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IOAM Linkage Solution for the Protection Cases of 5G Bearer Network
draft-li-ippm-ioam-path-protection-01

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Author Zhenwen Li
Last updated 2022-07-11
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draft-li-ippm-ioam-path-protection-01
IPPM                                                       Z.LI. Li, Ed.
Internet-Draft                                                     CAICT
Intended status: Experimental                               11 July 2022
Expires: 12 January 2023

  IOAM Linkage Solution for the Protection Cases of 5G Bearer Network
                 draft-li-ippm-ioam-path-protection-01

Abstract

   In-band operation and maintenance management (IOAM, In-band OAM), as
   a network performance monitoring technology, is based on the
   principle of path-associated detection to perform specific field
   marking/coloring and identification on actual service flows, and
   perform packet loss and delay measurement.  It can quickly perceive
   network performance-related faults, and accurately delimit boundaries
   and do troubleshooting.  However, the current IOAM solution has
   shortcomings too.  For example, after the service traffic path
   switching, the IOAM cannot continue working.  This paper proposes a
   scheme to achieve automatic performance monitoring through service
   path switching and linkage with IOAM, which enhances the feasibility
   of the IOAM scheme in large-scale deployment and the completeness of
   IOAM technology.

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
   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 12 January 2023.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   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 Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     1.2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  IOAM basic processing analysis  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  The impact of service path switching on IOAM  . . . . . . . .   4
     3.1.  Analysis of Service Protection Mechanism  . . . . . . . .   4
     3.2.  The impact of service path switching on IOAM  . . . . . .   5
     3.3.  Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   4.  IOAM monitoring is associated with service path . . . . . . .   7
     4.1.  Key points of the linkage solution  . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       4.1.1.  Service path changes notice IOAM module . . . . . . .   7
       4.1.2.  Reconfigure mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.2.  The process of the linkage solution . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   8.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     8.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10

1.  Introduction

   In-band operation and maintenance management (In-band OAM, IOAM) is a
   flow monitoring technology with high accuracy.  It does not need to
   use out-of-band monitoring messages, and measures network KPIs such
   as packet loss and delay directly.  But there are also shortcomings:
   in the current solution, performance monitoring can only be performed
   based on traffic quintuple information (pre-configuration or learning
   from traffic flow).  If the path of this flow changes, it cannot
   working in most cases.  However, In real network , the service flow
   path is not stable.  There are many reasons for the change of the
   flow path, such as the interruption of the working fiber link in the
   network and the error code exceeding the threshold, or switching
   traffic to the backup link temporarily because of the equipments'
   upgrade.  Regardless of the cause of the service traffic path
   switching, it is of great significance to monitor the performance on

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   the new path after the switching automatically.  Service path
   switching is a key event in the network.  If the switched service
   path is not monitored in real time, it is impossible to ensure that
   the switched path can meet the requirements of the upper-layer
   service; on the contrary, if the IOAM performance monitoring of the
   switched path can be used to detect the deterioration of the network
   KPI after the switch in time , the operator may optimize and adjust
   the service path as soon as possible.  Except for the manual and
   planned switching, it is difficult to predict the time for other
   switching caused by network failures, which will also cause the
   network operator to be unable to redeploy and start IOAM performance
   monitoring in time after the switching.

1.1.  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].

1.2.  Terminology

   IOAM:In-band Operation And Maintenance Management

   KPI:Key Performance Indicator

   HSB:Hot Standby

   APS:Automatic Protect Switch

   Ti-LFA:Topology Independent Loop Free Alternate

   SD:Signal Degrade

   UNI:User Network Interface

   NNI:Network Network Interface

2.  IOAM basic processing analysis

   IOAM Data collection and analysis process is shown in the figure1:

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                              +---------------------+
                    ----------| Statistical analysis|--------
                    |         |  module for IOAM    |       |
                    |         +---------------------+       |
                    |                   |                   |
                    |                   |                   |
                    |                   |                   |
              +---------+         +---------+         +--------+
         ---->| Ingress |---------| Transit |---------| Egress |------>
              | PE      |         | P       |         | PE     |
              +---------+         +---------+         +--------+

                                  Figure 1

   IOAM Data collection and analysis process

   *  At the ingress PE, the UNI side uses ACL to match the quintuple
      information of the service flow, dyes the matched traffic packets
      and sends the statistics to the statistical analysis module in the
      network controller.  The NNI side encapsulates the IOAM header and
      service label (SR-TE/SR-BE and VPN label);

   *  The P device reads the IOAM header information (Flow ID and
      colored bit information).  The IOAM header is inside the SR label
      and the VPN label, and there is no need to decapsulate and
      recapsulate it to avoid too much impact on the forwarding
      performance; this step only involves hop-by-hop monitoring, not
      end-to-end monitoring.

