Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Colton Conor]

We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?

What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
for a brand new fiber network?


 Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
method for assigning circuit IDs.

I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
advice would be great!

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Nick Hilliard]

Colton Conor wrote:
> What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
> for a brand new fiber network?

"Begin at the beginning", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till
you come to the end: then stop."

I suggest starting at "1".  Feel free to pad with zeros as appropriate.

Nick

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Jared Mauch]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 03:26:20PM -0500, Colton Conor wrote:
> We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
> circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
> for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?

I've seen a few different methods for this, the most common includes
some form of the source/dest pop locations for the service delivery.

an example:

yy-chcgil-dllstx-xx

where yy and xx may provide some more detail.  the pop codes might
include more detail about the equipment in use, same for yy/xx that might
encode the underlying service/speeds or numbering in the case of multiple
things involved.

from the circuit-id you would be able to look up other
details like underlying carriers, service or abstraction layers such
as what routers/DWDM/fiber the service rides upon.

> What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
> for a brand new fiber network?

I would stick with some variant of A-Z location data and leave any
service speeds at the phy speed of the device, eg: don't call it 300m if it's
1G ethernet rate-limited.

>  Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
> historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
> method for assigning circuit IDs.

I've seen a few different types over the years from ISDN to T1
to much faster services.  They all have merit, but the key is to be usable
and readble.  Don't use both 0 and O for example, don't make case sensitive,
avoid lookalikes like l and 1.

I would even consider putting in a check digit if you are creating
your own.

> I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> advice would be great!

- Jared


-- 
Jared Mauch  | pgp key available via finger from ja...@puck.nether.net
clue++;  | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/  My statements are only mine.

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 4:26 PM, Colton Conor 
wrote:

> We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> format to for new fiber circuits.
> I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> advice would be great!
>

Hi Colton,

The key thing a circuit ID should inherently identify is whether or not the
circuit is one of yours.  Typically this is a two or three letter code in a
particular position whose absence allows a tech to immediately realize that
the ID the customer read out refers to something else.

You might also consider putting a simple checksum in the circuit ID like
the credit card companies do so that you can detect when an ID has been
mis-entered.

Finally, structure it with breaks (slashes, commas, spaces) so it can be
read out over the phone without a high probability of error. It's easy to
lose your place in a 20 digit number one digit after another after another.
And when you write the database software, make sure the UI provides and
accepts those breaks!

Beyond that, there's no great value in not simply counting up by one. Your
network's architecture will change over time so any architecture-based
scheme will end up with confusing exceptions. Locality-based schemes aren't
a whole lot better.

Finally, there's a database principle called normalization: it means don't
put the same information two places because inevitably one will end up
disagreeing with the other. Put the customer's configuration (such as
speed) in your database and leave it out of the circuit id.

Regards,
Bill Herrin




-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Dirtside Systems . Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Tim Pozar]

Could start looking at the AT&T/Telecordia standards for this sort of
thing...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_ID
http://www.centurylink.com/wholesale/systems/WebHelp/reference/circuit_id_formats_guide.htm

On 8/21/17 1:26 PM, Colton Conor wrote:
> We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
> circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
> for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?
> 
> What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
> for a brand new fiber network?
> 
> 
>  Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
> historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
> method for assigning circuit IDs.
> 
> I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> advice would be great!
> 

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[James Bensley]

On 21 August 2017 at 21:26, Colton Conor  wrote:
> We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
> circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
> for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?
>
> What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
> for a brand new fiber network?
>
>
>  Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
> historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
> method for assigning circuit IDs.
>
> I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> advice would be great!

In my opinion the circuit ID should be an abitrary (but unique) value
and nothing more. As Nick suggested start at 1 and go up. If your
company is called ABC Ltd then maybe have your first circuit ID as
ABC0001 and count up from there, it's as simple as that.

