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Enhanced Virtual Private Networks (VPN+)
draft-bryant-rtgwg-enhanced-vpn-00

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Stewart Bryant , Jie Dong
Last updated 2017-07-02
Replaced by draft-dong-teas-enhanced-vpn, draft-dong-teas-enhanced-vpn
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draft-bryant-rtgwg-enhanced-vpn-00
Routing Area Working Group                                     S. Bryant
Internet-Draft                                                   J. Dong
Intended status: Informational                                    Huawei
Expires: January 4, 2018                                    July 3, 2017

                Enhanced Virtual Private Networks (VPN+)
                   draft-bryant-rtgwg-enhanced-vpn-00

Abstract

   This draft describes a number of enhancements that need to be made to
   virtual private networks (VPNs) to support the needs of new
   applications, particularly applications that are associated with 5G
   services.  A network enhanced with these properties may form the
   underpin of network slicing, but will also be of use in its own
   right.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 4, 2018.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of

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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Overview of the Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Isolation between VPNs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Guaranteed Performance  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Customized Control Plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Components of VPN+  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Use of Segment Routing Constructs . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  Latency Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.3.  Support of an IP underlay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.4.  Application Specific Network Types  . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.5.  A Hybrid Control Plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Applicability to Network Slicing  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   Virtual networks, often referred to as virtual private networks
   (VPNs) have served the industry well as a means of providing
   different groups of users with logically isolated access to a common
   network.  The common or base network that is used to provide the VPNs
   is often referred to as the underlay, and the VPN is often called an
   overlay.

   Driven largely by needs surfacing from 5G, the concept of network
   slicing has gained traction.  The network slicing problem is
   described in [I-D.galis-netslices-revised-problem-statement] and the
   network slicing architecture is described in
   [I-D.geng-netslices-architecture].  A study of the new work needed in
   the IETF to address the gap between the requirements and existing
   IETF protocols is discussed in [I-D.qiang-netslices-gap-analysis].

   Setting aside the details of the life-cycle management of a network
   slice instance (NSI), the underpinning technology in the transport
   network is a type of virtual network which provides the client with
   dedicated (private) networking, computing and storage resources drawn
   from a shared pool.  The tenant of the NSI can require a degree of
   isolation and performance that previously could only be satisfied by

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   dedicated networks.  Additionally the tenant may ask for some level
   of control of the network slice, e.g. to customize the service paths
   in the network slice.

   These new network layer properties are of interest as part of a
   network slicing solution, as a precursor to the full roll-out of
   network slicing, and in their own right.  These properties cannot be
   met with pure overlay networks, as they require tighter coordination
   and integration between the underlay and the overlay network.  This
   document introduces a new network service called enhanced VPN (VPN+).
   VPN+ refers to a virtual network which has dedicated network
   resources allocated from the underlay network, and can achieve a
   greater isolation and lower latency than traditional VPN.

   In this draft we identify the new and modified components that need
   to be provided in the network layer and their associated control and
   monitoring of an enhanced VPN.  Specifically we are concerned with
   the technology needed to be provided by the enhanced VPN underlay,
   the enhanced VPN data-plane and the necessary protocols in both the
   underlay and the overlay of enhanced VPN.  It is likely that these
   enhanced VPNs will be used to create network slices with different
   isolation requirements.  Different service types, e.g. emergency
   services, enterprise service and broadband services etc. may be
   partitioned into different "hard" slices according to the isolation
   requirement.  These "hard" slices might then be used to carry one or
   multiple VPNs.  VPNs on such a hard slice may be only partially
   isolated (so called "soft" slices).

2.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   [RFC2119].

3.  Overview of the Requirements

   In this section we provide an overview of the requirements of an
   enhanced VPN.

3.1.  Isolation between VPNs

   The requirement is to provide both hard and soft isolation between
   the tenants/applications using one enhanced VPN and the tenants/
   applications using another enhanced VPN.  Hard isolation is needed so
   that applications with exacting requirements can function correctly
   despite a flash demand being created on another VPN competing for the

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   underlying resources.  An example might be a network supporting both
   emergency services and public broadband multi-media services.

   During a major incident the VPNs supporting these services would both
   be expected to experience high data volumes, and it is important that
   both make progress in the transmission of their data.  In these
   circumstances the VPNs would require an appropriate degree of
   isolation to be able to continue to operate acceptably.

