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Scalability Considerations for Network Resource Partition
draft-dong-teas-nrp-scalability-01

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Replaced".
Authors Jie Dong , Zhenbin Li , Liyan Gong , Guangming Yang , Jim Guichard , Gyan Mishra , Fengwei Qin , Tarek Saad , Vishnu Pavan Beeram
Last updated 2022-02-07 (Latest revision 2021-12-17)
Replaces draft-dong-teas-enhanced-vpn-vtn-scalability
Replaced by draft-ietf-teas-nrp-scalability
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draft-dong-teas-nrp-scalability-01
TEAS Working Group                                               J. Dong
Internet-Draft                                                     Z. Li
Intended status: Informational                       Huawei Technologies
Expires: 11 August 2022                                          L. Gong
                                                            China Mobile
                                                                 G. Yang
                                                           China Telecom
                                                             J. Guichard
                                                  Futurewei Technologies
                                                               G. Mishra
                                                            Verizon Inc.
                                                                  F. Qin
                                                            China Mobile
                                                                 T. Saad
                                                               V. Beeram
                                                        Juniper Networks
                                                         7 February 2022

       Scalability Considerations for Network Resource Partition
                   draft-dong-teas-nrp-scalability-01

Abstract

   The IETF Network Slice service aims to meet the connectivity demands
   of a network slice customer with specific Service Level Objectives
   (SLOs) and Service Level Expectations (SLEs) over a common underlay
   network.  A Network Resource Partition (NRP) is a set of network
   resources that are allocated from the underlay network to carry a
   specific set of network traffic and meet the required SLOs and SLEs.
   One or multiple IETF Network Slice services can be mapped to one NRP.

   As the demand for IETF Network Slice services increases, scalability
   would become an important factor for the large scale deployment of
   IETF Network Slices.  Although the scalability of IETF Network Slices
   can be improved by mapping a group of IETF Network Slices to one NRP,
   there are concerns about the scalability of NRPs.  This document
   describes the scalability considerations about NRPs in the network
   control plane and data plane, and some optimization mechanisms are
   proposed.

Status of This Memo

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

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Network Resource Partition Scalability Requirements . . . . .   3
   3.  Network Resource Partition Scalability Considerations . . . .   5
     3.1.  Control Plane Scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       3.1.1.  Distributed Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       3.1.2.  Centralized Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  Data Plane Scalability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Gap Analysis of the Existing Mechanism  . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Proposed Scalability Optimizations  . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Control Plane Optimizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       4.1.1.  Distributed Control Plane Optimizations . . . . . . .   8
       4.1.2.  Centralized Control Plane Optimization  . . . . . . .  10
     4.2.  Data Plane Optimizations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   5.  Solution Evolution for Improved Scalability . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   8.  Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   9.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13

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     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15

1.  Introduction

   The IETF Network Slice service aims to meet the connectivity demands
   of a network slice customer with specific Service Level Objectives
   (SLOs) and Service Level Expectations (SLEs) over a common underlay
   network.  [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices] defines the
   terminologies and the characteristics of IETF Network Slices.  It
   also discusses the general framework, the components and interfaces
   for requesting and operating IETF Network Slices.  For the
   realization of IETF Network Slice services, a concept called Network
   Resource Partition (NRP) is introduced, which refers to a set of
   network resources that are available in the underlay network to
   ensure the requested SLOs and SLEs of IETF Network Slices can be met.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn] describes the layered framework and
   candidate technologies for delivering enhanced VPN (VPN+) services.
   VPN+ aims to meet the needs of customers or applications, including
   the applications that are associated with 5G, which require
   connectivity services with advanced characteristics, such as the
   assurance of Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and specific Service
   Level Expectations (SLEs).  VPN+ services can be delivered by mapping
   one or a group of overlay VPNs to a virtual underlay network built
   with a set of network resources.  The VPN+ framework and technologies
   could be used for the realization of IETF Network Slice services.
   NRP could be used as the underlay network construct to support the
   VPN+ services.

