Baicells: Update Equipment IP addresses dynamically from EPC

A new feature has been added to enhance the cronjob functionality. It allows for an operator to poll dynamic IP addresses of equipment as were assigned by Baicells platform and sychronize equipment positions in SIMPLer with the retrieved data.

Use of this feature is required to get customer Usage Figures when using Baicells local EPC with no additional access controllers. Baicells API integration does not cover any usage figures in many instances, also it does not present what the current IP addressed used by the customer is. That being said this data is available on the EPC so we have created an interface to their database that allows to poll the current IP addresses of any device connected on any APN via a particular IMSI. This allows SIMPLer to poll the most recent IP address attached to the IMSI and update customer equipment with it. This in turn allows SIMPLer to run SNMP on these equipment and poll the usage figures (as well as possibly some additional data that might be useful for debugging).

This feature relies on remote mysql database connection (such database is run on the Baicells EPC).

To make use of this feature:

1. navigate to Cronjob page

2. add a new a new 'Equipment: Synchronize IP from Baicells'. There are following attributes that need to be defined:

  • EPC IP - this field should list the IP address EPC databases can be reached at (optionally port)

  • Database - database name - should be OAM (unless instructed otherwise)

  • Username - Baicells engineer should provide the username to use

    • Password - Baicells engineer should provide the password to use

  • APN Filter - filter for which APN IP addresses should be reported

    • Bearer Filter - filter for which Bearer IP addresses should be reported

  • Equipment Type - what equipment types the IP addresses should be applied to - this allows to limit the feature to update only specific equipment with IP retrieved for a specific APN/Bearer. With two cronjobs this allows for example to update all customer router equipment (PilotR190) with IP addresses as reported for Bearer 6, and all Baicells CPE units with IP addresses reported for Bearer 5 - which is a common setup

Fig 1. Equipment IP synchronization cronjob setup

Published Date: 1/Apr/2019

Change History Log:

v001

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