USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING AND SERVICE INDIRECTION
draft-purkayastha-sfc-service-indirection-00

Network Working Group                                     D. Purkayastha
Internet-Draft                                                 A. Rahman
Intended status: Informational                                D. Trossen
Expires: January 2, 2018                InterDigital Communications, LLC
                                                            July 1, 2017

     USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING AND SERVICE INDIRECTION
              draft-purkayastha-sfc-service-indirection-00

Abstract

   Many stringent requirements are imposed on today's network, such as
   low latency, high availability and reliability in order to support
   several use cases such as IoT, Gaming, Content distribution, Robotics
   etc.  Networks need to be flexible and dynamic in terms of allocation
   of services and resources.  Network Operators should be able to
   reconfigure the composition of a service and steer users towards new
   service end points as user move or resource availability changes.
   SFC allows network operators to easily create and reconfigure service
   function chains dynamically in response to changing network
   requirements.  We discuss a use case where Service Function Chain can
   adapt or self-organize as demanded by the network condition without
   requiring SPI re-classification.  This can be achieved, for example,
   by decoupling the service consumer and service endpoint by a new
   service function proposed in this draft.  We describe few
   requirements for this service function to enable dynamic switching
   between consumer and end point.

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 http://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 January 2, 2018.

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 1]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

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

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  NSH and Re-classification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     2.1.  Dynamic service chain creation using NSH  . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Challenges with dynamic indirection . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Desired Features  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Service Request Routing (SRR) Service Function  . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Next Steps  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   9.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   The requirements on today's networks are very diverse, enabling
   multiple use cases such as IoT, Content Distribution, Gaming, Network
   functions such as Cloud RAN.  Every use case imposes certain
   requirements on the network.  These requirements vary from one
   extreme to other and often they are in a divergent direction.
   Network operator and service providers are pushing many functions
   towards the edge of the network in order to be closer to the users.
   This reduces latency and backhaul traffic, as user request can be
   processed locally.

   It becomes more challenging for the network when user mobility as
   well as non-deterministic availability of compute and storage
   resources are considered.  The impact is felt most in the edge of the
   network because as the users move, their point of attachment changes
   frequently, which results in (at least partially) relocating the
   service as well as the service endpoint.  Furthermore, network
   functions are pushed more and more towards the edge, where compute

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 2]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   and storage resources are constrained and availability is non-
   deterministic.  Also, storage resources may need to be moved where
   the user concentration is more in case of content delivery
   applications.

   Take the following video orchestration service example from ETSI MEC
   Requirements document [ETSI_MEC].  The proposed use case of edge
   video orchestration suggests a scenario where visual content can be
   produced and consumed at the same location close to consumers in a
   densely populated and clearly limited area.  Such a case could be a
   sports event or concert where a remarkable number of consumers are
   using their handheld devices to access user select tailored content.
   The overall video experience is combined from multiple sources, such
   as local recording devices, which may be fixed as well as mobile, and
   master video from central production server.  The user is given an
   opportunity to select tailored views from a set of local video
   sources.

   In such a dynamic network environment, the capability to dynamically
   compose new services from available services as well as move a
   service instance in response to user mobility or resource
   availability is desirable.  SFC allows network operators as well as
   service providers to compose new services by chaining individual
   service functions towards the composed new service.  In a dynamic
   network environment where service functions move frequently because
   of user movement, load balancing or resource modification, service
   function chains and the service end points need to be created and
   recreated frequently.  SFC, as defined in IETF, is capable of
   modifying the service chain dynamically in response to network
   conditions.

   In this document we address this dynamicity by introducing a special
   Service Function, called SRR (service request routing).  We describe
   the problems associated with today's network and Layer 3 based
   approach to handle dynamicity in the network.  We then discuss how
   such new Service Function with certain capabilities can handle the
   dynamicity better than these conventional methods.

2.  NSH and Re-classification

   [RFC7498] captures the problems associated with existing service
   deployments that are problematic.  High level problems are listed
   below.

   o  Network topology: Network service deployment is tightly coupled
      with network topology thus reducing the flexibility in service
      delivery.  It adds complexity in deploying network service when

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 3]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

      certain traffic types may need some service and other traffic
      types do not need the same service.

   o  Configuration complexity is the direct result of dependency on
      network topology.

   o  Limited availability of services

   o  Altering the order of a deployed chain is complex and cumbersome

   o  Coupling of service functions to topology may require service
      functions to support many transport encapsulations or for a
      transport gateway function to be present.

   o  In a dynamic environment like the Edge of a network service
      delivery, routing changes fast.  It may be difficult to deliver
      service dynamically due to the risk and complexity of VLANs and/or
      routing modifications.