   As the demand for IETF Network Slice services increases, scalability
   would become an important factor for the large scale deployment of
   IETF Network Slices.  Although the scalability of IETF Network Slices
   can be improved by mapping a group of IETF Network Slices to one NRP,
   there are concerns about the scalability of NRPs.  This document
   describes the scalability considerations about NRPs in the network
   control plane and data plane, and some optimization mechanisms are
   proposed.

2.  Network Resource Partition Scalability Requirements

   As described in [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices], IETF Network
   Slices may be grouped together according to characteristics
   (including SLOs and SLEs).  This grouping allows an operator to host
   a number of slices on a particular set of resources to reduce the
   amount of state information needed in the network.  This can help to
   avoid the maintenance of per IETF Network Slice state in the underlay
   network.

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   With the development and evolution of 5G and other services, it is
   expected that an increasing number of IETF Network Slices will be
   deployed.  The number of network slices required depends on how IETF
   Network Slices will be used, and the progress of network slicing for
   the vertical industrial services.  The potential number of IETF
   Network Slice services and NRPs is analyzed by classifying the
   network slice deployment into three typical scenarios:

   1.  IETF Network Slices can be used by a network operator for
       different types of service.  For example, in a converged multi-
       service network, different IETF Network Slices can be created to
       carry mobile transport services, fixed broadband services and
       enterprise services respectively: each type of service could be
       managed by a separate department or management team.  Some
       service types, such as multicast services may also be deployed in
       a dedicated NRP.  In this case, a separate NRP may need to be
       created for each service type.  It is also possible that a
       network infrastructure operator provides IETF Network Slices to
       other network operators as a wholesale service, and a NRP may
       also be needed for each wholesale service customer.  In this
       scenario, the number of NRPs in a network could be relatively
       small, such as in the order of 10 or so.  This could be one of
       the typical cases in the beginning of IETF Network Slice
       deployment.

   2.  IETF Network Slices can be requested by customers of industrial
       verticals, where the assurance of SLOs and the fulfilment of SLEs
       are quite important.  At the early stage of the vertical
       industrial services, a few top customers in some industries will
       begin to use IETF Network Slices to provide performance assurance
       to their business, such as smart grid, manufacturing, public
       safety, on-line gaming, etc.  The realization of such IETF
       Network Slices typically requires the provision of different NRPs
       for different industries, and some top customers can require
       dedicated NRPs for strict service performance guarantees.
       Considering the number of vertical industries, and the number of
       top customers in each industry, the number of NRPs needed may be
       in the order of 100.

   3.  With the evolution of 5G and cloud networks, IETF Network Slices
       could be widely used by various vertical industrial customers and
       enterprise customers who require guaranteed or predictable
       service performance.  The total amount of IETF Network Slices may
       increase to thousands or more, although it is expected that the
       number of IETF Network Slices would still be less than the number
       of traditional VPN services in the network.  Accordingly, the
       number of NRPs needed may be in the order of 1000.

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   In [TS23501], the 3GPP defines a 32-bit identifier for a 5G network
   slice with an 8-bit Slice/Service Type (SST) and a 24-bit Slice
   Differentiator (SD).  This allows mobile networks (the RAN and mobile
   core networks) to potentially support a large number of 5G network
   slices.  It is likely that multiple 5G network slices are mapped to
   the same IETF Network Slice, but in some cases (for example, for
   specific SST or SD) the mapping may be closer to one-to-one, and the
   required NRPs may increase as well.

   Thus, there may be large numbers of IETF Network Slices in some
   scenarios and the realization of IETF Network Slices needs to meet
   the scalability requirements.  Mapping multiple IETF Network Slices
   to the same NRP presents a significant scaling benefit, but there can
   still be a requirement for a large number of NRPs which presents its
   own scalability challenges.

3.  Network Resource Partition Scalability Considerations

   This section analyses the scalability of NRPs in the control plane
   and data plane to understand the possible gaps in meeting the
   scalability requirements of IETF Network Slices.

