How to create BNG session manually?

[vpluto]

Hello!

We have two ASR9006 with RSP440SE and A9K-24x10GE-SE. IOS XR 6.4.2 32-bit.

Our clients are connected through L2 VLANs (/24 per VLAN).
We use IPoE BNG sessions protected by SRG and created by an FSOL packet.

Some of our clients have silent devices that don't send any frames by itself and just wait for an incoming packet. Because of that, sessions are not created and the clients have connectivity issues.

Is there any way to create a BNG session without the FSOL packet, by some CLI or API command?  We have all the required information (VLAN, MAC, IP) in our database so we can create any request to do it. 

[xthuijs]

hi vpluto,

you can use the static subscriber sessions on the bng. these subscriber sessions will always be active and don't need

an fsol to create a subscriber session dynamically.

see here for a reference:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/asr9000/software/asr9k_r5-1/bng/configuration/guide/b_bng_cg51xasr9k/b_bng_cg51xasr9k_chapter_0101.html#concept_0C6649D5E9A04060B250A3BBA565D153

cheers!

xander

[vpluto]

Hi, xander,

Thank you for your answer.

I knew about static sessions, but it was not really useful in our case, because it is interface-based. So to use it we need to put all those "silent" clients to separate VLAN. In our case, we have /24 VLANs and this kind of client can appear anywhere.

Now we russianed up a solution where a special server puts ARP responses into VLANs on behalf of these clients. 
There is a useful feature in IOS XE (ASR1k) - "initiator static ip subscriber list list-name", but, as far as I know, there is no such a thing in IOS XR. 

Regards,

Valery

[xthuijs]

hi valery,

that is correct, the static session for xr bng groups all users together under that same session on the same access interface. the a1k has a solution to define a list to include/exclude sessions in that static subscriber set allowing them to be combined with other session types.

do you have the ability to push an extra tag on these devices to catch them under a unique access interface?

these devcies are completely silent and always use the same address? or is there some way to have them create a packet triggered subscriber interface one time that never times out. eg if the device boots, it should send something that we can use to create the packet trigger sub on and you'd be fine then. alternatively to send down some packet on the access interface for this typical device having it force send something back is an option too as you did there.

cheers!

xander