco Network Registrar DHCP database for every change made to the scope, regardless of how major or minor the change is. If the number of scopes is large, the reload time can become a problem because the DHCP server does not respond to DHCP requests during reload. Dynamic scope management, also known as DHCP no-reload, allows users to make changes to their scope configuration and have these changes become effective without server reload. This feature minimizes service interruption time and enhances customer satisfaction.
Q. What is extended lease reservation?
A. Lease reservation is a feature in Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 that allows users to assign a static IP address to a client by using the client's MAC address as the lookup key for the reserved IP address. In some deployments, customers often need to create lease reservations based on something other than the MAC address from the incoming client packet. In fact, there is often a need to allow any DHCP client device attached to a port on a switch always to get the same IP address, regardless of the MAC address. This approach is often used in the "Industrial Ethernet," where factory floor devices need to be replaced by identical devices (with different MAC addresses), but still maintain the same DHCP IP address.
Q. What is DHCP load-balancing failover?
A. In normal failover mode, the main DHCP server bears most of the burden of servicing clients when the failover partners are in normal communication mode. The main server not only services all new client requests, but has to handle renewal and rebinding requests and expired leases from the backup partner. To distribute the load more evenly between the two servers in a simple failover configuration scenario, the Cisco Network Registrar application introduced the load-balancing feature in Release 6.2. This feature is based on RFC 3074, "DHCP Load Balancing."
Q. Why would I need DHCP load-balancing failover?
A. DHCP load-balancing failover allows both servers to actively service clients and determine which unique clients each will serve without running the risk of both servicing the same ones. The load-balancing factor is set through a percentage attribute, load-balancing-backup-pct, which assigns hash values to each server so that each one services a certain set of clients. A hash value is calculated for each request the server receives based on the client's identifier option value or hardware address, and the request is serviced if the hash value is assigned to that server. For example, a 50-percent load-balancing backup percentage may assign clients with hash values of 0 through 127 to the main server and 128 through 255 to the backup server. This capability provides higher DHCP throughput by distributing the load between the main and the backup DHCP servers.
DNS ENHANCEMENTS
Q. What is High-Availability DNS?
A. The Domain Name System was designed to have one primary server and multiple secondary servers as authoritative for a zone. This setup works well for static addressing, because only one instance (the primary zone file) is modified, while the secondary servers periodically probe for updates from the primary, or the primary notifies the secondary servers of updates when the zone is loaded or reloaded. This scenario has shortcomings with DNS updates under the RFC 2136 protocol, where DHCP dynamically updates the DNS server, and only the primary DNS server can accept updates. A single point of failure results: DNS updates cannot happen if the primary goes down. To solve this problem, a second primary server can be made available as a hot-standby server that shadows the main primary server. This solution is called High-Availability DNS. Both servers in this failover configuration must be synchronized so that their primary zones and related attributes are identical. Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 provides settings on the main server to identify the main and backup servers for synchronization, and the communication timeout period to revert to failover mode.
Q. Why is High-Availability DNS important?
A. Both DNS and DHCP are important to support IP services. They need to be up-to-date with the latest change in the network. High-Availability DNS improves DNS reliability and accuracy.
Q. What is policy-based update?
A. The DNS update policies provide a mechanism for managing update authorization at the resource records level. Using update policies, users can grant or deny DNS updates based on rules, ACLs, as well as resource records names and types. This capability provides a flexible way to configure DNS update for resource records rather than having an ACL for a zone.
WEB-BASED GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE
Q. What new roles are added to Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. With Cisco Network Registrar 6.2, the following roles have been added to support administrative tasks on the regional cluster:
• central-dns-admin: This role gives the regional administrator permission to administer DNS zones and templates, hosts, resource records, and secondary servers; and create subzones and reverse zones.
• central-host-admin: This role is responsible for core functionality (central-cluster license): Manage DNS hosts.
LICENSING AND UPGRADE
Q. Are there changes to the Cisco Network Registrar licensing for Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. The Cisco Network Registrar solution has been licensed based on the number of IP nodes. This strategy will continue in Cisco Network Registrar 6.2. The following licensing is applied to Cisco Network Registrar 6.2:
• Local cluster key-Manages the local cluster servers in the Web user interface or command-line interface; a user currently running Cisco Network Registrar 6.0 can upgrade to Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 using the key available for Cisco Network Registrar 6.0
• Regional central configuration key-Manages multiple local clusters at the regional cluster, in the Web user interface only
• Regional address space key-Manages the address space (address blocks and subnets) in the local clusters; management is done at the regional cluster using the Web user interface only
• Router management key-Manages RIC server at the regional cluster; management can be done using the Web user interface only
• Node count key-Manages a specified number of managed IP addresses, at the regional cluster
• IPv6-Activates DHCPv6 and DNSv6 capability
Q. How can users upgrade to Cisco Network Registrar 6.2?
A. Users running an older Cisco Network Registrar version can purchase an "a-la-carte" upgrade to the Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 local and regional cluster. However, because IPv6 is a new feature, there is no upgrade product number available for IPv6.
Q. How does the new licensing scheme apply to users who purchased Software Application Support (SAS) for Cisco Network Registrar 6.1?
A. Users with an active SAS contract for local cluster will receive an upgrade to Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 local cluster free of charge. If the contract also covers the regional cluster, the user is entitled to free upgrade to a Cisco Network Registrar 6.2 regional cluster, but the user needs to buy a separate license in order to activate IPv6 features.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
For more information about the Cisco Network Registrar product, contact your local Cisco account representatives, or visit http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/netmgtsw/ps1982/index.html.