3.1.  Control Plane Scalability

   The control plane for establishing and managing NRPs could be based
   on the hybrid of a centralized controller and a distributed control
   plane.  The subsections that follow consider the scalability of these
   two approaches: the resultant scalability of the control plane will
   depend on how the hybrid is constructed.

3.1.1.  Distributed Control Plane

   It is necessary to create multiple NRPs for the delivery of IETF
   network slice services.  Each NRP can be associated with a customized
   logical topology.  The network resource attributes and the associated
   logical topology information of each NRP may need to be exchanged
   among the network nodes.  The scalability of the distributed control
   plane used for the distribution of NRP information needs to be
   considered in the following aspects:

   *  The number of control protocol instances maintained on each node

   *  The number of protocol sessions maintained on each link

   *  The number of routes advertised by each node

   *  The amount of attributes associated with each route

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   *  The number of route computations (i.e., SPF computation) executed
      by each node

   As the number of NRPs increases, it is expected that in some of the
   above aspects, the overhead in the control plane may increase in
   proportion to the number of the NRPs.  For example, the overhead of
   maintaining separated control protocol instances (e.g., IGP
   instances) for different NRPs is considered higher than maintaining
   the information of separate NRPs in the same control protocol
   instance with appropriate separation, and the overhead of maintaining
   separate protocol sessions for different NRPs is considered higher
   than using a shared protocol session for the information exchange of
   multiple NRPs.  To meet the requirements of the increasing number of
   NRPs, it is suggested to choose a control plane mechanism which could
   improve the scalability while still provide the required
   functionality.

3.1.2.  Centralized Control Plane

   By introducing a centralized network controller, the Software Defined
   Network (SDN) approach may help to reduce the amount of computation
   overhead in the distributed control plane, while it may also transfer
   some of the scalability concerns from network nodes to the
   centralized controller, thus the scalability of the controller also
   needs to be considered.

   To provide global optimization for the Traffic Engineered (TE) paths
   in different NRPs, the controller needs to keep the topology and
   resource information of all the NRPs up-to-date.  To achieve this,
   the controller may need to maintain a communication channel with each
   network node in the network.  When there is significant change in the
   network, or multiple NRPs require global optimization concurrently,
   there may be a heavy processing burden at the controller, and a heavy
   load in the network surrounding the controller for the distribution
   of the updated network state and the TE paths.

3.2.  Data Plane Scalability

   To provide different IETF Network Slice services with the required
   SLOs and SLEs, it is necessary to allocate different subsets of
   network resources as different NRPs to avoid or reduce the unexpected
   interference from other services in the network.  As the number of
   NRPs increases, it is required that the underlying network can
   provide fine-granular network resource partitioning, which means the
   amount of state about the partitioned network resources to be
   maintained on the network nodes will also increase.

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   In packet forwarding, IETF Network Slice service traffic needs to be
   processed according to the topology and resource attributes of the
   NRP it is mapped to, this means that some fields in the data packet
   need to be used to identify the NRP and its associated topology
   either directly or implicitly.  Different approaches of encapsulating
   the NRP information in data packet can have different scalability
   implications.

   One practical approach is to reuse some of the existing fields in the
   data packet to additionally identify the NRP the packet belongs to.
   For example, the destination IP addresses or the MPLS forwarding
   labels may be reused to further identify the NRP.  This can avoid the
   cost of introducing new fields in the data packet, while since it
   introduces additional semantics to the existing fields, the
   processing of the existing fields in packet forwarding may need to be
   changed.  Moreover, introducing resource semantics to existing
   identifiers in the packet (e.g., IP addresses, MPLS forwarding
   labels, etc.) may result in the increase of the amount of the
   existing IDs in proportion to the number of the NRPs, which may cause
   scalability problem in networks where a relatively large number of
   NRPs is needed.

   An alternative approach is to introduce a new dedicated field in the
   data packet for identifying the NRP.  This could avoid the impacts to
   the existing fields in the packet.  And if this new field carries a
   globally-significant identifier of the NRP, it could be used together
   with the existing fields to determine the packet forwarding behavior.
   The potential issue with this approach is the difficulty in
   introducing a new field in some of the data plane technologies.

