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Pawan Gupta
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Introduction

The Web Cache Communication Protocol (WCCP) was initially designed as a component of IOS whose purpose was to intercept HTTP traffic traversing a router and redirect that traffic to a local cache with the aim of reducing access times to web sites and conserving wide area bandwidth. Typically the packets are redirected from their  destination web server on the Internet to a content engine that is local  to the client. In some WCCP deployment scenarios, redirection of  traffic may also be required from the web server to the client. WCCP  enables you to integrate content engines into your network  infrastructure. With the introduction of WCCPv2 the scope of the protocol widened to include traffic types other than HTTP allowing the protocol to be used as a more general interception mechanism. In WCCPv2 clients specify the nature of the traffic to be intercepted and forwarded to external devices which are then in a position to provide services, based upon the traffic type, such as WAN optimisation and application acceleration.

Cisco IOS Release 12.1 and later releases allow the use of either WCCP Version 1 (WCCPv1) or Version 2 (WCCPv2).

WCCP VRF Support

The WCCP VRF Support feature enhances the existing WCCPv2 protocol by  implementing support for virtual routing and forwarding (VRF).

The WCCP VRF Support feature allows service groups to be configured on a per VRF basis in addition to those defined globally.

Along with the service identifier, the VRF of WCCP protocol packets  arriving at the router is used to associate cache-engines with a  configured service group.

The interface on which redirection is applied, the interface which is  connected to cache engine, and the interface on which the packet would  have left if it had not been redirected must be in the same VRF.

In Cisco IOS Release 12.2(33)SRE, this feature is supported only on Cisco 7200 NPE-G2 and Cisco 7304-NPE-G100 routers.

Configuring WCCP

Until you configure a WCCP service using the ip wccp {web-cache | service-number} global configuration command, WCCP is disabled on the router. The first use of a form of the ip wccp command enables WCCP. By  default WCCPv2 is used for services, but you can use WCCPv1  functionality instead. To change the running version of WCCP from  Version 2 to Version 1, or to return to WCCPv2 after an initial change,  use the ip wccp version command in global configuration mode.

If a function is not allowed in WCCPv1, an error prompt will be  printed to the screen. For example, if WCCPv1 is running on the router  and you try to configure a dynamic service, the following message will  be displayed: "WCCP V1 only supports the web-cache service." The show ip wccp EXEC command will display the WCCP protocol version number that is currently running on your router.

Using the ip wccp web-cache password command, you can set a  password for a router and the content engines in a service group. MD5  password security requires that each router and content engine that  wants to join a service group be configured with the service group  password. The password can consist of up to eight characters. Each  content engine or router in the service group will authenticate the  security component in a received WCCP packet immediately after  validating the WCCP message header. Packets failing authentication will  be discarded.

SUMMARY STEPS

1.  enable

2.   configure terminal

3.  ip wccp version {1 | 2}

4.  ip wccp [vrf vrf-name] {web-cache | service-number} [group-address group-address] [redirect-list access-list] [group-list access-list] [password password [0| 7]]

5.  interface type number

6.   ip wccp [vrf vrf-name] {web-cache | service-number} redirect {out | in}

7.   exit

8.   interface type number

9.  ip wccp redirect exclude in


Tunnel Interfaces

In IOS versions where WCCP is VRF aware, such as 15.0M and 15.1T, the use of GRE redirection will result in some new tunnel interfaces appearing.  On the ASR platform these tunnel interfaces are also present from IOS XE release 2.5 onwards (although VRF support within WCCP on the ASR platform is not present until IOS XE release 3.1).

Examples of the new tunnel interfaces are shown below:

Router#show ip wccp summary 
WCCP version 2 enabled, 3 services

Service     Clients   Routers   Assign      Redirect   Bypass    
-------     -------   -------   ------      --------   ------    
Default routing table (Router Id: 30.1.1.80):
web-cache   1         1         HASH        GRE        GRE       
61          1         1         HASH        GRE        GRE       
62          1         1         HASH        GRE        GRE       

Router#show ip interface brief | include Tun
Tunnel0                172.16.0.1      YES unset  up                    up     
Tunnel1                172.16.0.1      YES unset  up                    up     
Tunnel2                172.16.0.1      YES unset  up                    up     
Tunnel3                172.16.0.1      YES unset  up                    up     
Router#

The tunnels are created automatically to process outgoing GRE encapsulated traffic for WCCP.  They appear when a cache engine  connects and requests GRE redirection.  They're not created directly by WCCP, but indirectly via a tunnel API.  WCCP has no  direct knowledge of these tunnel interfaces, but knows enough to cause packets to be redirected to them.  This results in the  appropriate encapsulation being applied, after which the packet is then sent to the cache engine.  Note that these interfaces  are not used in connection with incoming WCCP GRE return packets.

There is one tunnel created per service group that is using GRE redirection, plus one additional tunnel to provide an IP  address to allow the other tunnel group interfaces to be unnumbered but still enabled for IPv4.  Some information about the  tunnels is shown with the command show tunnel groups wccp, although this is unlikely to be useful to the end-user other than  to confirm the connection between the tunnels and WCCP.

