Passport Carrier Release
Encyclopedia
Passport Carrier Release (PCR) is a version of the Passport Switch (now Multiservice Switch) software designed to run in telecommunications carrier environments. It was formerly developed by Nortel
Nortel
Nortel Networks Corporation, formerly known as Northern Telecom Limited and sometimes known simply as Nortel, was a multinational telecommunications equipment manufacturer headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada...

. After the sale in 2009 of most Nortel's assets, the passport SW is still used in several products of Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent
Alcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...

, Ericsson
Ericsson
Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...

 and Kapsch
Kapsch
The Kapsch Group, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, is an international Road Telematics, Information Technology and Telecommunications Company. The corporate group, with more than 4,000 employees worldwide generated total revenue of € 829.9 Million as of March 2011 and has invested € 55.8 Million ...

.

The passport products are now part of Ericsson's PPX products under IP Networking. The Ericsson PPX products can be found at the following link.
http://www.ericsson.com/ourportfolio/products/multiservice-switches?nav=fgb_101_504

Technologies

Internally, PCR is largely built up of custom applications on top of a VxWorks
VxWorks
VxWorks is a real-time operating system developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems.- History :...

 kernel. A benefit of the software is that it is completely modular and can load components to Passport control processors (CPs) and function processors (FPs) on an as-needed basis. FPs (also known as line cards) each run their own instance of the Operating System, and as such can be rebooted without the need to take the entire switch out of service, for example due to a software failure. As well, as would be expected, entire cards can be replaced while the system is hot, thus minimizing downtime due to hardware failure.

OAM and Provisioning

PCR consists of a custom OAM
OAM
OAM is an acronym that may refer to:*OA&M, Operations, Administration, and Maintenance*Oamaru Aerodrome, New Zealand*Object access method*Observatorio Astronómico de Mallorca, an observatory in Spain*U.S...

 interface that is highly object oriented. This reflects the modular nature of the operating system. The core component when provisioning IP
Internet Protocol
The Internet Protocol is the principal communications protocol used for relaying datagrams across an internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite...

 networks is the Virtual Router (however, a Passport switch can act in more than IP environments). Interfaces are provisioned as "application" objects, which are then in turn connected to Protocol Ports on a Virtual Router. It is best to consider the environment in which provisioning occurs to be object oriented, in the sense that the behaviour of the router is defined based on which objects are instantiated and how they are related. Note that there is a change in this paradigm noticeable in recent releases of PCR -- MPLS
Mpls
MPLS or Mpls can refer to:* Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States* Multiprotocol Label Switching, a data-carrying mechanism in computer networking...

, for example, now resides on an object called simply a Router with built-in IP features. This provisioning approach is more similar to that of Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...

 or Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks is an information technology and computer networking products multinational company, founded in 1996. It is head quartered in Sunnyvale, California, USA. The company designs and sells high-performance Internet Protocol network products and services...

.

Drawbacks

Unfortunately, at this time the OAM interface is unable to select which components are to be loaded on the fly. For example, if Multi-link Point-to-Point Protocol
Point-to-Point Protocol
In networking, the Point-to-Point Protocol is a data link protocol commonly used in establishing a direct connection between two networking nodes...

(PPP) is a required feature, before this feature can be used the CP and the FP hosting the MLPPP interface must have the mlppp feature loaded. As well, the vast array of objects available to an operator can be daunting, especially for an individual starting out with Nortel Passport switches for the first time. As well, built in documentation leaves much to be desired (thus not helping the first-time operator), and tab completion features are non-existent (though some objects and parameters have shorthand names, for example the Virtual Router component can simply be known as a Vr).

Versioning

PCR releases are assigned a release code, usually of the form CG##X, where ## is a two digit number and X is a letter, usually referring to a patch code or revision code.

The current release is PCR 9.1.1.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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