   In addition, the introduction of NRP specific packet forwarding has
   an impact on the scalability of the forwarding entries on network
   nodes, as a network node may need to maintain separate forwarding
   entries for each NRP it participates in.

3.3.  Gap Analysis of the Existing Mechanism

   This section provides a gap analysis for an existing mechanism to
   perform NRP identification in the data plane and the related
   information distribution in the control plane.

   One existing mechanism of building NRPs is to use resource-aware
   Segment Identifiers (either SR-MPLS or SRv6)
   [I-D.ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments] to identify the allocated
   network resources in the data plane based on the mechanisms described
   in [I-D.ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn], and distribute the resource
   attributes and the associated logical topology information in the
   control plane using mechanisms based on Multi-topology

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   [I-D.ietf-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt] or Flex-Algo
   [I-D.zhu-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-flexalgo].  This mechanism is suitable for
   networks where a small number of NRPs are needed.  As the number of
   NRPs increases, there may be several scalability challenges with this
   approach:

   1.  The number of SR SIDs needed will increase in proportion to the
       number of NRPs in the network, which will bring challenges both
       to the distribution of SR SIDs and the related information in the
       control plane, and to the installation of forwarding entries for
       resource-aware SIDs in the data plane.

   2.  As each NRP is associated with an independent logical topology or
       algorithm, the number of route computations (e.g., SPF
       computations) will increase in proportion to the number of NRPs
       in the network, which may introduce significant overhead to the
       control plane of network nodes.

   3.  The maximum number of logical topologies supported by OSPF
       [RFC4915] is 128, and the maximum number of Flexible Algorithms
       [I-D.ietf-lsr-flex-algo] is 128, which may not meet the required
       number of NRPs in some network scenarios.

4.  Proposed Scalability Optimizations

4.1.  Control Plane Optimizations

4.1.1.  Distributed Control Plane Optimizations

   Several optimizations can be considered to reduce the distributed
   control plane overhead and improve its scalability.

   The first optimization mechanism is to reduce the amount of control
   plane sessions used for the establishment and maintenance of the
   NRPs.  For multiple NRPs which have the same connection relationship
   between two adjacent network nodes, it is proposed that one single
   control protocol session is used for each such group of NRPs.  The
   information of different NRPs can be exchanged over the same session,
   with necessary identification information to distinguish the NRPs in
   the control message.  This could reduce the overhead of maintaining a
   large number of separate control protocol sessions for each NRP, and
   could also reduce the amount of control plane messages flooded in the
   network.

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   The second optimization mechanism is to decouple the NRP information
   from the associated logical topology information in the control
   plane, so that the resource attributes and the topology attributes
   can be advertised and processed separately.  In a network, it is
   possible that multiple NRPs associate with the same logical topology,
   and multiple NRPs may share the same set of network resources on a
   subset of network nodes and links.  Then it is more efficient if only
   one copy of the topology information is advertised, and multiple NRPs
   sharing the same topology could refer to this topology information.
   More importantly, with this approach, the result of topology-based
   route computation could be shared by multiple NRPs, so that the
   overhead of per NRP route computation could be avoided.  Similarly,
   information of a subset of network resources reserved on a particular
   network node or link could be advertised once and may be referred to
   by multiple NRPs which share the same set of resources.

                        O#####O#####O          O*****O*****O
                        #     #     #          *     *     *
                        #     #     #          *     *     *
                        O#####O#####O          O*****O*****O

                            NRP-1                  NRP-2

                                   O-----O-----O
                                   |     |     |
                                   |     |     |
                                   O-----O-----O

                               Shared Network Topology

          Legend

          O     Virtual node
          ###   Virtual links with a set of reserved resources
          ***   Virtual links with another set of reserved resources

      Figure 1. Topology Sharing between NRPs

   Figure 1 gives an example of two NRPs which share the same logical
   topology.  As shown in the figure, NRP-1 and NRP-2 are associated
   with the same topology, while the resource attributes of each NRP are
   different.  In this case, only one copy of the network topology
   information needs to be advertised, and the topology-based route
   computation result can be shared by the two NRPs to generate the
   corresponding routing and forwarding tables.

