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New Features

Migration of NorthStar Controller to a New UI Framework

NorthStar Controller 6.2.0 introduces a new UI framework for building modern, loosely coupled, single-pane-of-glass user experiences. It has been developed from the ground up using the latest Web application technologies and user experience best practices. The navigation in NorthStart 6.2.0 Controller User Guide is based on this new framework.

Note:

When you first log in to NorthStar, the Ext UI (also known as classic UI) appears. To change to the new user interface, select New UI from the hamburger button on right side of the top menu.

Colored SRTE Policies Using PCEP

Prior to NorthStar 6.2.0, you could apply the Color Community BGP attribute to SR LSPs created using NETCONF. Starting in NorthStar 6.2.0, this feature is also supported for LSPs provisioned using PCEP. To apply the color attribute, navigate to the Network Management > Provisioning > Provision LSP > Advanced tab in the web UI and specify the color assignment in the Color Community field. This field is only available when the Provisioning Type is set to SR in the Properties tab.

Note:

You need Junos OS Release 20.4 or later running on a device to apply the Color Community BGP attribute to LSPs provisioned using PCEP.

Once a colored SR LSP is successfully provisioned, the corresponding configuration on the device indicates the color community. As shown in the following example, LSP-1 has a color community (<c>) of “123’.

On-Demand Next-hop, Intra-Domain (Experimental)

The On-Demand Next-hop (ODN) feature gives Junos OS the ability to dynamically create SRTE LSPs when routes resolve over BGP next hops. The SRTE LSPs can then be delegated and managed by NorthStar. To use this feature, you must be running a recent version of Junos 20.4 supports that supports SR ODN (e.g. JUNOS 20.4I-20200910).

Note:

This feature is being provided for lab and demonstration purposes, but is not recommended for production networks at this time.

See Segment Routing for more information.

Admin Group Bit to Name Mapping

(Admin only) NorthStar automatically discovers admin group bits associated with a link/LSP. Prior to NorthStar 6.2.0, this information was displayed in bits (i.e. bit0, bit1) in the web UI. Starting in NorthStar 6.2.0, you can assign a meaningful name to the admin group bits (0-31). For example, you might want to map an admin group to a network region such as San Francisco or New York, where each region is given its own bit name. Or, you can map each admin group to a color, so that you can easily differentiate the different traffic routes in the display. Once defined, the link/LSP admin group is displayed in the topology map with its corresponding name.

Traffic Reports Filtered by Interface Groups

Starting in NorthStar 6.2.0, you can run traffic reports for interface groups. Group were added as part of the Link Utilization report type in the Demand Reports collection. Group utilization is based on what you define in the user properties. When you run the group report, you now see the property name and values that you specified under the property name columns in the Link or Tunnel tabs. In addition, the report shows the group traffic and group utilization in percentages. You can also apply filters to the user properties that you want to appear in the report.

See the Demand Reports section in Netflow Collector.

NorthStar Controller Interface Operational State

The NorthStar controller can now detect and update the operational state of an interface in the NorthStar topology. Using syslog messages, the controller notifies the updates to REST users over IO socket notification interfaceEvent on /restNotifications-v2.

The following output shows the updated configurations for both Juniper and Cisco nodes. Note that <ns-ip> refers to the NorthStart IP address.

Juniper configuration

Cisco configuration

In the above configuration, <device-name-as-per-northstar> refers to the device name or hostname as learned by NorthStar.

Telemetry Support for Ericsson Router 6000 (Experimental)

The NorthStar Controller can now collect telemetry data (statistics for interface and link latency data) for Ericsson 6000 Series routers. NorthStar’s analytic collectors receives the telemetry streams from the routers and processes and stores them for use in the analytics based features. This is an experimental feature that you can try out, however it is not fully qualified and is subject to change.

Path Computation Enhancements

The following PCE enhancements were added to NorthStar Release 6.2.0:

  • SR Anycast Path Computation Server (PCS) now supports:

    • NETCONF SR LSP provisioning

    • LSP bandwidth sizing

    • Bandwidth constraints

    • Bounded metrics (restraints were added for maximum hop, maximum delay and maximum cost)