For me, all the circuit ID should be is a record number/ID of a
database entry and nothing more (or a search string). Some people like
to have circuit IDs which include circuit types, or circuit speeds, or
interface type, but as you asked, do you then change the circuit ID if
the circuit speed changes, or the interface types changes, or the
medium etc?

No, it's just a pointer to a database record, KISS.

Cheers,
James.

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Tassos Chatzithomaoglou]

I don't know if it has any relation to your issue, but we use Circuit-ID to 
uniquely identify the access node plus the customer's access loop logical port 
on the access node.
Access node can be either a DSLAM, a switch, an OLT, etc.

You may have a look at BBF's TR-101 (section 3.9.3)  or TR-156 (section 5.7) 
for syntax guide .

--
Tassos

Colton Conor wrote on 21/8/17 23:26:
> We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
> circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
> for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?
>
> What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
> for a brand new fiber network?
>
>
>  Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
> historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
> method for assigning circuit IDs.
>
> I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> advice would be great!
>

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Jared Mauch]

> On Aug 22, 2017, at 12:01 PM, Tassos Chatzithomaoglou  
> wrote:
> 
> I don't know if it has any relation to your issue, but we use Circuit-ID to 
> uniquely identify the access node plus the customer's access loop logical 
> port on the access node.
> Access node can be either a DSLAM, a switch, an OLT, etc.
> 
> You may have a look at BBF's TR-101 (section 3.9.3)  or TR-156 (section 5.7) 
> for syntax guide .


My favorite circuit-ids were those from MFS where it had the service type (2 
chars i think) + a pop-code + z pop-code + service count number.

We could then tell what pop/facility everything was handed off at easily 
enough.  I think my house even got a MFS pop code at one time due to the T1 
which was there.

- Jared

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Justin M. Streiner]

On Tue, 22 Aug 2017, James Bensley wrote:


In my opinion the circuit ID should be an abitrary (but unique) value
and nothing more. As Nick suggested start at 1 and go up. If your
company is called ABC Ltd then maybe have your first circuit ID as
ABC0001 and count up from there, it's as simple as that.

For me, all the circuit ID should be is a record number/ID of a
database entry and nothing more (or a search string). Some people like
to have circuit IDs which include circuit types, or circuit speeds, or
interface type, but as you asked, do you then change the circuit ID if
the circuit speed changes, or the interface types changes, or the
medium etc?


Agreed.  I designed something similar at a previous employer, and it just 
used a date-coded ID with sequence number (ex: UOP 20170822.0001), and 
then all of the cross-connect details were recorded in a place that was 
better suited to capturing that sort of information.  That would also 
allow us to re-use fiber paths when we upgraded 1G links to 10G, etc.


This also included IDs that could reference other circuit IDs - including 
circuit IDs from other providers - so we could tie non-dark elements 
together, such as waves through DWDM gear end up riding on separate dark 
fiber paths on either side of the mux.


The biggest obstacle was getting people to label fiber jumpers in the 
field, but that obstacle went away as people get a better understanding of 
it and having all of the cross-connects documented saved lots of time and 
frustration when having to search through a large patch field at 3 AM...


jms

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Nick Hilliard]

James Bensley wrote:
> In my opinion the circuit ID should be an abitrary (but unique) value
> and nothing more. As Nick suggested start at 1 and go up. If your
> company is called ABC Ltd then maybe have your first circuit ID as
> ABC0001 and count up from there, it's as simple as that.

there are a lot of ways of handling this, which broadly speaking break
down into whether you want to encode data in your circuit ID or whether
you want it to act as nothing more than an index on a database table.

Regardless of what way you go about things, there are some parallel
issues, including whether you want inline checksumming, whether you want
random value increases or +1 increases, and whether you want an
alphanumeric or strictly numeric ID.  Alphanumeric can allow unique
prefixes or suffixes to help identify who owns a circuit ID or what type
it is, at the complexity of adding identifiers which can be
misinterpreted over the phone.