   *  At the egress PE, decapsulate the packet, read the information in
      the IOAM header, report to the statistical analysis module, and
      then send the original user payload from the UNI side;

   *  The statistical analysis module combines the topology information
      to perform statistical analysis on the data sent by the network
      equipments, and present it through reports or graphics.

3.  The impact of service path switching on IOAM

3.1.  Analysis of Service Protection Mechanism

   If it is an automatic switching triggered by a network failure, it
   can be divided into signal failure (SF, often caused by line fiber
   break, equipment power failure), signal degradation (SD, line error
   or packet loss over the threshold of performance availability, due to
   aging of fiber.  Switching occurs when the error rate or the
   accumulated packet loss rate reaches the detection threshold).  Fiber
   breakage, power failure of P node, and SD error codes will trigger

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   HSB or APS switching (for SR-TE tunnel) or Ti-LFA protection (for SR-
   BE tunnel), the tail node power failure will trigger VPN FRR(Fast
   reroute) protection.

   If the switching is triggered because of network expansion, upgrade,
   etc., the switching mechanism is basically the same as the network
   failure trigger, and the impact on IOAM is also the same, so it will
   not be analyzed separately.

3.2.  The impact of service path switching on IOAM

   As shown in Figure2 below, network equipments A, C, and G are PE
   devices; B ,E and F are P devices, and D is CE devices.  Under normal
   condition, services are forwarded through the working tunnel path,
   which is A-B-C-D ; The protection tunnel path is A-E-F-G-C-D (one by
   one protection path of the tunnel), and the tail node protection path
   is A-E-F-G-D.

                         +----+      +----+
                 +-------|  B |------| C  |------+
                 |       +----+      +----+      |
              +----+        |           |        |
         gNB->| A  |        |           |        |
              +----+        |           |        |
                 |          |           |     +----+
                 |          |           |     |  D |---->5GC
              +----+        |           |     +----+
              | E  |        |           |        |
              +----+        |           |        |
                 |       +----+      +----+      |
                 +-------|  F |------| G  |------+
                         +----+      +----+

                                  Figure 2

   5G Bearer Network with Backup Path

   1.  When the working path is normal, configure IOAM end-to-end
       instances on A and C respectively, or configure IOAM hop-by-hop
       instances on A, B, and C to monitor the delay and packet loss.

   2.  Taking the L3VPN over SR-TE tunnel as an example, when the Node B
       or the link between A and C fails, the HSB protection of the SR-
       TE tunnel is triggered, and the service traffic switchs to
       A-E-F-G-C-G, the end-to-end IOAM monitoring is not affected;

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       because Node B fails , the hop-by-hop monitoring instance cannot
       continue to obtain the data reported by B, so the relevant
       configuration of the monitoring instance needs to be switched to
       each node of the backup path, that is, the IOAM monitoring
       instance needs to be newly configured at node E, F, and G.

   3.  When the node C fails, the VPN FRR protection is triggered.
       Because the PE is switched to node G, the end-to-end and the hop
       by hop monitoring instance will become invalid, and it is
       impossible to continue to monitor the KPI of the service on the
       protection path.  IOAM monitoring needs to be newly configured at
       nodes E, F, and G.

   4.  The statistical analysis module in the network controller
       combines the topology information to perform statistical analysis
       on the data sent by the network equipments, and present it
       through reports or graphics.

3.3.  Summary

   From the above, it can be seen that the change in the flow direction
   caused by the switching of the active and standby service paths will
   directly affect the data collection and reporting of the IOAM
   monitoring instance.  Based on the existing solution, one way to
   continue monitoring after the switch is to deploy IOAM monitoring on
   all nodes of the active and standby paths.  When there is no traffic
   on the standby path, the nodes along the way do not report monitoring
   data; whenever traffic reaches, the monitoring data will be reported
   again.  There are two issues with this solution: the first one is
   that after the traffic is switched, because there is no linkage, the
   upper-layer statistical analysis module in the controller does not
   perceive the change of the service path, and does not know what the
   real service path is, so it may not be able to calculate the result
   of delay and packet loss normally; the second one is that it will
   cause waste of IOAM resources configured on the device that no
   traffic passes through.  Therefore, if a certain linkage mechanism
   can be established between the IOAM and the service path to
   dynamically perceive this path change, and reconfigure in time,
   continuous IOAM monitoring will be performed automatically when the
   service path switches and recovers(except a short interruption during
   the switching process), and no additional IOAM resources are
   occupied.

