Towards the Future of Multivendor Management for CPEs and IoTs: TR-069 to TR-369
Introduction In the increasingly interconnected landscape of modern technology, efficient and unified device management has become crucial. The evolution of the TR-069 protocol to TR-369 marks a crucial point in this journey, opening new doors for service providers and end users. In this article, we’ll explore the transition from TR-069 to TR-369 and the significant impact this has on device management in an increasingly connected world. TR-069 —> TR-369: The Future of Device Management The CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP), known as TR-069, was a milestone in Internet providers’ ability to deliver services in an agile and efficient manner, guaranteeing proactive and secure network management. However, with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the growing demand for interconnected devices, it has become clear that this protocol needs to evolve. The TR-369, also known as the User Services Platform (USP), is the answer to this need for evolution. Jointly developed by a range of renowned companies and institutions, including Google, Nokia, Huawei and others, the TR-369 promises to be flexible, secure, scalable and standardized to meet the demands of an increasingly connected world. Challenges and Opportunities of the Internet of Things The growing demand for interconnected environments, such as smart homes and cloud-based environments, has brought with it a series of challenges and opportunities. Monetizing IoT devices has become a priority for many companies, leading to proprietary solutions that, while understandable, contribute to a poor and limited ecosystem. TR-369 has emerged as a solution to these challenges, offering an open and interoperable standard that promotes healthy competition, continuous innovation and cost savings for service providers and end users. The Future of Device Management: TR-369 in Action With the implementation of TR-369, service providers can expect more efficient and unified device management, regardless of vendor. The flexibility and scalability of TR-369 ensure that solutions based on this standard are prepared for the challenges of the future, keeping up to date and adaptable to new technologies and market demands. Conclusion As we move toward an increasingly interconnected future, the evolution from TR-069 to TR-369 is a crucial step on the path toward efficient and unified device management. With the support of leading companies and institutions in the industry, TR-369 promises to revolutionize the way devices are managed in an increasingly connected world. Prepare for the future of device management with the TR-369 and discover the benefits of a multi-vendor approach for CPEs and IoTs. Meet OktopUSP: The Revolution in Device Management As the official sponsor of the project, Made4it is pleased to present the OktopUSP, an innovative project developed by Oktopus and led by Leandro Antonio Farias Machado. This project promises to revolutionize the way internet service providers and IT integrators manage their devices, offering remote control, powerful insights, and a future-proof solution. Description: OktopUSP was created to enable internet providers and IT integrators to use the full potential of their products. With robust features and a multi-vendor approach, OktopUSP enables: Ready-To-Go: OktopUSP offers cloud or on-premises management, allowing you to access your devices from anywhere and receive real-time alerts, without having to modify your network topology. Multi-Vendor: Don’t become a hostage to a single supplier with specific and costly solutions. With OktopUSP, you can control your mixed device park reliably and securely. WiFi: With more than 350 parameters for Wi-Fi configuration and the flexibility to monitor various IoT devices, OktopUSP gives you complete control over your wireless network. We’ll be bringing you more details about OktopUSP soon, and we’re also proud to announce that Made4Graph will include management via TR-369 in addition to TR-069. Stay tuned for our updates so you don’t miss out on anything new! The future in Made4it solutions On Made4Graph, comprehensive management via TR-069 is already available, allowing service providers and network administrators to monitor and control their devices easily and effectively. In addition, the platform is preparing for the future, with plans to implement management via TR-369 soon. This transition between the two protocols is a testament to Made4it’s commitment to providing innovative solutions that keep pace with the market’s ever-evolving demands. With the ongoing support and updates provided by Made4Graph, service providers and network administrators can be confident that they are prepared to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities that the future of CPE and IoT management presents. Stay tuned for our updates! Sign up below so you don’t miss out on the latest news.
