Assurance Sensor Control

Overview

The Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Control (formerly Skylight sensor: control) plays the role of an extended Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor (formerly Skylight Performance Element) in a Performance Monitoring Solution. A single Sensor Control can manage thousands of performance monitoring sessions. The Sensor Control relies on Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to link to small footprint hardware devices (Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor SFP and Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance Sensor Modules). NFV permits wirespeed processing power and provides a level of microsecond precision that exceeds that of standalone Assurance Sensors. Management, test control, and result-processing functions have been migrated to a centralized controller, and processing functionality was ported to Cisco Provider Connectivity Assurance’s own FPGA programmable processors. The Sensor Control handles the CPU requirements of thousands of Provider Connectivity Assurance devices and each device acts as a remote port for the Sensor Control.

Provider Connectivity Assurance devices perform Service Activation Testing (SAT), traffic conditioning, standards based OAM, and Performance Monitoring (PM) under the control and command of the Sensor Control. These miniaturized devices generate full line rate test traffic and maintain thousands of PM sessions per unit. The Sensor Control also maintains synchronization information for each endpoint, permitting highly precise one-way measurements for a variety of remote locations.