There are differing opinions on whether other information such as
service type, node location, speed, etc should be encoded in the service
name.

Things that most people generally agree on include:

- carefully splitting out service types.  E.g. a fibre cable to a
location is one ID; a wavelength on that service is another ID of
another type; an IP transit service on that wave is a third ID, etc.

- don't reuse IDs, ever.  There are plenty of numbers out there.

- don't change from one ID mechanism to another, if possible.

Otherwise, for every well-reasoned suggestion to use a specific format,
there are other well-reasoned arguments to do things in a different way.
 Choose one and stick with it.

Nick

RE: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Timothy Creswick]

> Things that most people generally agree on include:
> 
> - carefully splitting out service types.  E.g. a fibre cable to a
> location is one ID; a wavelength on that service is another ID of
> another type; an IP transit service on that wave is a third ID, etc.

Definitely. We have one digit in our circuit ID which denotes the type to aid 
with quick identification.
 
We also use a luhn-10 checksum digit at the end, which is optional on re-entry. 
This is really helpful when getting references over the phone. When written, 
it's with a hyphen so that it's clear that it's able to be dropped.

A few things we also decided on:

- Circuit references are purely numerical (although we prefix them with letters 
when written, those letters are not part of what makes the numbers unique in 
our business). The main reason for this is that they can easily be entered in a 
variety of *compact* barcode formats. Most label printers support this, and it 
saves loads of time in the datacentre when you can just scan the label on a 
circuit on a handheld PC.

- Circuit references are always the same length. This way, if the checksum 
digit is being dropped (e.g. because it's coming from a non-human source like a 
barcode), we know that the checksum digit is missing.

- The first digit is never a zero, to avoid silly mistakes if you're sorting 
them in Excel etc.

- The first four digits are a simple date code of YYMM that the ID was 
generated. This is surprisingly handy when you're looking for a specific 
circuit reference in a list, and it sort of helps to spread the dataset out a 
bit. This is what ensures that it's a non-zero first digit for the next 80 
years or so. The date code isn't a *requirement* of our format, however. Should 
we need more than 10,000 circuits per month, we'll just abandon the date coding.

For those interested, our system looks like this:

VCI-150600019-7

Any non [0-9] characters (including symbols) can be omitted.

VCI : denotes that this circuit identifier corresponds to our business
1506 : date code
0001 : sequence number, incremented per circuit, per month
9 : circuit type
7 : checksum (optional)

T

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Nick W]

More information for AT&T circuit IDs, could give some ideas:
http://etler.com/docs/AT&T/ATTCCGTab11.pdf

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 7:41 PM, Tim Pozar  wrote:

> Could start looking at the AT&T/Telecordia standards for this sort of
> thing...
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_ID
> http://www.centurylink.com/wholesale/systems/WebHelp/
> reference/circuit_id_formats_guide.htm
>
> On 8/21/17 1:26 PM, Colton Conor wrote:
> > We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
> > format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
> > circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
> > for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?
> >
> > What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID
> format
> > for a brand new fiber network?
> >
> >
> >  Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
> > historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
> > method for assigning circuit IDs.
> >
> > I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
> > advice would be great!
> >
>

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Allan Eising]

Excerpts from Colton Conor's message of August 21, 2017 10:26 pm:

We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID
format to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber
circuit formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades
for 100Mbps to 1Gbps port?

What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format
for a brand new fiber network?


 Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was
historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex
method for assigning circuit IDs.

I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any
advice would be great!



Hi,

I see you have already received some very good suggestions.

The key for me with circuit IDs are that they have to integrate well in your
backend systems as well as your products. 


There is little point in creating a telcordia-like system if you will have
trouble filling in all the fields in an automated way, just like it can be
troublesome to keep an incrementing number accurate, if you don't have a good
central database to track it in.

Avoid creating a number system where the A-end and B-end is part of the ID
if you have (or ever will have) logical multi-point circuits.