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                       O#####O#####O         O----O#####O
                       #     #     #           \/ #     #
                       #     #     #           /\ #     #
                       O#####O#####O         O----O#####O

                           NRP-1                NRP-2

       Legend

       O     Virtual node
       ###   Virtual links with a set of reserved resource
       ---   Virtual links with another set of reserved resource

   Figure 2. Resource Sharing between NRPs

   Figure 2 gives another example of two NRPs which share the same set
   of network resources on some of the links.  In this case, information
   about the resources allocated on each link only needs to be
   advertised once, then both NRP-1 and NRP-2 could refer to the
   reserved link resource for constraint based path computation.

4.1.2.  Centralized Control Plane Optimization

   For the optimization of the centralized control plane, it is
   suggested that the centralized controller is used as a complementary
   mechanism to the distributed control plane rather than a replacement,
   so that the workload for NRP specific path computation in control
   plane could be shared by both the centralized controller and the
   network nodes, and the scalability of both systems could be improved.
   In addition, the centralized controller may be realized with multiple
   network entities, each is responsible for one subset or region of the
   network.  This is the typical approach for scale out of the
   centralized control plane.

4.2.  Data Plane Optimizations

   To support more IETF Network Slice services while keeping the amount
   of data plane state at a reasonable scale, one typical approach is to
   classify a set of IETF Network Slice services which have similar
   service characteristics and performance requirements into a group,
   and such groups of IETF Network Slice services are mapped to one NRP,
   which is allocated with an aggregated set of network resources and
   the union of the required logical topologies to meet the service
   requirement of the whole group of IETF Network Slice services.
   Different groups of IETF Network Slice services can be mapped to
   different NRPs with different set of network resources allocated from
   the underlay network.  With appropriate grouping of IETF Network
   Slice services, a reasonable number of NRPs with network resources

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   reservation and aggregation could still meet the IETF Network Slice
   service requirements.

   Another optimization in the data plane is to decouple the identifiers
   used for topology-based forwarding and the identifier used for the
   resource-specific processing introduced by NRP.  One possible
   mechanism is to introduce a dedicated network-wide NRP Identifier
   (NRP-ID) in the packet header to uniquely identify the set of network
   resources allocated to a NRP on each involved network node and link
   for the processing and forwarding of the data packets mapped to the
   NRP.  Then the existing identifiers in the packet header used for
   topology based forwarding (e.g., the destination IP address, MPLS
   forwarding labels) are kept unchanged.  The benefit is the amount of
   the existing topology-specific identifiers will not be impacted by
   the increasing number of NRPs.  Since this new global NRP-ID field
   will be used together with other existing fields to determine the
   packet forwarding behavior, this may require network nodes to support
   a hierarchical forwarding table in data plane.  Figure 3 shows the
   concept of using different data plane identifiers for topology-
   specific and resource-specific packet forwarding and processing
   respectively.

                         +--------------------------+
                         |       Packet Header      |
                         |                          |
                         | +----------------------+ |
                         | | Topology-specific IDs| |
                         | +----------------------+ |
                         |                          |
                         | +----------------------+ |
                         | |    Global NRP-ID     | |
                         | +----------------------+ |
                         +--------------------------+

    Figure 3. Decoupled Topology and Resource Identifiers in data packet

   In an IPv6 [RFC8200] based network, this could be achieved by
   introducing a dedicated field in either the IPv6 fixed header or the
   extension headers to carry the NRP-ID for the resource-specific
   forwarding, while keeping the destination IP address field used for
   routing towards the destination prefix in the corresponding topology.
   Note that the NRP-ID needs to be parsed by every node along the path
   which is capable of NRP aware forwarding.
   [I-D.dong-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id] introduces the mechanism of
   carrying the VTN resource ID (which is equivalent to NRP-ID in the
   context of network slicing) in IPv6 Hop-by-Hop extension header.