   We introduce the terms hard and soft isolation to cover cases such as
   the above.  A VPN has soft isolation if the traffic of one VPN cannot
   be inspected by the traffic of another.  An IP and MPLS VPNs are
   examples of soft isolated VPNs because the network delivers the
   traffic only to the required VPN endpoints.  However the traffic from
   one or more VPNs and regular network traffic may congest the network
   resulting in delays for other VPNs operating normally.  The ability
   for a VPN to be sheltered from this effect is called hard isolation,
   and this property is required by some critical applications.  A
   network slice that experiences only soft isolation is said to be soft
   sliced, and a network slice that has hard isolation is said to be
   hard sliced.

   Although these isolation requirements are triggered by the needs of
   network slicing in support of 5G networks, they have general utility.

   It is of course possible to achieve high degrees of isolation in the
   optical layer.  However this is done at the cost of allocating
   resources on a long term basis and end-to-end basis.  Such an
   arrangement means that the full cost of the resources must be borne
   by the service that is allocated the resources.  On the other hand,
   isolation at the packet layer allows the resources to be shared
   amongst many services and only dedicated to a service on a temporary
   basis.  This allows greater statistical multiplexing of network
   resources and amortizes the cost over many services, leading to
   better economy.  However, the degree of isolation required by network
   slicing cannot easily be met with MPLS-TE packet LSPs.  Thus some
   trade-off between the two approaches needs to be considered to
   provide the required isolation between virtual networks while still
   allows reasonable sharing inside each VPN.

3.2.  Guaranteed Performance

   There are several aspects to guaranteed performance, guaranteed
   maximum packet loss, guaranteed maximum delay and guaranteed delay
   variation.

   Guaranteed maximum packet loss is a common parameter, and is usually
   addressed by setting the packet priorities, queue size and discard

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   policy.  However this becomes more difficult when the requirement
   combine with the latency requirement.

   Guaranteed maximum latency is required in a number of applications
   particularly real-time control applications and some types of virtual
   reality applications.  The work of the IETF Deterministic Networking
   (DetNet) Working Group is relevant, however the scope needs to be
   extended to methods of enhancing the IP/MPLS underlay to better
   support the delay guarantee, and to integrate these enhancements with
   the overall service provision.

   Guaranteed maximum delay variation is a service that may also be
   needed.  Time transfer is one example of a service that needs this,
   although the fungible nature of time means that it might be delivered
   by the underlay and not provided through different virtual networks.
   The need for guaranteed maximum delay variation as a general
   requirement is for further study.

   A possible mechanism to address these guarantees is to provide
   enhancement to the underlay network through technologies such as
   Flexible Ethernet [FLEXE].

3.3.  Customized Control Plane

   In some cases it is desirable that an enhanced VPN has a custom
   control plane, so that the tenant of the enhanced VPN can have some
   control to the resources and functions partitioned for this VPN.

   Further detail on this requirement will be provided in a future
   version of the draft.

4.  Components of VPN+

4.1.  Use of Segment Routing Constructs

   Clearly we can use traditional constructs to create a VPN, but there
   are advantages to the use of Segment Routing (SR) in the creation of
   virtual networks with enhanced properties.

   Segment Routing [I-D.ietf-spring-segment-routing] is a method that
   prepends instructions to packets at entry and possibly at various
   points as it passes though the network.  These instructions allow
   packets to be routed on paths other than the shortest path for
   various traffic engineering reasons.  These paths can be strict or
   loose paths, depending on the compactness required of the instruction
   list and the degree of autonomy granted to the network (for example
   to support ECMP).  With current segment routing, the instructions are
   used to specify the nodes and links to be traversed.  However, in

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   order to achieve the required isolation between different services,
   new instructions can be created which can be prepended to a packet to
   steer it through specific dedicated network resources and functions,
   e.g. queues, processors, links, services etc.  New instructions can
   also be created to specify not only which resources are traversed,
   but in some cases how they are traversed.  For example, it may be
   possible to specify not only the queue to be used but the policy to
   be applied when enqueuing and dequeuing.

