Problem statement and use cases of Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6)
draft-li-apn6-problem-statement-usecases-00
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Zhenbin Li , Shuping Peng , Daniel Voyer , Chongfeng Xie , Peng Liu , Chang Liu , Kentaro Ebisawa , Yukito Ueno , Stefano Previdi , Jim Guichard | ||
| Last updated | 2019-09-25 | ||
| Stream | (None) | ||
| Formats | plain text xml htmlized pdfized bibtex | ||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
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| IESG | IESG state | I-D Exists | |
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| Send notices to | (None) |
draft-li-apn6-problem-statement-usecases-00
Network Working Group Z. Li
Internet-Draft S. Peng
Intended status: Standards Track Huawei Technologies
Expires: March 28, 2020 D. Voyer
Bell Canada
C. Xie
China Telecom
P. Liu
China Mobile
C. Liu
China Unicom
K. Ebisawa
Toyota Motor Corporation
Y. Ueno
NTT Communications Corporation
S. Previdi
Individual
J. Guichard
Futurewei Technologies Ltd.
September 25, 2019
Problem statement and use cases of Application-aware IPv6 Networking
(APN6)
draft-li-apn6-problem-statement-usecases-00
Abstract
Operators are facing the challenges of providing better network
services for users. As the ever-developing 5G and industrial
verticals evolve, more and more services that have diverse network
requirements such as ultra-low latency and high reliability are
emerging and accessing the network, differentiated service treatments
are desired by users. However, operators are still not aware of
applications, which cause that only coarse-grained services can be
provided to users. As a result, operators are only evolving to be
large but dumb pipes without corresponding revenue increase. As the
network technologies evolve including deployments of IPv6 and SRv6,
the programmability provided by IPv6 and SRv6 encapsulations can be
augmented by conveying the application related information into the
network. Adding application knowledge to the network layer, allow
applications to specify finer granularity requirements, which
eventually bridges network and applications.
This document analyzes the existing problems of the current operators
in the application awareness, and outlines various use cases that
could benefit from the Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6).
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Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
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
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
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 March 28, 2020.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 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
(https://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
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Large but dumb pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Network on its own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Decoupling of network and applications . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4. Challenges of traditional differentiated service
provisioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
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3.5. Challenges of supporting new 5G and edge computing . . . 6
4. Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Use cases of APN6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.1. App-aware SLA Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. App-aware network slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3. App-aware deterministic networking . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.4. App-aware service function chaining . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.5. App-aware network measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
Operators are facing the challenges of providing better network
services for users. As the ever-developing 5G and industrial
verticals evolve, more and more services that have diverse network
requirements such as ultra-low latency and high reliability are
emerging and accessing the network, differentiated service treatments
are desired by users. However, operators are still not aware of
applications, which cause that only coarse-grained services can be
provided to users. As a result, operators are only evolving to be
large but dumb pipes without corresponding revenue increase. As the
network technologies evolve including deployments of IPv6 and SRv6,
the programmability provided by IPv6 and SRv6 encapsulations can be
augmented by conveying the application related information into the
network. Adding application knowledge to the network layer, allow
applications to specify finer granularity requirements, which
eventually bridges network and applications.
This document analyzes the existing problems of the current operators
in the application awareness, and outlines various use cases that
could benefit from the Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6).
2. Terminology
ACL: Access Control List
APN6: Application-aware IPv6 Networking
DPI: Deep Packet Inspection
PBR: Policy Based Routing
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QoE: Quality of Experience
3. Problem Statement
This section summarizes the challenges faced by the operators to
satisfy the various requirements of applications and provide fine-
granular traffic operations.
3.1. Large but dumb pipe
Currently, the network is still not aware of applications, that is,
the network and applications are actually decoupled. It is difficult
for network operators to provide fine-granular traffic operations for
performance-demanding applications. In order to satisfy the SLA
requirements operators continue to increase the network bandwidth but
only carrying very light traffic load (around 30%-40% of its
capacity). This situation greatly increases the CAPEX and OPEX but
only brings very little revenue from the carried services, which
makes operators' network infrastructure large but dumb pipes.
3.2. Network on its own
As the network evolves, VPN/TE/FRR play important roles in satisfying
the service isolation, SLA guarantee, and high reliability, etc.
