Inline Editing of VPLS and Layer 3 VPN Service Orders

The Manage Service Order windows that enable the provisioning of L3VPN and VPLS services utilize grids as a navigation element to add sites and interfaces to a VPN. In addition, grids are also used to select individual elements and configure any details that might be required for such element to be part of the VPN. For example, a typical VPLS configuration workflow involves the following steps:

Entering general service parameters that apply to all nodes in the VPN, such as the name of the service, signaling protocol used, route distinguishers, and route targets

Selecting the set of nodes that participate in the VPN instance. Per-node parameters can be configured by going through one node at a time, or though a bulk edit operation by selecting and editing multiple nodes simultaneously.

Choosing the the set of interfaces on each node that connect to the customer devices and configure the interface-specific characteristic of each interface. Similar to the node settings, users can perform bulk edits to modify multiple interfaces at a time.

In your network environment, the VPLS and L3VPN services, owing to their multipoint nature, involve multiple devices and interfaces, which causes the configuration to require many steps, and becomes cumbersome and complicated. To simplify and optimize the configuration of multipoint services by allowing users to configure devices an interfaces in a grid so that the operator can easily view and modify the most important parameters of the service, the inline edit mechanism is implemented. Inline modification signifies the ability to perform changes to previously defind settings in an easy and quick manner.

Embedded editing is enabled, which causes the grids showing the devices and interfaces to become modifiable directly without the need to perform the process of highlighting, editing, and saving the changes every time you want to edit a particular parameter. The page that displays the configured settings presents as a form in which the fields or cells of the table are editable.

Because the inline edit functionality enables you to directly edit the grids, only the salient and most important parameters for each service in the grids are displayed.

For parameters that you can enable or disable, you can select or clear the check boxes.

For parameters that require a value to be specified, an auto drop-down list is displayed that enables you select a value from the list of available or configured values.

Advanced parameters can be continued to be edited by selecting the rows and clicking Edit. A popup dialog box is displayed with the list of all parameters supported for editing. You can perform inline edits by double-clicking in the cell or the field under a particular column in the table of displayed settings. The field becomes editable when you double-click within the cell.

For a VPLS service order, the following node settings can be modified using the inline edit method:

Service loopback, Hub, Mac learning, Mac Interface limit, Mac statistics

Parameter	                  Editable	      Dependencies
Node 	                     Yes	            None
Status	                     No	            None
Platform	                  No	            None
Service loopback            Not available  	 None
Hub	                        Yes	            Only available for hub-spoke topologies
Mac learning	                Yes	            None
Mac Interface limit	       Yes	            None
Mac statistics	             Yes	            None

Parameter				Editable			Dependencies
Node 					Yes	         None
Interface         	Yes	         The Node name has to be configured
Status					No	            None
Autopick Unit	   Yes	         None
Unit ID	         Yes	         Only enabled when autopick unit ID is not checked
VLAN tagging	      Yes	         None. This is a combo box with 3 options (Disabled, Dot1Q and QinQ)
Autopick VLAN ID	 Yes	         Enabled when VLAN tagging is set to Dot1Q or QinQ
Outer VLAN ID	    Yes	         Enabled when VLAN tagging is set to Dot1Q or QinQ and autopick VLAN ID is not checked
Inner VLAN ID	    Yes	         Only available for QinQ VLAN tagging
Rate Limit	       Yes	         None
Interface 
Description	       Yes	         None

For an L3VPN service order, the following node settings can be modified using the inline edit method:

Node, Hub, Stitching point

Parameter			 Editable				Dependencies
Node 				 Yes						None
Hub					 Yes						Only editable for Hub-and-spoke topologies
Stitching point	 Yes						When hub is selected, stitching point must be disabled

For an L3VPN service order, the following site settings can be modified using the inline edit method:

Node, Interface, Autopick Unit, Unit ID, VLAN tagging, Autopick VLAN ID, Outer VLAN ID, Inner VLAN ID, Auto pick IP, IP Address, Subnet

Parameter			 Editable				Dependencies
Node 	          Yes	              None
Interface	       Yes	              The Node name has to be configured
Status	          No						None
Autopick Unit	  Yes						None
Unit ID			  Yes						Only enabled when autopick unit ID is not checked
VLAN tagging		  Yes	              Only enabled when the interface selected is not a loopback (lo0). For loopback interfaces the VLAN												                           	      tagging should be set to disabled. For other ethernet-based interfaces, this should be a combo box                                    with 3 options (Disabled, Dot1Q and QinQ)
Autopick VLAN ID  Yes						 Enabled when VLAN tagging is set to Dot1Q or QinQ
Outer VLAN ID		Yes					 Enabled when VLAN tagging is set to Dot1Q or QinQ and autopick VLAN ID is not checked
Inner VLAN ID	   Yes	             Only available for QinQ VLAN tagging
Auto pick IP	      Yes               None
IP Address	      Yes	             If autopick is enabled this should be a combo box showing the available pools. If autopick is                                         disabled, this should be an input text box allowing users to enter the IP
Subnet	            Yes	             None, when autopick is enabled this sets the block size. Then autopick is disabled it sets up the													                                     subnet size