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   In an MPLS [RFC3032] based network, this may be achieved by
   introducing a dedicated NRP-ID either in the MPLS label stack or
   following the MPLS label stack.  This way, the existing MPLS
   forwarding labels are used for topology-specific packet forwarding
   towards the destination node, and the NRP-ID is used to determine the
   set of network resources for packet processing.  This requires that
   both the forwarding label and the NRP-ID be parsed by nodes along the
   forwarding path of the packet, and the forwarding behavior may depend
   on the position of the NRP-ID in the packet.  The detailed extensions
   to MPLS data plane are under discussion as part of the work in MPLS
   Open Design Team and is out of the scope of this document.

5.  Solution Evolution for Improved Scalability

   Based on the analysis in this document, the control plane and data
   plane for NRP need to evolve to support the increasing number of IETF
   Network Slice services and the increasing number of NRPs in the
   network.

   At the first step, by introducing resource-awareness to segment
   routing SIDs [I-D.ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments], and using
   Multi-Topology or Flex-Algo as the control plane mechanism to define
   the logical topology, it could provide a solution for building a
   limited number of NRPs in the network, and can meet the requirements
   of a relatively small number of IETF Network Slice services.  This
   mechanism is called the basic SR based NRP.

   As the required number of IETF Network Slice services increases, more
   NRPs may be needed, then the control plane scalability could be
   improved by decoupling the topology attribute from the resource
   attribute, so that multiple NRPs could share the same topology or
   resource attribute to reduce the control plane and data plane
   overhead.  The data plane can still be based on the resource-aware
   SIDs.  This mechanism is called the scalable SR based NRP.  Both the
   basic and the scalable SR based NRP mechanisms are described in
   [I-D.ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn].

   When the data plane scalability becomes a concern, a dedicated NRP-ID
   can be introduced in the data packet to decouple the resource-
   specific identifiers from the topology-specific identifiers in the
   data plane, this could help to reduce the number of IP addresses or
   SR SIDs needed to support a large number of NRPs.  This mechanism is
   called the NRP-ID based mechanism.

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6.  Security Considerations

   This document describes the scalability considerations about the
   network control plane and data plane of NRPs in the realization of
   IETF Network Slice services, and proposes the mechanisms for
   scalability optimization.  As the number of NRPs supported in the
   data plane and control plane of the network can be limited, this may
   be exploited as an attack vector by requesting a large number of
   network slices, which then result in the creation of a large number
   of NRPs.

   One protection against this is to improve the scalability of the
   system to support more NRPs.  Another possible solution is to make
   the network slice controller aware of the scaling constraints of the
   system and dampen the arrival rate of new network slices and NRPs
   request, and raise alarms when the thresholds are crossed.

   The security considerations in [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices]
   and [I-D.ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn] also apply to this document.

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document makes no request of IANA.

8.  Contributors

   Zhibo Hu
   Email: huzhibo@huawei.com

   Hongjie Yang
   Email: hongjie.yang@huawei.com

9.  Acknowledgments

   The authors would like to thank Adrian Farrel for the review and
   discussion of this document.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [I-D.ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Li, Z., Miyasaka, T., and Y. Lee, "A
              Framework for Enhanced Virtual Private Network (VPN+)
              Services", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              teas-enhanced-vpn-09, 25 October 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-teas-enhanced-
              vpn-09.txt>.

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   [I-D.ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices]
              Farrel, A., Gray, E., Drake, J., Rokui, R., Homma, S.,
              Makhijani, K., Contreras, L. M., and J. Tantsura,
              "Framework for IETF Network Slices", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-teas-ietf-network-slices-05, 25
              October 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-
              teas-ietf-network-slices-05.txt>.

   [RFC3032]  Rosen, E., Tappan, D., Fedorkow, G., Rekhter, Y.,
              Farinacci, D., Li, T., and A. Conta, "MPLS Label Stack
              Encoding", RFC 3032, DOI 10.17487/RFC3032, January 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3032>.