Those network technologies have been evolving themselves, which make
the network features continuously upgrading. However, such
continuous upgrading doesn't bring corresponding revenue increase.
Marginal Utility has been reduced, which has become the bottleneck of
operators to increase their revenue.
3.3. Decoupling of network and applications
MPLS played a very important role in helping the network enter the
generation of All-IP successfully. However, MPLS actually doesn't
allow a close interworking with the application layer since MPLS
encapsulation is, typically, not used by the packet source.
As new services continuously evolve, more encapsulations are
required, and this isolation and decoupling has further become the
blockage towards the seamless convergence of the network and
applications.
3.4. Challenges of traditional differentiated service provisioning
A number of IETF activities have been reviewed which are primarily
intended to evolve the IP architecture to support new service
definitions which allow preferential or differentiated treatment to
be accorded to certain types of traffic. The challenge when using
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traditional ways to guarantee SLA is that the packets are not able to
carry enough information for indicating applications and expressing
their service/SLA requirements. The network devices mainly rely on
the 5-tuple of the packets or DPI. However, there are some
challenges of those traditional methods in differentiated service
provisioning.
1. Five tuples used for ACL/PBR
Five tuples are widely used for ACL/PBR. However, they cannot
provide enough information for the fine-grained service process, and
can only be seen as indirect application information which needs to
be translated in order to indicate a specific application. It will
further impact on the forwarding performance.
2. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
If more information is needed, it has to be done through the use of
DPI in order to deeply inspect the packets. However, this will
introduce more CAPEX and OPEX in the network and also it imposes
security challenges.
3. Orchestration and SDN-based solution
In the era of SDN, typically, a SDN controller is used to manage and
operate the network infrastructure and orchestrator elements allow to
introduce application requirements so that the network is programmed
accordingly. The SDN controller can be aware of the service
requirements of the applications on the network through the interface
with the orchestrator, and the service requirement is used by the
controller for traffic management over the network. However, this
method raises the following problems:
1) The whole loop is long and time-consuming which is not suitable
for the fast service provisioning for critical applications;
2) Too many interfaces are involved in the loop, as shown in
Figure 1, which introduce challenges of standardization and inter-
operability.
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+--------------+
/-----| Orchestrator | -------------------\
/ +--------------+ Resource \
APP Req. / \ Management \
+---------+ +---------+ & +---------+
|SDN Ctrl1| |SDN Ctrl2| Service |SDN Ctrl3|
+---------+ +---------+ Provisioning +---------+
APP Req. / \ / \ / \
+-/-+ +--\--+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
|APP| | DCN | |Network D1|..|Network D3| |Network D4|..|Network D6|
+---+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
Figure 1. Many interfaces involved in the long service-provisioning loop
3.5. Challenges of supporting new 5G and edge computing
As the continuous development of 5G, IoT, and edge computing, more
and more new type of services are (and will be) accessing network.
Vast volume of network traffic with diverse requirements such as low
latency and high reliability rapidly increases. If we continue to
use traditional methods, it will cause much higher CAPEX and OPEX to
satisfy the ever-developing applications' diverse requirements.
4. Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6)
To resolve the above-mentioned issues, one possible way is to convey
the application characteristic information (including application
identification and network performance requirements) into the
network, and make the network aware of application characteristic
information more quickly in order to perform the fine-granularity
network resource adjustment and SLA performance guarantee, hence to
better serve demanding applications.
The IPv6 encapsulation including its extension headers (EH) [RFC8200]
are well suited for a good programmability and can be utilized to
encapsulate application information as well as other necessary
information. EH provides very good foundations for the application-
aware fine-granularity service provisioning. We name this technology
as APN6.
The advantages of using IPv6 to support APN6 include,
1. Simplicity: Conveying application information with IPv6
encapsulation can just be based on IP reachability.
2. Seamless convergence: Much easier to achieve seamless convergence
between applications and network since both are based on IPv6.
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3. Great extensibility: IPv6 encapsulation including its extension
headers can be used to carry very rich information relevant to
applications.
4. Good compatibility: On-demand network upgrade and service
provisioning. If the application information is not recognized
by the node, the packet will be forwarded based on pure IPv6,
which ensure backward compatibility.
5. Little dependency: Information conveying and service provisioning
are only based on the forwarding plane of devices, which is
different from the Orchestration and SDN-based solution which
involves multiple elements and diverse interfaces.