   With SR, a path is dynamically created through a set of resources by
   simply specifying the Segment IDs (SIDs), i.e. instructions rooted at
   a particular point in the network.  Thus if a path is to be
   provisioned from some ingress point A to some egress point B in the
   underlay, A is provided with the A..B SID list and instructions on
   how to identify the packets to which the SID list is to be prepended.

   The SIDs may be used to specify both network paths, or service
   functions as described in
   [I-D.xu-mpls-unified-source-routing-instruction].

   Dynamic creation of a VPN path using SR requires less state
   maintenance in the network core at the expense of larger VPN headers
   on the packet.  The scaling properties will reduce roughly from a
   function of (N/2)^2 to a function of N, where N is the VPN path
   length in intervention points (hops plus network functions).
   Reducing the state in the network is important to VPN+, as VPN+
   requires the overlay to be more closely integrated with the underlay
   than with traditional VPNs.  This tighter coupling would normally
   mean that significant state needed to be created and maintained in
   the core.  However, a segment routed approach allows much of this
   state to be spread amongst the network ingress nodes, and transiently
   carried in the packets as SIDs.

4.2.  Latency Support

   The IETF has ongoing work on support for a latency ceiling
   [I-D.ietf-detnet-architecture].  The provision of a latency ceiling
   is a requirement of the application seeking the use of enhanced
   virtual networks.  The current design of DetNet assumes the design of
   the underlay network is unchanged.  In this section we look at some
   changes that could be used to assist in achieving low latency ceiling
   across the wide area.

   Traditionally a traffic engineered path operates with a granularity
   of a link with hints about priority provided through the use of the
   traffic class field in the header.  However to achieve the latency
   and isolation characteristics that are sought, steering packets
   through specific queues may be required.  This allows a much finer

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   control of which services wait for which, and a much finer
   granularity of queue management policy.

   This may be introduced into traditional path construction techniques
   such as RSVP-TE and MPLS-TP, or it may be introduced by specifying
   the queue in an SR instruction list.

4.3.  Support of an IP underlay

   Where an underlay needs to be provided by IP, a number of options
   present themselves.  We could allocate an IP address to that path and
   construct a path through the network for that IP address.  The path
   could be laid in with RSVP signaling or through SDN controller.  This
   path could have all of the required properties including specifying
   resources to use and functions to visit.  Although this construct has
   been considered many time over the years, such a mechanism, at least
   to the author's knowledge, has not found favor in deployment.

   There are two ways that segment routing might be used to adapt the
   system described above to an IP context.  One is to use the method
   described in [I-D.ietf-6man-segment-routing-header] in which each
   segment (instruction) is encoded as a normal IPv6 address.  An
   alternative is to use the more compact representation considered in
   [I-D.xu-mpls-unified-source-routing-instruction] and
   [I-D.bryant-mpls-unified-ip-sr].

4.4.  Application Specific Network Types

   Although the transport service that underpins the extended VPN is
   likely MPLS/IP based, it needs to be able to carry application
   specific non-MPLS/IP traffic.  This can be accommodated through the
   use of pseudowires (PWs).

4.5.  A Hybrid Control Plane

   It is expected that VPN+ would be based on a hybrid control
   mechanism, which takes advantage of the logically centralized
   controller for on-demand provisioning and global optimization, whilst
   still relies on distributed control plane to provide scalability,
   high reliability, fast reaction, automatic failure recovery etc.
   Extension and optimization to the distributed control plane is needed
   to support the enhanced properties of VPN+.
   [I-D.king-teas-applicability-actn-slicing] describes the use of ACTN
   to network slicing.  This approach may be considered as part of the
   centralized control plane of VPN+ in some applications.

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5.  Applicability to Network Slicing

   In [I-D.geng-netslices-architecture] a network slice is defined to
   be:

   "A managed group of subsets of resources, network functions / network
   virtual functions at the data, control, management/orchestration
   planes and services at a given time.  Network slice is programmable
   and has the ability to expose its capabilities.  The behaviour of the
   network slice realized via network slice instance(s)."

   A network slice instance (NSI) is then defined as:

   "An activated network slice.  It is created based on network
   template.
   A set of managed run-time network functions, and resources to run
   these network functions, forming a complete instantiated logical
   network to meet certain network characteristics required by the
   service instance(s).
   It provides the network characteristics that are required by a
   service instance.  A network slice instance may also be shared across
   multiple service instances provided by the network operator.  The
   network slice instance may be composed by none, one or more sub-
   network instances, which may be shared by another network slice
   instance."