   [RFC8200]  Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
              (IPv6) Specification", STD 86, RFC 8200,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8200, July 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8200>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.dong-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id]
              Dong, J., Li, Z., Xie, C., Ma, C., and G. Mishra,
              "Carrying Virtual Transport Network (VTN) Identifier in
              IPv6 Extension Header", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-dong-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id-06, 24 October 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-dong-6man-enhanced-
              vpn-vtn-id-06.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-lsr-flex-algo]
              Psenak, P., Hegde, S., Filsfils, C., Talaulikar, K., and
              A. Gulko, "IGP Flexible Algorithm", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-lsr-flex-algo-18, 25 October
              2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-lsr-
              flex-algo-18.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt]
              Xie, C., Ma, C., Dong, J., and Z. Li, "Using IS-IS Multi-
              Topology (MT) for Segment Routing based Virtual Transport
              Network", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              lsr-isis-sr-vtn-mt-02, 13 January 2022,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-lsr-isis-sr-
              vtn-mt-02.txt>.

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   [I-D.ietf-spring-resource-aware-segments]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Miyasaka, T., Zhu, Y., Qin, F., Li,
              Z., and F. Clad, "Introducing Resource Awareness to SR
              Segments", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-
              spring-resource-aware-segments-03, 12 July 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-spring-
              resource-aware-segments-03.txt>.

   [I-D.ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn]
              Dong, J., Bryant, S., Miyasaka, T., Zhu, Y., Qin, F., Li,
              Z., and F. Clad, "Segment Routing based Virtual Transport
              Network (VTN) for Enhanced VPN", Work in Progress,
              Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn-01,
              12 July 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-ietf-
              spring-sr-for-enhanced-vpn-01.txt>.

   [I-D.zhu-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-flexalgo]
              Zhu, Y., Dong, J., and Z. Hu, "Using Flex-Algo for Segment
              Routing based VTN", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
              draft-zhu-lsr-isis-sr-vtn-flexalgo-03, 11 July 2021,
              <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-zhu-lsr-isis-sr-
              vtn-flexalgo-03.txt>.

   [RFC4915]  Psenak, P., Mirtorabi, S., Roy, A., Nguyen, L., and P.
              Pillay-Esnault, "Multi-Topology (MT) Routing in OSPF",
              RFC 4915, DOI 10.17487/RFC4915, June 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4915>.

   [RFC5120]  Przygienda, T., Shen, N., and N. Sheth, "M-ISIS: Multi
              Topology (MT) Routing in Intermediate System to
              Intermediate Systems (IS-ISs)", RFC 5120,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5120, February 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5120>.

   [TS23501]  "3GPP TS23.501", 2016,
              <https://portal.3gpp.org/desktopmodules/Specifications/
              SpecificationDetails.aspx?specificationId=3144>.

Authors' Addresses

   Jie Dong
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Campus, No. 156 Beiqing Road
   Beijing
   100095
   China

   Email: jie.dong@huawei.com

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   Zhenbin Li
   Huawei Technologies
   Huawei Campus, No. 156 Beiqing Road
   Beijing
   100095
   China

   Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com

   Liyan Gong
   China Mobile
   No. 32 Xuanwumenxi Ave., Xicheng District
   Beijing
   China

   Email: gongliyan@chinamobile.com

   Guangming Yang
   China Telecom
   No.109 West Zhongshan Ave., Tianhe District
   Guangzhou
   China

   Email: yangguangm@chinatelecom.cn

   James N Guichard
   Futurewei Technologies
   2330 Central Express Way
   Santa Clara,
   United States of America

   Email: james.n.guichard@futurewei.com

   Gyan Mishra
   Verizon Inc.

   Email: gyan.s.mishra@verizon.com

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   Fengwei Qin
   China Mobile
   No. 32 Xuanwumenxi Ave., Xicheng District
   Beijing
   China

   Email: qinfengwei@chinamobile.com

   Tarek Saad
   Juniper Networks

   Email: tsaad@juniper.net

   Vishnu Pavan Beeram
   Juniper Networks

   Email: vbeeram@juniper.net

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