   These factors provide motivation for a simplified and flexible
   service insertion model that addresses many of the current
   shortcomings and provides new, much needed functionality to enable
   service deployments in modern network environments.  Service chaining
   accomplishes this by considering service functions as resources, with
   associated attributes, available for scheduled consumption.
   Selective traffic, subject to policy, may then be "steered" to the
   requisite service resources, along with any "extra" information
   referred to as metadata.  This metadata is used for policy
   enforcement.

   A basic form of service chaining may be realized using existing
   transport encapsulations.  This method of chaining relies upon the
   tunneling of selected data between service functions.  Although this
   form of service chaining achieves some level of abstraction from the
   underlying topology, it does not truly create a service plane.  NSH
   [I-D.ietf-sfc-nsh] is a distinct identifiable plane that can be used
   across all transports to create a service chain and exchange metadata
   along the chain.

2.1.  Dynamic service chain creation using NSH

   We revisit the dynamic service chain creation capability of NSH.  NSH
   defines a new service plane protocol [I-D.ietf-sfc-nsh].  A Network
   Service Header (NSH) contains service path information and optionally
   metadata that are added to a packet or frame and used to create a
   service plane.  A control plane is required in order to exchange NSH
   values with participating nodes, and to provision the same nodes with
   requisite information such as service path ID to overlay mapping.

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 4]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   The Network Service Header has three parts, Base header, Service Path
   Header and Context Header.  NSH Service Path Header is a 4-byte
   service path header follows the base header and defines two fields
   used to construct a service path:

   o  Service path identifier (SPI)

   o  Service index (SI)

   The following figure depicts the service path header.

     0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
     | Service Path ID                               | Service Index |
     +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

                         Figure 1: NSH Path Header

   The service path identifier (SPI) is used to identify the service
   path that interconnects the needed service functions.  It allows
   nodes to utilize the identifier to select the appropriate network
   transport protocol and forwarding techniques.  The service index (SI)
   identifies the location of a packet within a service path.  As
   packets traverse a service path, the SI is decremented post-service.

   SPI represents the service path and altering the path identifier
   results in a change of a service path.  A change in SPI value is a
   result of re-classification.  It means a node in the service path
   determined, based on policy, that the initial classification was
   incorrect or incomplete.  If the updated classification results in
   the necessity of a new service path, the node updates the SPI and SI
   fields accordingly.  The new identifier is then used to select the
   appropriate overlay topology.  This allows service functions to alter
   the path of a packet without having to participate in the network
   topology and its associated control plane(s).  The method to
   determine that an existing classification is incorrect and how to
   determine the new classification is not defined.

3.  Challenges with dynamic indirection

   The emerging trend in today's network is to deploy network functions,
   services and applications at the edge of the network to support
   latency requirements, computational offload, traffic optimization
   etc.  As users are moving, application or services being used by
   users, may need to be moved closer to the user's new location.  This
   implies another instance of the service function may need to be
   instantiated close to the user's new location.  It may result in re-

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 5]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   establishing service path from the newly instantiated service
   function to other service instances.  It is also possible that the
   newly instantiated service function may be redirected to a new
   service end point (e.g.  Application Server) for various reasons,
   such as incomplete content, proximity to data store, load balancing
   etc.  In another scenario, a single instance of the service function
   may not handle all users.  A single service function may be
   instantiated more than once to balance user load.  As the number of
   instances increase and along with mobility, the complexity of service
   routing increases.  It is anticipated that there may be a constant
   action of function chaining, re-chaining occurring in the network.

   The challenge of dynamic indirection may be better described by
   analyzing the working of CDNs, which dynamically (re-)direct user-
   initiated requests towards the most appropriate content instance.
   This task becomes more difficult if granularity of the instance
   placement increases.  For instance, in case of a CDN being realized
   close to end users, specifically in edge of the network, the specific
   content instance might need to be selected dynamically.  After
   initial selection, the instance may change during service execution.