6. Quick response: Flow-driven and direct response from devices
since it is based on the forwarding plane.
APN6 has the following key elements,
1. Application information is conveyed by the IPv6 encapsulation:
The conveyed application characteristic information (application-
aware information) includes application identification and/or its
network performance requirements. This element is not enforced
but actually provides an open option for applications to decide
whether to input this application-aware information.
2. Application information and network service provisioning
matching: provide fine-granularity network service provisioning
(traffic operations) and SLA guarantee based on the application-
aware information carried in IPv6 packets. This element provides
the network capabilities to applications. According to the
application-aware information, appropriate network services are
selected and provisioned to the demanding applications and
satisfy their performance requirements.
3. Network measurement based on IPv6: measure the network
performance and update the matching between the applications and
corresponding network services in order for better fine-
granularity SLA compliance. The network measurement methods
include in-band and out-of-band, passive, active, per-packet,
per-flow, per node, end-to-end, etc. These methods can also be
integrated.
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Applications | Network
Element 1: Conveying ------------------->
/|\
Application Info | Network capabilities
| (SLA guarantee)
| /|\
Element 2: Matching |
|
Element 3: Network Measurement
Figure 2. Illustration of the key elements of APN6
5. Use cases of APN6
This session provides the use cases that can benefit from the
application awareness. The corresponding requirements for APN6 are
also outlined.
5.1. App-aware SLA Guarantee
Among various applications being carried and running in the network,
some revenue-producing applications such as online gaming, video
streaming, and enterprise video conferencing have much more demanding
performance requirements such as low network latency and high
bandwidth. In order to achieve better Quality of Experience (QoE) of
the end users and engage customers, the network needs to be able to
provide fine-granularity and even application-level SLA guarantee.
Differentiated service provisioning is desired.
One of the key objective of APN6 is for operators to provide fine-
granularity SLA guarantee instead of coarse-grain traffic operations.
This will enable operators to provide differentiated services for
different applications of their customers and make increase revenue
accordingly.
Requirements for APN6:
For achieving App-aware SLA Guarantee, APN6 needs to perform the
three key elements as described in Section 4. Application-level
fine-granularity traffic operation that may include finer QoS
scheduling is the key to guarantee the SLA of each specific demanding
application.
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5.2. App-aware network slicing
More and more applications/services with diverse requirements are
being carried over and sharing operators' network infrastructure, the
same to the enterprise case. However, it is still desired to have
customized network transport that is able to support some
application's specific requirements, considering also the service and
resource isolation, which drives the concept of network slicing.
Network slicing provides ways to partition the network infrastructure
in either control plane or data plane into multiple network slices
that are running in parallel. These network slices can serve diverse
services and fulfill their various requirements at the same time.
For example, the mission critical application that requires ultra-low
latency and high reliability can be provisioned over a separated
network slice.
Requirements for APN6:
For achieving App-aware network slicing, APN6 needs to perform the
three key elements as described in Section 4 in the context of
network slicing. To be more specific, for the element 2, it needs to
match to a specific network slice according to the application
information carried in the IPv6 packets. The network measurement in
element 3 also needs to happen within each network slice.
5.3. App-aware deterministic networking
[RFC8578] documents use cases for diverse industry applications that
require deterministic flows over multi-hop paths. Deterministic
flows provide guaranteed bandwidth, bounded latency, and other
properties relevant to the transport of time-sensitive data, and can
coexist on an IP network with best-effort traffic. It also provides
for highly reliable flows through provision for redundant paths.
Requirements for APN6:
For achieving App-aware deterministic networking, APN6 needs to
perform the three key elements as described in Section 4 in the
context of deterministic networking. To be more specific, for the
element 2, it needs to match to a specific deterministic path
according to the application information carried in the IPv6 packets.
The network measurement in element 3 also needs to be performed on
each app-aware deterministic path.
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5.4. App-aware service function chaining
The end-to-end service delivery often needs to go through various
service functions, including traditional network service functions
such as firewalls, DPI as well as new application-specific functions,
both physical and virtual. The definition and instantiation of an
ordered set of service functions and subsequent steering of the
traffic through them is called Service Function Chaining (SFC)
[RFC7665]. SFC is applicable to both fixed and mobile networks as
well as data center networks.
