DEI-based classification is supported on access ports, access-uplink ports, network ports and hybrid ports as applicable on 7210 SAS platforms. DEI bits in the received packet are used to determine the ingress profile for the packet. If DEI = 0 in the received packet then the packet is considered to be GREEN or in-profile, and if DEI = 1 then the packet is considered to be YELLOW or out-of-profile. The profile assigned at the ingress can be used to enable color-aware metering with SAP ingress policing, network port ingress policing and access-uplink port ingress policing.
The profile of the packet can be reassigned by ingress meters/policers, when policing is used on SAP ingress, the final profile of the packet is determined by the meter/policers, based on the configured CIR/PIR rates. If a packet is below the CIR rate, it is assigned green/in-profile and if it exceeds the CIR rate and is below the PIR rate, it is assigned yellow/out-of-profile.
On the 7210 SAS, the behavior is the same when using ingress policing but is different when using ingress queuing. When using SAP ingress queuing, the profile assigned to the packet by user configuration cannot be reassigned by the ingress meters/policers or by ingress queue rate shapers. Therefore, the user-assigned profile is the final profile assigned to the packet.
The final profile assigned at ingress is used by egress to determine the WRED slope to use. The WRED slope determines whether the packet is eligible to be assigned a buffer and can be queued up on egress queue for transmission.
Ingress policing is supported on all 7210 SAS platforms as described in this document.
The following support is available for DEI classification:
Under the port configuration, a command is provided to enable DEI-based classification, allowing user an option to enable/disable use of DEI for ingress classification on a per port basis. The initial profile (also known as color) is based on the DEI/CFI bit. If DEI = 0 in the received packet, then the packet can be considered GREEN or in-profile and if DEI = 1, then packet can be considered YELLOW or out-of-profile by the subsequent processing flow in hardware.
All the SAPs configured on the port (access or hybrid) can use DEI classification for color-aware metering if required. The user has an option to use color-blind metering for some SAPs and color-aware metering for some other SAPs configured on the same port when DEI classification is enabled on the port. When using color-blind mode, the ingress profile assigned to the packet based on the DEI bit is ignored.
The user is provided with an option in the SAP ingress QoS policy, to configure a policer as color-aware or color-blind. In color-aware mode, the DEI bit in the packet determines the ingress profile of the packet. If the user configures the meter/policer mode as color-aware, the DEI bit of the incoming packet is used by the policer as the ingress profile.
When using policing, the final profile of the packet is assigned by the ingress meter (based on configured CIR/PIR rate) in both color-aware and color-blind mode.
On hybrid ports, the software allows only ONE of the following options to be configured:
If DEI-based classification is enabled, network port ingress policy MUST use Dot1p classification criteria with DEI profile for all configured Dot1p values.
OR
If DEI-based classification is disabled, network port ingress policy can use Dot1p or DSCP classification criteria.
For network port policies, DEI-based classification is supported only when Dot1p classification criteria is in use. In other words, DEI-based classification cannot be used when DSCP based classification is used.
For network IP interface policies DEI-based classification is not supported. In other words, when using EXP-based classification, DEI bit cannot be used to assign the profile for the packet.