   In a conventional network, an instance of a service is found and
   selected using DNS.  The subsequent service request is then routed
   through the network between the client and the service.  If the user
   is doing a DNS lookup to access content served by a CDN then the DNS
   service will maintain a list of IP addresses that can be returned for
   a given domain name and will try to return an IP address of a node
   geographically close to the client.  Should the service provider want
   to replace an instance of their service with another one at a
   different IP address (and potentially a different physical location
   for various reasons such as load balancing, reliability etc.) then
   the DNS tables must be updated, i.e., the service needs to be
   (re-)registered quickly.  This is done by updating the local
   authoritative DNS server which then propagates the new mapping to DNS
   services across the world.  DNS propagation can take up to 48 hours
   so fast and dynamic switching from one service instance to another is
   not possible in conventional networks.  When relying on many
   surrogate service endpoints to exist in the edge network, there is a
   clear issue of certain resources not being available in one surrogate
   instance while existing in another so that changes in redirection
   might be desirable, while also changes in local load drive the need
   for such change in redirection.

   The other issue in conventional network lies with mobility management
   procedure.  These procedures use an anchor point, which terminates a
   session at the network edge.  As user moves around, traffic is
   redirected from the anchor point to the new point of attachment.
   Relying on typical mobility management approaches found in IP

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 6]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   networks, usually leads to inefficient 'triangular' routing of
   requests through this common 'anchor' point.  This triangular routing
   increases the latency in reaching the new service function or service
   end points as users move.

   Traffic steering is a common procedure in managed networks,
   particularly at the edge, due to desired subscriber-centric traffic
   policies (e.g., related to pricing structures), resource requirements
   (e.g., related to using particular paths in the network) or mobility
   (e.g., users moving in a cellular network).  Today's methods for
   traffic steering include anchor-based mobility management as well as
   traffic classification, for instance, in packet gateways of cellular
   systems (using, e.g., deep packet inspection as well as port and
   address classification).  While the former leads to inefficient
   'triangular' traffic forwarding, the latter often requires additional
   state in the forwarders to differentiate traffic from one user to
   another.

   The analysis of CDN network shows that dynamic indirection is a
   necessary requirement, which needs to be supported by the networks.
   The goal for this indirection is to provide user applications lowest
   possible latency.  But as discussed above, relying on today's
   technique, does not help in guaranteeing same latency to user
   applications.  On the other hand, there is a high possibility that
   latency may increase if we rely on Layer 3 based service redirection
   techniques.

   SFC handles indirection through the use of SPI.  A packet needs to be
   reclassified and the intermediate node changes the SPI.  Following
   are the typical steps that happens in order to implement the
   indirection.

   o  A packet arrives at a particular node

   o  The node contacts the policy manager

   o  Identifies the current classification is incorrect

   o  Reclassifies the packet, i.e. change the SPI

   o  Inserts the packet in the pipe, possibly towards the SFF

   The indirection mechanism in SFC involves certain steps to process
   policy information and change the SPI in the packet header, making it
   suitable to handle dynamic indirection requirements.  Our proposed SF
   in this document provides an additional method to handle dynamic
   indirection of service requests, not relying on the reclassification

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 7]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   mechanism.  Combining these two techniques may provide flexibility
   and improvement over single method.

4.  Desired Features

   In order to route the service requests to service end points in a
   dynamic manner, we identify the following desirable features:

   o  Fast switching from one service instance to another by not relying
      on DNS for service location resolution.  Instead of DNS, the
      function should be able to identify the path, which will allow to
      reach the service end point.

   o  Direct path mobility, where the path between the requester and the
      responding service can be determined as being optimal (e.g.,
      shortest path or direct path to a selected instance), is needed to
      avoid the use of anchor points and reduce service-level latency

   o  Indirect service requests at the network level, transparent to the
      requesting client and without the involvement of the DNS.  End
      user is not aware of the decision made by the SF.

   o  New methods for forwarding, such as path-based forwarding, direct
      path routing in mobility cases, path pinning for traffic steering
      and simplified service-specific peering towards the Internet.

5.  Service Request Routing (SRR) Service Function

   The following diagram shows the application of the new proposed SRR
   service function in an example of media clients connecting to media
   servers.  There may be more than one media functions to support CDN
   like architecture, Surrogate servers to handle mobility and load
   balancing.