Generally, in order to manipulate a specific application traffic
along the SFC, a DPI needs to be deployed as the first service
function of the chain to detect the application, which will impose
high CAPEX and consume long processing time. For the encrypted
traffic, it even becomes impossible to inspect the application.
Requirements for APN6:
For achieving App-aware service function chaining, APN6 needs to
perform the three key elements as described in Section 4 in the
context of service function chaining. To be more specific, for
element 1 class information can be conveyed. For element 2, it needs
to match to a specific service function chain and subsequent steering
according to the application information carried in the IPv6 packets.
The network measurement in element 3 also needs to happen within each
app-aware service function chain.
5.5. App-aware network measurement
Network measurement can be used for locating silent failure and
predicting QoE satisfaction, which enables real-time SLA awareness/
proactive OAM. Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM)
refers to a toolset for fault detection and isolation, and network
performance measurement. In-situ Operations, Administration, and
Maintenance (IOAM) records operational and telemetry information in
the packet while the packet traverses a path between two points in
the network.
Requirements for APN6:
For achieving App-aware network measurement, APN6 needs to perform
the two key elements as described in Section 4 in the context of
network measurement. The network measurement in element 3 does not
need to be considered here.
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6. IANA Considerations
This document does not include an IANA request.
7. Security Considerations
Since the application information is conveyed into the network, it
does involve some security and privacy issues.
First of all, APN6 only provides the capability to the applications
to provide their profiles and requirements to the network, but it
leaves the applications to decide whether to input this information.
If the applications decide not to provide any information, they will
be treated in the same way as today's network and cannot get the
benefits from APN6.
Once the application information has been carried in the IPv6 packets
and conveyed into the network, the IPv6 extension headers, AH and
ESP, can be used to guarantee the authenticity of the added
application information.
Any scheme involving an information exchange between layers
(application and network layers in this case) will obviously require
an accurate valuation of security mechanism in order to prevent any
leak of critical information. Some additional considerations may be
required for multi-domain use cases. For example, how to agree upon
which application information/ID to use and guarantee authenticity
for packets traveling through multiple domains (network operators).
8. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Robert Raszuk for his valuable
review and comments.
9. Contributors
Liang Geng
China Mobile
China
Email: gengliang@chinamobile.com
Chang Cao
China Unicom
China
Email: caoc15@chinaunicom.cn
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Cong Li
China Telecom
China
Email: licong.bri@chinatelecom.cn
10. References
10.1. 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,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC7665] Halpern, J., Ed. and C. Pignataro, Ed., "Service Function
Chaining (SFC) Architecture", RFC 7665,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7665, October 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7665>.
[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>.
[RFC8578] Grossman, E., Ed., "Deterministic Networking Use Cases",
RFC 8578, DOI 10.17487/RFC8578, May 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8578>.
10.2. Informative References
[I-D.ietf-6man-segment-routing-header]
Filsfils, C., Dukes, D., Previdi, S., Leddy, J.,
Matsushima, S., and d. daniel.voyer@bell.ca, "IPv6 Segment
Routing Header (SRH)", draft-ietf-6man-segment-routing-
header-23 (work in progress), September 2019.
[I-D.ietf-spring-srv6-network-programming]
Filsfils, C., Camarillo, P., Leddy, J.,
daniel.voyer@bell.ca, d., Matsushima, S., and Z. Li, "SRv6
Network Programming", draft-ietf-spring-srv6-network-
programming-02 (work in progress), September 2019.
Authors' Addresses
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Zhenbin Li
Huawei Technologies
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
Shuping Peng
Huawei Technologies
China
Email: pengshuping@huawei.com
Daniel Voyer
Bell Canada
Canada
Email: daniel.voyer@bell.ca
Chongfeng Xie
China Telecom
China
Email: xiechf.bri@chinatelecom.cn
Peng Liu
China Mobile
China
Email: liupengyjy@chinamobile.com
Chang Liu
China Unicom
China
Email: liuc131@chinaunicom.cn
Kentaro Ebisawa
Toyota Motor Corporation
Japan
Email: ebisawa@toyota-tokyo.tech
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Yukito Ueno
NTT Communications Corporation
Japan
Email: yukito.ueno@ntt.com
Stefano Previdi
Individual
Italy
Email: stefano@previdi.net
James N Guichard
Futurewei Technologies Ltd.
USA
Email: jguichar@futurewei.com
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