COPS-PR Software Development Kit

SDK to develop Policy Decision Point (PDP) and Policy Enforcement Point (PEP), the key components of IETF’s framework.

Calsoft labs has developed a comprehensive family of products with the goal of enabling QoS based services, based on IETF’s Policy Based Framework, which provides a basis for standard based solutions. This product brief describes the Software Development Kit (SDK) that can be used to develop Policy Decision Point (PDP) and Policy Enforcement Point (PEP), the key components of IETF’s framework.

The product consists of a PIB -to-C++ translator and two sets of class libraries, one for building PDPs and the other for PEPs.

Features

• Built-in COPS-PR protocol stack.
• Support for event-driven programming.
• A framework for implementing specific QoS models like DiffServ or 802.1q.
• Multi-threaded architecture on the server side to support parallel processing of multiple requests.
• PIB-to-C++ translator that can take a PIB and generate C++ classes.These classes represent the ASN.1 types and values. They hide the ASN.1 syntax details and provide BER encoding/decoding support.

PIB-to-C++ Translator

PIB-to-C++ translator translates Policy Information Bases (PIB) to C++ classes. PIBS are defined in IETF's Structure of Policy Provisioning Information (SPPI). This tool enables developers to add functionality corresponding to any standard or enterprise PIB.

The generated .h (header) and .C (source) files contain equivalent classes and routines to convert values between the internal C++ representation and the corresponding BER format.

Highlights

• OID information for all PRC (Provisioning Class) definitions contained in the PIB.
• Function to retrieve the PRID (PRID is an OID identifying the Policy Rule Class (PRC) and the instance).
• Functions to retrieve and update the value of a PRC variable.
• Support for BER encoding of PRIs (Provisioning Instances)

Management Framework

The Management framework is a set of abstract classes. These provide interfaces that are to be extended and implemented to develop PDP Server applications or to provide device and PIB specific implementation in case of PEP development. The extended classes will use the C++ classes that represent the corresponding attributes defined in the PIB.

Highlights

• Architecture allows easy customization.
• Samples shipped have the code to query LDAP repository for standard policies.
• Decisions are represented in PRID/EPD format allowing the addition of new PRCs without tampering the existing code.

Core Framework

The Core framework implements the communication channels for applications and client interfaces.

Highlights

• Built-in CORS-PR protocol support.
• Provision for client application (PDP/PEP) to register for event-driven user defined callback methods.
• Methods for assisting PDP/PEP applications to download and remove policy decisions.
• Provides different levels of logging and tracing facilities.