Reconfiguring ONU/ONT NOKIA G-1425-GA after reset: auto-configuration using DHCP Option 43 for ACS delivery
In this article we will talk about the process of reconfiguring Nokia G-1425-GA routers after they have been reset. In order for them to be completely reconfigured to the state they were in before the reset, an ACS TR-069 server must be up and running, persisting its previous settings. If you don’t know what an ACS server is or how useful it is, read this article. These tests were carried out in the laboratory environment of DPR Telecomunicações, NOKIA’s largest partner in Brazil. They have a large optical equipment factory and a laboratory for testing Nokia solutions. Find out more about DPR here. For the test, we used the NOKIA G-1425-GA UN model. It was fully configured, including the Made4it made4graph ACS server, which handled data persistence for provisioning. Once the laboratory environment has been properly provisioned, we apply a factory-reset to our test CPE. As we can see in the images below, all the settings have been lost, including WAN, Wifi and the ACS server returning to default. Requesting “Reset System Configuration to Factory Default“ The “default” TR-069 settings of the Nokia ONT after the reset. An important part of the lab is to observe the VLAN and the ONU’s addressing mode with factory settings. In this case, the Nokia ONU connects to a WAN on VLAN 881 with DHCP enabled. With the router reset to its factory settings, we set up the self-provisioning infrastructure via DHCP Option 43, as described in the article: . We used the same default VLAN 881 for this! Here, in a few moments, the ONU received the IP address from the DHCP server and also the ACS server. After that, the magic of the TR-069 begins, with the ACS server made4graph completely reconfiguring the ONU to its previous state, including the correct WAN settings (username, PPPoE password, and VLAN for accessing the BNG/BRAS), Wi-Fi, port forwarding, and much more. And how do you generate the URL for ACS delivery via DHCP Option 43? To generate the URL, Nokia uses a rule for option 43“Vendor Specific Information” coded with 3 parameters: The fields are always made up of: Based on this rule, we can generate the Option 43 code to be sent via DHCP. I’ll explain how. You must first have the data at hand: ACS server URL User name Password With this data in hand, you can generate the field in the rules that Nokia requires. Let’s take an example: 😀 To generate the ACS URL https://acs.made4graph.com.br/ with user made4graph and password made4it, we have to convert each field to hexadecimal, take note of the length of the string and put it in the correct format. URL URL (hex) Size Size (hex) https://acs.made4graph.com.br/ 68747470733A2F2F6163732E6D6164653467726170682E636F6D2E62722F 30 1E USER User (hex) Size Size (hex) made4graph 6D616465346772617068 10 0A PASSWORD Password (hex) Size Size (hex) made4it 6D616465346974 7 07 So the complete hexa field would be: 01 1E 68747470733A2F2F6163732E6D6164653467726170682E636F6D2E62722F 02 0A 6D616465346772617068 03 07 6D616465346974 This results in the final string, which can be pasted into the DHCP Server: 0x011E68747470733A2F2F6163732E6D6164653467726170682E636F6D2E62722F020A6D61646534677261706803076D616465346974 *the 0x at the beginning indicates to the DHCP Server that the following data is in hexadecimal To make things easier, we’ve created an automatic Option 43 generator for NOKIA, which you can check out here Conclusion In this article, we show you how to configure a DHCP server to deliver ACS attributes to Nokia CPEs that have just been “reset” to factory defaults, without any “presets” or firmware changes. This allows us to easily and effectively autoconfigure a URL, username, and password for an ACS server on a Nokia CPE/ONU, making it accessible to an ACS server and enabling it to be autoconfigured via TR-069. This technique is particularly valuable in environments with Nokia CPEs/ONUs, where a DHCP server preconfigured on VLAN ID 881 (Nokia default) ensures that regardless of whether a CPE resets or loses its settings, it will always have connectivity to the ACS server and will always be properly configured via TR-069. Special thanks to DPR for providing us with all the necessary support, as well as supplying the infrastructure for the tests to take place, proving to us that Nokia equipment reliably implements the TR-069 CPE WAN Management Protocol and enable self-configuration of the ACS via DHCP Option 43.
DHCP Option 43 for ACS auto-configuration
Today we’re going to explore the famous DHCP Option 43, used mainly to autoconfigure devices such as Access Points, Switches, IP Phones, CPEs, IoT devices and others through TR-069. We will also show a configuration example using the DHCP Server of a Mikrotik router, delivering parameters via DHCP Option43 and allowing autoconfiguration of services in the process of assigning IP addresses to the device. This allows us, for example, to signal a controller external to the device automatically, even if the device has gone through a factory-reset. RFC 2132 “DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions” [1] deals with various types of information that can be sent via the DHCP protocol, such as DNS, subnet mask, router address, vendor-specific attributes and much more. Option 43 is defined in this RFC as “Vendor Specific Information” and is used by DHCP clients and servers to exchange specific information with each other. The RFC does not specify what values I can send, nor what this information is, much less the data type. It merely describes the structure, which should be: Code Len Vendor specific information 43 n i1 i2 … Code 1 Len 1 Date 1 Code 2 Len 2 Date 2 Code n Len n Date no. T1 n1 d1 T2 n2 T2 … … … With this structure, each manufacturer or organization can model the data as is most convenient for their use. For example, for access-points the IP addresses of Wifi controllers can be configured, allowing them to be “joined” to the centralized controller, for IP Phones the IP or URL of the telephony server can be delivered and for routers that support TR-069 the ACS URL can be configured. And all this automatically! The focus of this article will be to show how to use option 43 together with TR-069, sending the URL from the ACS server to the CPE via the DHCP server. This allows the router, even when reset and without a configuration template, to learn the URL of the ACS server via DHCP, along with the user and password, the data needed to integrate with the ACS and allow the TR-069 to apply configurations to the CPE automatically. But before I continue, I’ll leave you with some links to other examples of option 43 use cases. Configure DHCP OPTION 43 for Lightweight Access Points: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless-mobility/wireless-lan-wlan/97066-dhcp-option-43-00.html VLAN ID Discovery over DHCP: https://wiki.unify.com/wiki/VLAN_ID_Discovery_over_DHCP Use DHCP Option 43 for Unifi Access Point Provisioning:https://niksec.com/use-dhcp-option-43-for-unifi-accesspoint-provisioning/ How DHCP ended up in the TR-069 If you don’t know what ACS is, check out our other article . DHCP was introduced as one of the methods for ACS onboarding. Onboarding is the process by which the CPE/router is configured with an ACS server.There are three ways to onboard CPEs to an ACS server, according to the Broadband Forum’s TR-069 specification [2]: The ultimate goal of any of the three is one: to have the ACS server URL configured in the CPE so that it can be managed via the TR-069 protocol. DHCP Option 43 request process The BroadBand Forum defines some steps so that the CPE can get the ACS URL via DHCP. The picture below shows the steps, and we’ll talk about each of them in a moment. Communication step by step: The TR-069 specification also defines other fields/protocols that can be used for the same purpose: DHCPv4 Option 125, DHCPv6 Option 17. They also mention various post-reset discovery rules and how to deal with connectivity problems with the ACS. But they are beyond the scope of this article. Example of a DHCP transaction with Option 43 – Packet captures Mikrotik configuration example Here, we’ll see how to configure a Mikrotik router to deliver autoconfiguration parameters to “clients” via DHCP-Server using Option43. The configuration will be based on the topology below, similar to the one used in our tests with a Nokia CPE. First you need to have the DHCP Server configured, then link the DHCP Option43 settings. We used the network 192.168.2.0/24 and Vlan 881, as in our example: You might be wondering, where did the value of option 43 come from? There is a rule to be created, and you can see how to generate it for your ACS server in the following article. Conclusion In this article, we look at how to use DHCP’s “Option43” attribute to autoconfigure an ACS server on CPEs and various devices. We discuss how it works and how it can be used to automate the delivery of specific configurations to devices using a protocol as common as DHCP. Understanding the capabilities, features, and options supported by the manufacturer and equipment model helps us automate various configurations, including, but not limited to, managing a Nokia CPE via TR-069. References:[1] RFC 2132, DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions, https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2132.txt [2] TR-069, CPE WAN Management Protocol, https://www.broadband-forum.org/pdfs/tr-069-1-6-1.pdf
How to Configure Huawei EG8145X6 ONUs Using TR069
Today I’m going to show you how to configure your CPE eg8145x6 using Made4Graph’s TR-069. I recommend that this be done at a workstation using a public IP address, since it will need to be approved. To do this, we’ll update some information in your CPE using the TR-069 form; we don’t want a customer to be left without internet service. Before beginning the configuration, it is essential that there be no “NAT” of any kind on the network between the CPE and the TR-069 server; if there is, it will compromise TR-069 functionality, as stated in the protocol documentation. Now that I’ve completed the prerequisites, let’s set up the CPE. When accessing the CPE, go to the Configuration tab —> System Management—and then select TR 069. When you reach the screen shown below, we will make the following settings: CWMP Settings:→ The “Enable ACS Management” checkbox must be checked→ The “Enable Periodic Informing” checkbox must be checked→ Informing interval = 300→ ACS URL = http://ip_do_acs:7547→ ACS username = admin→ ACS password = admin→ Connection request username = admin→ Connection request password = admin After that, click Apply.
How to Configure TP-Link EC220-G5 Routers Using TR069
Today I’m going to show you how to configure your CPE EC220-G5 using Made4Graph’s TR-069. I recommend doing this in a lab environment, since it will need to be approved, and to do that we’ll be changing some settings on your CPE via TR-069—and we don’t want a customer to be left without internet access. Before beginning the configuration, it is essential that there be no NAT between the CPE and the TR-069 server on the network; if there is, it will compromise the functionality of TR-069, as stated in the protocol documentation. Now that I’ve completed the prerequisites, let’s set up the CPE. When you open CPE, go to the Advanced tab, then System Tools, and finally CWMP Settings. When you reach the screen shown below, we will make the following settings: CWMP Settings: → The CWMP button must be enabled→ The information button must be enabled→ Information interval = 300→ ACS URL = http://ip_do_server_de_tr:7547→ ACS username = admin→ ACS password = admin→ Interface used by TR-069 = Any WAN→ CPE ID = SN→ Display SOAP Message button = disabled→ The “Connection Request Authentication” checkbox must be checked In the fields below the connection request box, you will be asked for a username and password; you should enter: → Username = admin→ Password = admin→ Path = /tr069→ Port = 7547 The “Simple UDP Traversal over NATs” option can be enabled, but it does not need to be configured; the settings can be left at their defaults.After that, click Save. Shortly thereafter, the CPE should appear on made4graph, where it will be approved by our team Some information has been redacted to keep CPE data confidential. If you still have questions, send us a message, and we’ll help you with your CPE. Don’t have the TR069 yet?
How to Configure Intelbras RG1200 and Tenda AC10 Routers Using TR069
Today I’m going to show you how to configure your RG1200 CPE. “The same configuration can also be done on the Tenda AC10 CPE, since the graphical interface is similar,” using Made4Graph’s TR-069. I recommend that this be done at a workstation using a public IP address, since it will need to be approved. To do this, we’ll need to update some information in your CPE using the TR-069 form, and we don’t want a customer to be left without internet service. Before beginning the configuration, it is essential that there be no “NAT” of any kind on the network between the CPE and the TR-069 server; if there is, it will compromise TR-069 functionality, as stated in the protocol documentation. Now that I’ve completed the prerequisites, let’s set up the CPE. When you access the CPE, go to the Advanced Settingstab, then to TR069.When you reach the screen shown below, make the following settings: CWMP Settings: → The CWMP button must be enabled→ The Information button must be enabled→ Information interval = 300→ ACS URL = http://ip_do_server_de_tr:7547→ ACS username = admin→ ACS password = admin→ The “Connection Request Authentication” checkbox must be checkedIn the fields below the connection request box, you will be prompted for a username and password; you must use:→ Username = admin→ Password = admin→ Port = 7547 The STUN option can be enabled, but it does not need to be configured; the settings can be left at their default values. After that, click Save. Shortly thereafter, the CPE should appear on made4graph, where it will be approved by our team Some information has been redacted to keep CPE data confidential. If you still have questions, send us a message, and we’ll help you with your CPE. Don’t have the TR069 yet?
How to Configure Huawei WS5200 Routers Using TR069
Today I’m going to show you how to configure your CPE WS5200 using Made4Graph’s TR-069. I recommend that this be done at a workstation using a public IP address, since it will need to be approved. To do this, we’ll update some information in your CPE using the TR-069 form; we don’t want a customer to be left without internet service. Before beginning the configuration, it is essential that there be no “NAT” of any kind on the network between the CPE and the TR-069 server; if there is, it will compromise TR-069 functionality, as stated in the protocol documentation. Now that I’ve completed the prerequisites, let’s set up the CPE. When you access the CPE, go to the More Functionstab, then System Settings, and TR-069 When you reach the screen shown below, we will make the following settings CWMP Settings: → The TR069 Management button must be enabled→ The Information Interval button must be enabled→ ACS server address = http://ip_do_server_de_tr:7547→ ACS username = admin→ ACS password = admin→ Connection request username = admin→ Connection request password = admin→ Data interval = 300 Then click Save Shortly thereafter, the CPE should appear on made4graph, where it will be approved by our team Some information has been redacted to keep CPE data confidential. If you still have questions, send us a message, and we’ll help you with your CPE.
How to Configure Archer-C20 Routers Using TR069
Today I’m going to show you how to set up your Archer-C20 on Made4Graph’s TR-069.I recommend doing this in a lab environment with a public IP address, since you’ll need to validate the configuration. To do this, we’ll change some settings on your CPE via TR-069, and we don’t want a customer to be left without internet access.Before starting the configuration, it is essential that there be no “NAT” of any kind on the network between the CPE and the TR-069 server; if there is, it will compromise the functionality of TR-069, according to the protocol documentation.Now that I’ve covered the prerequisites, let’s configure the CPE. When you open CPE, go to the Advanced tab, then System Tools, and finally Settings.When you reach the screen shown below, make the following settings: CWMP Settings:→ The CWMP button must be enabled→ The information button should be active→ Data interval = 300→ ACS URL = http://ip_do_server_de_tr:7547→ ACS username = admin→ ACS password = admin→ Interface used by TR-069 = Any WAN→ CPE ID = SN→ “View SOAP Message” button = disabled→ The “Connection Request Authentication” checkbox must be checkedIn the fields below the connection request box, you will be asked for a username and password; you should enter:→ User = admin→ Password = admin→ Path = /tr069→ Port = 7547 The “Simple UDP Traversal over NATs” option can be enabled, but it does not need to be configured; the settings can be left at their defaults.After that, click Save. Shortly thereafter, the CPE should appear in Made4Graph, where it will be approved by our team Some information has been redacted to keep CPE data confidential.If you still have questions, send us a message, and we’ll help you with your CPE.
What is TR-069 and how it can help providers
TR-069 is a network device management protocol. It allows ISPs to remotely manage and configure network devices such as routers and modems.
With TR-069, ISPs can automate configuration, monitoring, and maintenance tasks for network devices, which helps ensure that Internet services run consistently and efficiently. In addition, TR-069 also allows providers to collect device performance data, which helps them identify and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.
In summary, TR-069 is a valuable tool for Internet Service Providers as it allows you to automate and manage network devices remotely, collect performance data to quickly identify and resolve problems, automate software and firmware upgrades, and offer network management for your customers, which can help reduce costs, increase operational efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
