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Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8 Administrator Guide
OL-27172-01
Chapter 2 Broadband Access Center Architecture
Architecture
• By discovering the URL via DHCP. This ACS URL is returned in response to a DHCP Discover, a
DHCP Request, or a DHCP Inform. This mechanism is limited to deployments of primary Internet
gateway devices, because it requires the ability to make DHCP requests to the WAN side.
Note Assigning a URL using preconfiguration is a more secure mechanism than one discovered
using DHCP.
Provisioning Group Scalability
Provisioning groups enhance the scalability of the Cisco BAC network by making each provisioning
group responsible for only a subset of devices. This partitioning of devices can be along regional
groupings or any other policy that the service provider defines. When the size of the provisioning group
is restricted, the DPEs can be more effective in caching the necessary information.
To scale a deployment, the service provider can:
• Upgrade existing DPE server hardware.
• Add DPE servers to a provisioning group.
• Add provisioning groups.
Cisco BAC Process Watchdog
The Cisco BAC process watchdog is an administrative agent that monitors the runtime health of all Cisco
BAC processes. This watchdog process ensures that if a process stops unexpectedly, it is automatically
restarted.
The Cisco BAC process watchdog can be used as a command line tool to start, stop, restart, and
determine the status of any monitored processes.
See Cisco BAC Process Watchdog, page 9-1, for additional information on how to manage the monitored
processes.
SNMP Agent
Cisco BAC provides basic SNMP v2-based monitoring of the RDU and the DPE servers. The Cisco BAC
SNMP agents support SNMP informs and traps. You can configure the SNMP agent on the DPE by using
snmp-server CLI commands, and on the RDU by using the SNMP configuration command-line tool.
See Monitoring Servers by Using SNMP, page 11-5, for additional information on the SNMP
configuration command line tool, and the Cisco Broadband Access Center 3.8 DPE CLI Reference, for
additional information on the DPE CLI.
Logging
Logging of events is performed at the DPE and the RDU. In some unique situations, DPE events are
additionally logged at the RDU to give them higher visibility. Log files are located in their own log
directories and can be examined by using any text processor.