Simulation Menu: Time-Based Simulation
Time-based simulation is used to simulate bandwidth calendaring. By Scheduling LSPs with specific time windows, you can simulate circumstances in a live network where peak periods of bandwidth utilization are created by LSPs with overlapping start and end times. This allows you to predict whether planned LSPs would actually be placed. You can add exhaustive failure simulation to the scenario as well, and finally, you can generate a report that details the results of the simulation.
The Paragon Planner follows some rules when performing the routing and failure portions of this type of simulation. For the routing simulation:
Only LSPs that are active during the simulation period are considered and placed into the time line; inactive LSPs are ignored.
The Paragon Planner advances the time line to route each LSP based on its scheduled start time.
For the failure simulation:
Outage simulation can be time consuming, so the Paragon Planner performs it only at specific times.
The times selected are just prior to the time the LSPs are scheduled to disconnect. This is when the highest impact is expected.
To simulate bandwidth calendaring, perform the following procedure.
Provision scheduled LSPs in the Paragon Pathfinder UI.
Set the network time by navigating to Tools > Options > General.
In the Simulation Scenarios window, click Time Based Simulation as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Simulation Scenarios Window Time Based Simulation
Click the check box that enables time-based simulation and select the simulation start and end times.
If you also want to include exhaustive failure simulation, click Single Failure in the Simulation Scenarios window and select the type(s) of outage you want to include (link, SRLG, node, and so on).
In the Simulation Scenarios window, click Report Options. Click the check box corresponding to the type of results report you want to generate. For bandwidth calendaring simulation, the following reports provide very useful information:
L2_PeakSimReroute
L2_PATHDELAY
L2_PeakSimRoute
These reports provide information about LSPs that are (not_routed) or (time_expired). You can then use the UI to research the exact reason why an LSP is (not_routed). Right-click on an unplaced LSP and select Bottleneck Analysis to learn why the LSP was not placed. One common reason is insufficient RSVP bandwidth.