Together, Colt and Cisco are Defining the Future of Segment Routing – Cisco Blogs

Over the years, we have built a rich and extended relationship with Colt that goes above and beyond sourcing; together we have engaged in a broad partnership and our work with Segment Routing has been particularly successful.

Colt was an early adopter of Segment Routing in 2017, working closely with Cisco to add value to its SR-based network. This early commitment has delivered the following key benefits to the Colt Network:

• Reduced network complexity
• Greater network availability with 50ms protection mechanism, covering 100% of the possible network topologies using TI-LFA SR
• Higher network utilization with simple and scalable MPLS segment routing traffic engineering for the data plane
• Easier delivery of innovative network services

Roughly four years since it was first deployed, Segment Routing is now deeply ingrained in Colt’s global network and is essential to delivering innovative services. Much of this success can be credited to Colt’s pragmatic, stepwise approach towards building a Segment Routing-enabled network, delivering services through a fully automated EVPN using SDN applications.

This investment and the ways it has benefitted Colt customers are the reasons why we are playing an active role in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standardization of Segment Routing technology.

Contributing to Segment Routing at the IETF

Cisco has been working closely with lead operators, like Colt, to drive Segment Routing innovation since day one. Sharing a strong focus on operations and performance monitoring capabilities, we have been working with Colt to build two standardization drafts that have been recently submitted to the IETF:

• Performance Measurement Using Simple TWAMP (STAMP) for Segment Routing Networks
• Performance Measurement Using TWAMP Light for Segment Routing Networks

These standardizations define an operational framework, where one-way and round-trip performance metrics – such as delay, delay variation, and packet loss – can be integrated into the path computation process for finding network paths that are compliant with the SLAs of the service.

We are proud to partner with Colt to help develop capabilities on this technology for Colt’s Packet Network and the global network community.

We can create network slices using a custom set of SLAs, such as maximum delay or loss thresholds. This innovation will also drive differentiated 5G slicing and become an active part of Colt’s fault and performance monitoring platforms, making use of ML/AI for analyzing and visualizing future services.

Segment Routing Today in the Colt IQ Network

One of Colt’s new service offerings enabled by Segment Routing, guarantees two disjoint network paths between two customer locations, increasing network resiliency against any node, link, or SRLG failures. This new service is based on Cisco’s ASR 9000, NCS 5500, and NCS 540 platforms, and takes advantage of:

• On-Demand Next Hop that helps scale the service and simplify its provisioning
• Crosswork Optimization Engine for network path visualization coupled with path computation to determine two distinct network paths

At the forefront of service provider innovation, Colt is leading the way in deploying this solution and has a unique mastery of Segment Routing technology that the broader community can benefit from. For those interested in learning more about our work with Colt, please listen to our Podcast with ACG Research or check out this presentation we created for APNIC.

Sharing Expertise and Building a Partnership

Partnering together as industry-leading companies, we’re delivering innovation in the Colt network that will significantly benefit customers and drive the industry forward as a whole.

We’re very proud of the work we’ve done so far, but the journey doesn’t stop here. Our Cisco Segment Routing team is already working with Colt to develop new cutting-edge solutions combining both Segment Routing and EVPN.

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