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 8]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

                                                         +--------+
                                                         |        |
            |-------------------------|------------------+  SRR   +
            |                         |                  |        |
            |                         |                  +---/|\--+
            |                         |                       |
       +---\|/--+   +---------+   +--\|/--+   +------+   +----+---+
       |        |   |         |   |       |   |      |   |        |
       + Client +-->+  IP     +-->+ Media +-->+ SRR  +-->+ Media  +
       |        |   | Routing |   |  Fn1  |   |      |   |  Fn2   |
       +--------+   +---------+   +-------+   +------+   +--------+

                       Figure 2: Use of SRR function

   The clients are connected to media functions through frontend routed
   network, e.g., relying on standard IP routing, while media functions
   are chained via the new proposed service request routing (SRR)
   function.  Alternatively, we also envision to utilize the SRR
   function directly between client SF and media function SF, as
   outlined in the figure below

                                                         +--------+
                                                         |        |
            |-------------------------|------------------+  SRR   +
            |                         |                  |        |
            |                         |                  +---/|\--+
            |                         |                       |
       +---\|/--+   +---------+   +--\|/--+   +------+   +----+---+
       |        |   |         |   |       |   |      |   |        |
       + Client +-->+  SRR    +-->+ Media +-->+ SRR  +-->+ Media  +
       |        |   |         |   |  Fn1  |   |      |   |  Fn2   |
       +--------+   +---------+   +-------+   +------+   +--------+

         Figure 3: SRR function between Client and Media Function

   The SRR service function decouples clients from media functions.
   This brings in flexibility in routing service requests from client to
   service end points.  In the edge network, where users are moving and
   service end points may also change, having flexibility to decide and
   steer service requests directly helps in guaranteeing the same
   latency to user applications.  Clearly, that is achieved by reducing
   the switching time from SF to another.  As service end point changes,
   the routing functions makes instantaneous decision to route the
   request to the appropriate media server.

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018                [Page 9]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   The possible improvements of using SRR within an SFC framework are
   listed below:

   o  Fast (between 10 and 20ms) switching times from one service
      instance to another by not relying on the DNS for service
      discovery and directly routing service requests at the level of
      the transport network.

   o  The capability to indirect service requests at the network level
      will help in reducing latency, when service end points change.
      E.g. when a service request is being sent to one surrogate
      instance but results in a HTTP 404 or 5xx error response, the
      original request is redirected to another alternative surrogate
      with minimal latency, i.e., right at the destination of said
      failed service request.  Nesting these operations effectively
      leads to a net-level 'search' among all available surrogate
      instances until the search is exhausted (with a negative result)
      or the resource is found.

   o  New methods for forwarding, such as path-based forwarding, will
      enable direct path routing in mobility cases, path pinning for
      traffic steering and simplified service-specific peering towards
      the Internet.  Such capability would allow for localizing traffic,
      reduce latency and costs.

6.  Next Steps

   Does the WG see value in supporting the requirements for SFC to
   enable routing of service requests between service consumers and
   service endpoints in a dynamic manner as outlined in Section 4?

7.  IANA Considerations

   This document requests no IANA actions.

8.  Security Considerations

   TBD.

9.  Informative References

   [ETSI_MEC]
              ETSI, "Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Technical
              Requirements", GS MEC 002 1.1.1, March 2016,
              <http://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/
              MEC/001_099/002/01.01.01_60/gs_MEC002v010101p.pdf>.

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018               [Page 10]
Internet-Draft   USE CASE FOR HANDLING DYNAMIC CHAINING        July 2017

   [I-D.ietf-sfc-nsh]
              Quinn, P. and U. Elzur, "Network Service Header", draft-
              ietf-sfc-nsh-13 (work in progress), June 2017.

   [RFC7498]  Quinn, P., Ed. and T. Nadeau, Ed., "Problem Statement for
              Service Function Chaining", RFC 7498,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7498, April 2015,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7498>.

Authors' Addresses

   Debashish Purkayastha
   InterDigital Communications, LLC
   Conchoken
   USA

   Email: Debashish.Purkayastha@InterDigital.com

   Akbar Rahman
   InterDigital Communications, LLC
   Montreal
   Canada

   Email: Akbar.Rahman@InterDigital.com

   Dirk Trossen
   InterDigital Communications, LLC
   64 Great Eastern Street, 1st Floor
   London  EC2A 3QR
   United Kingdom

   Email: Dirk.Trossen@InterDigital.com
   URI:   http://www.InterDigital.com/

Purkayastha, et al.      Expires January 2, 2018               [Page 11]