Router#show tunnel groups wccp              
WCCP : service group 0 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   intf: Tunnel0, locally sourced
WCCP : service group 317 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   intf: Tunnel3, locally sourced
WCCP : service group 318 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   intf: Tunnel2, locally sourced
Router#show tunnel interface t0
Tunnel0
   Mode:multi-GRE/IP, Destination UNKNOWN, Source 30.1.1.80
   Application ID 2: WCCP : service group 0 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   Linestate - current up
   Internal linestate - current up, evaluated up
Router#show tunnel interface t1
Tunnel1
   Mode:multi-GRE/IP, Destination UNKNOWN, Source 172.16.0.1
   Application ID 2: unspecified
   Linestate - current up
   Internal linestate - current up, evaluated up
Router#show tunnel interface t2
Tunnel2
   Mode:multi-GRE/IP, Destination UNKNOWN, Source 30.1.1.80
   Application ID 2: WCCP : service group 318 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   Linestate - current up
   Internal linestate - current up, evaluated up
Router#show tunnel interface t3
Tunnel3
   Mode:multi-GRE/IP, Destination UNKNOWN, Source 30.1.1.80
   Application ID 2: WCCP : service group 317 in "Default", ver v2, assgnmnt: hash-table
   Linestate - current up
   Internal linestate - current up, evaluated up
Router#

Note that service group number shown above is the internal tunnel representation of the WCCP service group number.  Group 0 is  the web-cache service, but for dynamic services subtract 256 to convert to the WCCP service group number.  For interfaces used  for redirection, the source address shown is the WCCP router ID.

Information relating to the connected cache engines and encapsulation, including software packet counters, can be seen with  the command "show adjacency <tunnel-interface> ...":

Router#show adjacency t0               
Protocol Interface                 Address
IP       Tunnel0                   30.1.1.82(3)
Router#show adjacency t0 encapsulation
Protocol Interface                 Address
IP       Tunnel0                   30.1.1.82(3)
  Encap length 28
  4500000000000000FF2F7D2B1E010150
  1E0101520000883E00000000
  Provider: TUNNEL
  Protocol header count in macstring: 3
    HDR 0: ipv4
       dst: static, 30.1.1.82
       src: static, 30.1.1.80
      prot: static, 47
       ttl: static, 255
        df: static, cleared
      per packet fields: tos ident tl chksm
    HDR 1: gre
      prot: static, 0x883E
      per packet fields: none
    HDR 2: wccpv2
       dyn: static, cleared
      sgID: static, 0
      per packet fields: alt altB priB
Router#show adjacency t0 detail
Protocol Interface                 Address
IP       Tunnel0                   30.1.1.82(3)
                                   connectionid 1
                                   0 packets, 0 bytes
                                   epoch 0
                                   sourced in sev-epoch 1
                                   Encap length 28
                                   4500000000000000FF2F7D2B1E010150
                                   1E0101520000883E00000000
                                   Tun endpt
                                   Next chain element:
                                    IP adj out of Ethernet0/0, addr 30.1.1.82
Router#show adjacency t0 internal
Protocol Interface                 Address
IP       Tunnel0                   30.1.1.82(3)
                                   connectionid 1
                                   0 packets, 0 bytes
                                   epoch 0
                                   sourced in sev-epoch 1
                                   Encap length 28
                                   4500000000000000FF2F7D2B1E010150
                                   1E0101520000883E00000000
                                   Tun endpt
                                   Next chain element:
                                    IP adj out of Ethernet0/0, addr 30.1.1.82
                                    parent oce 0x4BC76A8
                                    frame originated locally (Null0)
                                   L3 mtu 17856
                                   Flags (0x2808C4)
                                   Fixup enabled (0x40000000)
                                         GRE WCCP redirection
                                   HWIDB/IDB pointers 0x55A13E0/0x35F5A80
                                   IP redirect disabled
                                   Switching vector: IPv4 midchain adj oce
                                   IP Tunnel stack to 30.1.1.82 in Default (0x0)
                                    nh tracking enabled: 30.1.1.82/32
                                    IP adj out of Ethernet0/0, addr 30.1.1.82
                                   Adjacency pointer 0x4BC74D8
                                   Next-hop 30.1.1.82
Router#

For more information on configuring WCCP, please refer to the following document :

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios-xml/ios/ipapp/configuration/15-1mt/iap-wccp.html

Related Information

Common WAAS/WCCP issues on interactions with Security Devices

Troubleshooting Prepositioning on WAAS 4.1.1 and above

Comments

To scale the performance of WAAS / WAE and to provide high reliability, Cisco has a new feature called ITD. Please see ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) White Paper.

Also, recent blog : Intelligent Traffic Director @ Cisco Live Milan 2015

 

ITD Provides CAPEX and OPEX Savings for Customers

ITD (Intelligent Traffic Director) is a hardware based multi-Tbps Layer 4 load-balancing, traffic steering and clustering solution on Nexus 5K/6K/7K series of switches. It supports IP-stickiness, resiliency, NAT, (EFT), VIP, health monitoring, sophisticated failure handling policies, N+M redundancy, IPv4, IPv6, VRF, weighted load-balancing, bi-directional flow-coherency, and IPSLA probes including DNS.

ITD is much superior than legacy solutions like PBR, WCCP, ECMP, port-channel, layer-4 load-balancer appliances.

John Eze
Level 1
Level 1

Hello is WCCP supported on Cisco 2900 Series Routers? Please if it dose can i get documentation back this up, need to present to some clients thanks.

Oh if it not supported can you point me to the Router models that supports WCCP.

Thanks 

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