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4.  IOAM monitoring is associated with service path

4.1.  Key points of the linkage solution

4.1.1.  Service path changes notice IOAM module

   When the service path changes, the IOAM management module in the
   network controller can be notified through the alarms or events
   reported by the device; in addition, after the IGP on the device
   detects the network topology change, it will also notify network
   controller to perform the topology refresh through the BGP-LS
   protocol.

4.1.2.  Reconfigure mechanism

   a.  Identify the equipment that needs to be configured:according to
       the principle that the UNI interface on the access side(node
       A,connect to gNB) will remain unchanged and the corresponding
       relationship between the UNI interface -> VPN instance -> SR-TE/
       SR-BE tunnel index, the corresponding tunnel path can be queried,
       and then the node that needs to reconfigure the IOAM instance can
       be determined; The UNI interface on the core side(node C and
       G,connect to 5GC) may change due to the power failure or recovery
       of the PE device(node C), so the nodes of the IOAM instance in
       the downstream direction(5GC to gNB) cannot be queried in the
       same way as in the upstream direction(gNB to 5GC), so how to get
       the tunnel path and nodes in this direcion will be considered
       later,and updated in new version of this draft.  For nodes that
       already have IOAM configuration, reconfiguration will not cause
       problems.

   b.  Information and sources to be configured, as shown below:

       *  IOAM instance:End-to-end or hop-by-hop, unchanged before and
          after switching

       *  Node type:PE or P, determined according to the tunnel path
          information, the source and tail nodes are PE, and the others
          are P

       *  Flow ID:The same before and after the switching

       *  Stream quintuple:The same before and after switching

       *  UNI interface and VLAN on the access side:The same before and
          after switching

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       *  UNI interface and VLAN on the core side:To be disscussed in
          new version of draft

       *  Telemetry configuration:Relatively fixed, generated by the
          controller

   c.  Configuration protocol:Use Netconf protocol for configuration
       delivery.

4.2.  The process of the linkage solution

         -------------------------------------------------------
         |                    SDN Controller                   |
         |     -------2-----------------                       |
         |     |                       |                       |
         |     v                       v                       |
         | +------+   +--------+   +------+   +--------------+ |
         | |Alarm |   |Topology|   |IOAM  |   |IOAM statistic| |
         | |manage|   |manage  |-2-|manage|   |and analysis  | |
         | +------+   +--------+   +------+   +--------------+ |
         |-----^----------^----------^------------^------------|
               |          |          |            |
               |-----------          |            |
               |                     |            |
              1|           +----+    |  +----+    |
               | +---------|  B |----|--| C  |----|----+
               v |         +----+    |  +----+    |    |
              +----+                 |            |    |
         ---->| A  |                 |            |    |
              +----+                3|           4|    |
                 |                   |            |  +----+
                 |                   |            |  | D  |---->
              +----+            ------------------   +----+
              | E  |            |                      |
              +----+            v                      |
                 |         +------+      +------+      |
                 +---------|   F  |------|   G  |------+
                           +------+      +------+

                                  Figure 3

   Process of IOAM and service path linkage scheme

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   1.  For link or node failure, perform the corresponding fast
       switching (HSB/VPN FRR or Ti-LFA), and generate an alarm and send
       it to the network controller.  IGP also detects the topology
       changes and reports to the controller through BGP-LS.

   2.  Alarm management module and topology management module in the
       network controller notify the IOAM management module after
       receiving the fast switching trigger event or alarm sent by
       devices, or after the BGP-LS topology is refreshed.

   3.  The IOAM management module queries the tunnel path information
       after the switching, and determines the node that needs to
       reconfigure IOAM and the required information according to the
       method in section 2) above: "Reconfigure mechanism", and perform
       configuration provision.

   4.  The IOAM management module starts the monitoring instance, the
       device reports the collected data with Telemetry, and the IOAM
       statistical analysis module analyzes and presents the monitoring
       results.

   5.  When the network failure recovers, the controller notifies the
       IOAM management module to reconfigure according to the received
       switching recovery event or BGP-LS topology refresh.

   6.  After the configuration of the IOAM management module is
       completed, the monitoring instance is started, and the monitoring
       results based on the restored path are presented.

5.  Acknowledgements

   TBD

6.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

7.  Security Considerations

   TBD

8.  References

8.1.  Normative References

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   [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>.

8.2.  Informative References

   [RFC8321]  G.Fioccola, "Alternate-Marking Method for Passive and
              Hybrid Performance Monitoring.", 2018,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc8321/>.

   [YDT38262021]
              CCSA, "General Technical Requirements for Slicing Packet
              Network(SPN).", 2021.

Author's Address

   Zhenwen Li (editor)
   CAICT
   Beijing
   China
   Email: lizhenwen@caict.ac.cn

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