Also avoid having circuit numbers that take assumptions of your country of
operation if you ever have to deliver something cross-border.

I happen to like the format of PREFIX-NUMBERS, where the prefix indicates some
sort of broad type, and with such a form it is important not to have too
restrictive prefix types. For example consider only having Fiber, Copper, and
logical as types, or whatever makes sense in your operation. With too many
similar types comes the risk of having disparity between what your circuit ID
suggests, and what is actually out there.

I would suggest that you keep separate IDs for the actual fiber in the ground,
and the service the customer buys.

That way you can track the customer subscription, modify the parameters of it,
if the customer upgrades his speed, but separately track your fiber deployment.

At a previous employer we had to implement Service IDs on an already existing
network where everything previously had been using only the actual fiber IDs,
and that was a painful process, so it's better to get these things right as
early as possible.

--
Best Regards
Allan Eising
IP Network Engineer
NORDUnet A/S

m: eis...@nordu.net
w: http://www.nordu.net

RE: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[Jameson, Daniel]

What's the intended use of the Circuit ID?  Internal ID, Stickered Customer 
CPE;  Planning to carry other carriers circuits?  With so many virtual 
components in circuits now,  Where the circuit ID used to have some useful 
information, it's been largely reduced to a minimum amount of information that 
can get a customer/service tech in touch with the right tech support group.  
It's a-typical to provide a circuit-id for residential customers,  they're 
typically reserved for business class services although there isn't anything 
that would prevent it other than managing the data/changes.

29/EC00/123456/002/MYCO/0
(prefix 2) usually a form of where the service originates (Commonly where the 
IP address is provisioned)
Service type - format is up to the circuit owner.
A common syntax is: 
First digit identifies the service delivery type -  E = Ethernet A=ATM 
S=Sonet P=PON ...
Second digit identifies the physical delivery type.
A=64K
B=1.5Mbps
C=25Mbps
D=45Mbps(STS1)
E=100Mbps
F=155Mbps(oc3)
G=100Mbps
H=466Mbps(oc9)
I=622Mbps(oc12)
J=1Gbps
K=1.5Gbps
L=2.5G
M=10Gbps (oc192)
N=13Gbps(oc255)
O=25gpbs
P=40Gbps(OC768)
Q=100G
...
   Third and fourth digits identify the fractional provisioned rate as a %
00=100%
10=10%
  25=25%
Serial number -  6 digit alphanumeric serial number usually encoded with 
cust/location/
Suffix - used if cust/location for circuit count. Or generically as circuit 
count. (customer has 2 10G)

Company Code - use up to 4 letter (this is the controller of the circuit)

Segment - if it's a multi-segment circuit.  Occasionally used to denote if a 
circuit is protection.









-Original Message-
From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-boun...@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Colton Conor
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 2:26 PM
To: NANOG
Subject: Creating a Circuit ID Format

We are building a new fiber network, and need help creating a circuit ID format 
to for new fiber circuits. Is there a guide or standard for fiber circuit 
formats? Does the circuit ID change when say a customer upgrades for 100Mbps to 
1Gbps port?

What do the larger carriers do? Any advice on creating a circuit ID format for 
a brand new fiber network?


 Originally we ran a CLEC using a LECs copper, and our circuit ID was 
historically a telephone number for DSL circuits. The ILEC had a complex method 
for assigning circuit IDs.

I am sure anything will work as long as you keep track of it, but any advice 
would be great!

Re: Creating a Circuit ID Format

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 3:36 AM, Allan Eising  wrote:

>  it can be
> troublesome to keep an incrementing number accurate, if you don't have a
> good
> central database to track it in.
>


That reminds me: You will buy out other organizations' assets with other
organizations' identifiers. When you build your central database, make sure
it can accept the arbitrary circuit ID formats applied to your new property.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Dirtside Systems . Web: