Problem Statements of Virtualizing Home Services
draft-lee-vhs-ps-01

TBD                                                               Y. Lee
Internet-Draft                                                   Comcast
Intended status: Informational                                   R. Ghai
Expires: March 6, 2015                                     Benu Networks
                                                       September 2, 2014

            Problem Statements of Virtualizing Home Services
                          draft-lee-vhs-ps-01

Abstract

   Network Virtualization is proven a success to more effectively manage
   services in data center.  This draft states the motivations and
   problem statements of decoupling services from Customer Premises
   Equipment (CPE) and virtualizing them in the Network Service Provider
   (NSP).

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on March 6, 2015.

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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
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Table of Contents

   1.  Home CPE  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  CPE Deployment Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Network Virtualization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  High-level Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   7.  Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   9.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Home CPE

   In the early days of Internet era, most users used dial-up directly
   connecting to Internet from desktop Personal Computer (PC).  Network
   Service Provider (NSP) offered a single public IPv4 address to the
   dial-up (i.e., PPP) connection to the PC.  This model was revised
   when Internet and PC became more popular.  Multiple PCs would share a
   single NSP connection.  NSP wanted to preserve the model to offer
   only a single public IPv4 address per connection, NAT [RFC2663]
   enabled Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) was introduced in home
   network.  When days advance, NSP are offering more and more IP
   services (e.g., video, voice, home automation), NSPs must provide
   seamless support and excellent services to their users.  Today CPEs
   are doing more than just NAT-ing.  They may include but not limited
   to the following services:

   o  IPv4 NAT Services

   o  DHCPv4 Server Service

   o  Personal Firewall Services

   o  Parental Control Service

   o  Voice over IP (VoIP) Service

   o  Home Monitor Service

   o  Video Streaming Service

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2.  CPE Deployment Model

   Although the current CPE deployment model is a by-product of limited
   public IPv4 addresses, it is very successful and serves very well to
   users.  More importantly, NSP network has limited service capacity in
   the network and the capacity isn't growing as fast as the user
   demand.  NSP can offload and distribute their services to the CPE so
   that NSP can focus on growing bandwidth capacity.  With all the CPE's
   successes, there are also some drawbacks:

   o  No Uniform set of Services: There is no uniform set of services a
      CPE vendor can build an one-for-all-NSP CPE.  Each NSP may offer
      slightly different set of services and hence each NSP may develop
      its CPE specifications for CPE vendors to build.

   o  Service Variation: Even for a well defined service, each NSP may
      still have different requirements.  For example: NSP-A may use SIP
      for its VoIP and NSP-B may use WebRTC.

   o  CPE Manageability: When an NSP plan to offer a new service that is
      not compatible to the current CPE.  The NSP must update or upgrade
      the CPE.  Depending on the NSP subscription base, it could mean to
      update or upgrade thousands to millions of CPEs.

   Among all three, CPE manageability is particularly critical to NSP.

   Since the IPv4 addresses are depleted, IPv6 emigration has finally
   started.  One major advantage of IPv6 is network transparency.  In
   IPv4, NSP and Content Service Provider (CSP) can't identify a device
   simply by examining just an IPv4 address because a public IPv4 may
   represent multiple devices behind NAT.  In IPv6, every device will
   have one or more Global Unicast IPv6 addresses (GUA).  This enables
   NSP and CSP to offer device specific services.  This inspires
   innovation in services.  For NSP, they may refine and evolve the
   current "heavy" CPE deployment model to speed up offering new
   services.

3.  Network Virtualization

   Software Defined Network (SDN) is originally designed to simplify and
   rationalize data center deployment.  One main goal is to virtualize
   services from hardware.  Service designers can focus on service
   development without coupling to the underneath hardware architecture.
   SDN provides a set of Application Programming Interface (API) for
   service designers to interact with the hardware.  There are two
   critical criteria to make this concept possible: Fast network in data
   center and Exponential growth of computation power in general
   purposed hardware.  SDN/Virtualization has been proven successful.

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   Recently SDN has attracted researchers and network equipment vendors
   to apply the same concept to core and edge network design and
   development.

   The success of SDN in data center also inspires serious
   considerations by the NSP to apply the same concept to home services.
   The basic idea is to move the current home services run in the CPE to
   the NSP network.  The CPE will focus on data plane function such as
   Wifi and packet forwarding.

4.  High-level Architecture

   Similar to classic SDN architecture, virtualizing home services
   include a Controller (Virtual CPE Controller) that hosts and
   virtualizes home services and a Packet Processor (Virtual CPE Packet
   Forwarder) that process packet forwarding.  There exists an open API
   between the Virtual CPE Controller (VC) and the Virtual CPE Packet
   Forwarder (VDF) to exchange control plane information.  Figure 1
   shows the high-level architecture of virtualizing home services.

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               ------------------
              / NSP Provisioning /
              / System           /
              -------------------
                   ||
                   || Ia
                   ||     +------------------------+
                   -------| +---+ +---+      +---+ |
                          | |vs1| |vs2| .... |vsN| |
     ----                 | +---+ +---+      +---+ |
    /CPE/==========\      | Virtual CPE Controller |
    ----            \     +---------------||-------+
                     \+-------------+     || Ib           ///////////////
    ----              | Virtual CPE |=====||            /                /
   /CPE/ =============| Packet      |====================/  Internet   /
   ----       Ic      | Forwarder   |                   /               /
                     /+-------------+                    \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
    ----           /
   /CPE/=========/                    vs - Virtual Service
   ----                               Ia - Service Provisioning API
                                      Ib - Service Activation API
                                      Ic - Data Path Specification

        Virtualizing Home Services High-Level Architecture Diagram

                                 Figure 1

   Virtual Service contains the service definitions and service logic.
   For example: Virtual Service 1 (vs1) could be a parental control
   service and manage web filter rules configured by subscriber.
   Virtual Service 2 (vs2) could be personal firewall that protects a
   home from botnet and intrusion.  NSP can scale Virtual Service
   horizontally to meet user demand.  NSP can also dynamically create
   Virtual Service per subscriber only when the subscriber wants that
   service.  For example: NSP initiates vs1 for User X and vs2 for User
   Y.  In this model, NSP no longer updates CPE for service addition or
   modification.

   Virtual CPE Controller (VC) stores the user's service subscription.
   Each user may have different set of home services.  For example: User
   A may have video service.  User B may have VoIP service.  VC contains
   the user's service subscription and interact with the Virtual Service
   module to provide proper services to users.  It contains a north-
   bound API (Ia) to interact with NSP provisioning system.

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   Virtual CPE Packet Forwarder (VPF) is usually a networking device
   that is optimized for processing packet.  It has a north-bound API
   (Ib) to communicate to the VC.

   CPE is a simple access device that connects to the subscriber's
   devices at home to the NSP network.

   Service Provisioning API is used between NSP provisioning system and
   VC to communicate user's home service data such as service activation
   and service specific parameters.

   Service Activation API is used between VC and VPF to communicate data
   plane policy such as QoS parameters and Access Control List (ACL)
   rules.

   Data Path Specification is the protocol agreed between CPE and VPF.
   It could be Ethernet or any encapsulation technology such as PMIP or
   MPLS.

5.  Problem Statement

   Virtualizing home services enables NSP to offer service in a more
   rapid pace.  It also enables NSP to offer new possible services such
   as:

   1.  Connect a user mobile device to his home network at outdoor
       access point.

   2.  Provide more flexibility IPv4 and IPv6 address management.

   3.  Provide more granular QoS management.

   Section 4 describes the high-level architecture.  One possible
   deployment is to put the Virtual CPE Controller in a centralized
   location and put the Virtual CPE Switch closer to users.  This
   deployment requires to standardize the following:

   o  Service Definition: Define the service semantics and user
      interaction.  This allows the vendor community to standardize the
      service definition and build the Virtual Service model to support
      it.

   o  Home Service Provisioning API (Ia): Define and specify the API to
      provision the service to the Virtual CPE Controller for user and
      service parameters.

   o  Home Service Activation API (Ib): Define and specify the API to
      activate service policy in the data plane.

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   Standardizing the Service Definition, Ia and Ib will simplify service
   integration and equipment interoperability.  This will help vendors
   to speed up development and NSP to speed up new service offering.

6.  Security Considerations

7.  Conclusion

8.  Acknowledgements

9.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

10.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2663]  Srisuresh, P. and M. Holdrege, "IP Network Address
              Translator (NAT) Terminology and Considerations", RFC
              2663, August 1999.

Authors' Addresses

   Yiu L. Lee
   Comcast
   One Comcast Center
   Philadelphia, PA  19103
   U.S.A.

   Email: yiu_lee@cable.comcast.com
   URI:   http://www.comcast.com

   Rajat Ghai
   Benu Networks
   300 Concord Road, Suite 110
   Billerica, MA  01821
   U.S.A.

   Email: rghai@benunets.com
   URI:   http://www.benunets.com

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