   A network slice can thus be thought of as a customized set of logical
   network and compute resources required by the service the slice is
   supporting.  These resources support both virtual services in the
   data path and operation of the slice, for example by providing
   routing services.  The customization includes the connectivity,
   performance, and isolation characteristics.  These characteristics
   can be provided by the enhanced VPN described in this draft.

6.  Security Considerations

   All types of virtual network require special consideration to be
   given to the isolation between the tenants.  However in an enhanced
   virtual network service hard isolation needs to be considered.  If a
   service requires a specific latency then it can be damaged by simply
   delaying the packet through the activities of another tenant.  In a
   network with virtual functions, depriving a function used by another
   tenant of compute resources can be just as damaging as delaying
   transmission of a packet in the network.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   There are no requested IANA actions.

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [FLEXE]    "Flex Ethernet Implementation Agreement", March 2016,
              <http://www.oiforum.com/wp-content/uploads/
              OIF-FLEXE-01.0.pdf>.

   [I-D.bryant-mpls-unified-ip-sr]
              Bryant, S., Xu, X., Chen, M., Farrel, A., and J. Drake, "A
              Unified Approach to IP Segment Routing", draft-bryant-
              mpls-unified-ip-sr-00 (work in progress), June 2017.

   [I-D.galis-netslices-revised-problem-statement]
              Galis, A., "Network Slicing - Revised Problem Statement",
              draft-galis-netslices-revised-problem-statement-00 (work
              in progress), June 2017.

   [I-D.geng-netslices-architecture]
              67, 4., Dong, J., Bryant, S., kiran.makhijani@huawei.com,
              k., Galis, A., Foy, X., and S. Kuklinski, "Network Slicing
              Architecture", draft-geng-netslices-architecture-01 (work
              in progress), June 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-6man-segment-routing-header]
              Previdi, S., Filsfils, C., Raza, K., Leddy, J., Field, B.,
              daniel.voyer@bell.ca, d., daniel.bernier@bell.ca, d.,
              Matsushima, S., Leung, I., Linkova, J., Aries, E., Kosugi,
              T., Vyncke, E., Lebrun, D., Steinberg, D., and R. Raszuk,
              "IPv6 Segment Routing Header (SRH)", draft-ietf-6man-
              segment-routing-header-06 (work in progress), March 2017.

   [I-D.ietf-detnet-architecture]
              Finn, N., Thubert, P., Varga, B., and J. Farkas,
              "Deterministic Networking Architecture", draft-ietf-
              detnet-architecture-02 (work in progress), June 2017.

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   [I-D.ietf-spring-segment-routing]
              Filsfils, C., Previdi, S., Decraene, B., Litkowski, S.,
              and R. Shakir, "Segment Routing Architecture", draft-ietf-
              spring-segment-routing-12 (work in progress), June 2017.

   [I-D.king-teas-applicability-actn-slicing]
              King, D., "Applicability of Abstraction and Control of TE
              Networks (ACTN) to Network Slicing", draft-king-teas-
              applicability-actn-slicing-00 (work in progress), June
              2017.

   [I-D.qiang-netslices-gap-analysis]
              Qiang, L., Martinez-Julia, P., 67, 4., Dong, J.,
              kiran.makhijani@huawei.com, k., Galis, A., Hares, S., and
              S. Slawomir, "Gap Analysis for Network Slicing", draft-
              qiang-netslices-gap-analysis-00 (work in progress), June
              2017.

   [I-D.xu-mpls-unified-source-routing-instruction]
              Xu, X., Bryant, S., Raszuk, R., Chunduri, U., Contreras,
              L., Jalil, L., Assarpour, H., Velde, G., Tantsura, J., and
              S. Ma, "Unified Source Routing Instruction using MPLS
              Label Stack", draft-xu-mpls-unified-source-routing-
              instruction-02 (work in progress), June 2017.

Authors' Addresses

   Stewart Bryant
   Huawei

   Email: stewart.bryant@gmail.com

   Jie Dong
   Huawei

   Email: jie.dong@huawei.com

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