Use cases of Application-aware Networking (APN) in Game Acceleration
draft-zhang-apn-acceleration-usecase-03
Network Working Group S. Zhang
Internet-Draft C. Cao
Intended status: Informational China Unicom
Expires: 11 June 2022 S. Peng
Z. Li
Huawei
8 December 2021
Use cases of Application-aware Networking (APN) in Game Acceleration
draft-zhang-apn-acceleration-usecase-03
Abstract
With the development of the Internet, game industry has risen
rapidly, from handheld game consoles to PC games and mobile games.
The types of games are diversified, while the number of game users is
increasing year by year. The game market is maturing quickly.
Nowadays, the scale of game users is large and they belong to the
easy-to-consume groups. Among all the games, those require frequent
interactions and involve video streaming usually have highly
demanding requirements on the network in terms of guaranteed network
latency and reliability. Therefore, from the aspect of ensuring
better gaming experience, it is desirable of differentiating the
particular gaming application flows and providing high-priority
network services for those demanding gamers.
This document describes the game acceleration scenarios using
Application-aware Networking (APN) technology. In these scenarios,
APN can identify the specific requirements of particular gaming
applications, steer the flows to the game processors close to the
users, and provide SLA guaranteed network services such as low
latency and high reliability.
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.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Usage Scenarios of APN in Game Acceleration . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. APN for Steering into Dedicated Game Acceleration
Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.2. Fine-granularity Interactive Action Game Acceleration . . 5
3. Game Acceleration Business Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
Online games usually refer to games which use the access terminal PC
or smart terminal as the game platform, the Internet as the data
transmission medium, the game operator server as the processor, and
through the WAN network transmission (e.g. mobile Internet), in which
a single user or multiple users simultaneously participate to realize
the operation of the game characters or scenes.
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The number of online game players is large in China, about more than
700 million. Gamers usually pursue very high quality of
experience(QoE). At present, most gamers are willing to spend extra
money to get a better user experience.
The UDP protocol has good real-time performance and its network
overhead is also small, through which high communication rate can be
reached. So the UDP protocol is mainly used in the real-time game
interaction process. Even if the operator uses DPI, it will not
recognize UDP packets.
Application-aware networking (APN) [I-D.li-apn-framework] enables the
network to be aware of the applications' requirements in a fine
granularity, and then either steer the corresponding traffic onto the
appropriate network path that can satisfy the requirements or
establish an exclusive network path which would not be influenced by
other applications' traffic flow.
2. Usage Scenarios of APN in Game Acceleration
This section presents two typical game acceleration scenarios with
APN to meet the service requirements and ensure user experience.
2.1. APN for Steering into Dedicated Game Acceleration Channel
Generally speaking, the network latency requirement of games is less
than 30ms. For competitive games, the latency requirement is less
than 10ms. According to the statistics of the domestic Steam
platform in China (from 2018 Game Industry External Market
Observation Report by Tencent PC game platform), overseas games
account for a high proportion in TOP10 online games. The traditional
way to provide services is to connect with foreign operators through
the operators international business network and directly access the
game servers. In this case, the latency will generally exceed 200ms.
So in order to give users a better game experience, operators need to
provide solutions to reduce latency for the gamers oversea.
The games which are operated by domestic agents usually connect
through a third-party acceleration server forming a dedicated
acceleration channel to access the game servers in the Data Center,
as shown in the Figure 1.
Client
+------+ +------------+ +--------------------+ +--------+
| Game |___\ | Operator |___\| Third Party |___\| Data |
| Data | / | Network | /|Acceleration channel| /| Center |
+------+ +------------+ +--------------------+ +--------+
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Figure 1: Figure 1.A Third-party Acceleration Channel for Games
If the operator provides services directly, in order to reduce the
end-to-end latency, the operator's export gateway (Game Acceleration
Router) is connected to the International POP to directly access the
game servers in the Data Center,as shown in the Figure 2. In this
way, users can achieve quick access from domestic to the game servers
overseas.
Client
+------+ +------------+ +------------+ +--------------+ +--------+
| Game | | Operator | | Game | | International| | Data |
| Data |->| Network |->|Acceleration|->| PoP |->| Center |
| | | | | Router | | | | |
+------+ +------------+ +------------+ +--------------+ +--------+
Figure 2: Figure 2.The Operator Acceleration Channel for Games
As shown in the Figure 3, with APN, according to the application-
aware information carried in the packets, the game data can be
differentiated and steered at the App-aware process Head-end into the
dedicated game acceleration channel to achieve the desired low
latency.
Client
+------+ +---------+ +------------+ +---------+ +------+
| Game | |App-aware| | Game | |App-aware| | Data |
| Data |->| process |--|Acceleration|--| process |->|Center|
| | |Head-end | | Channel | |End point| | |
+------+ +---------+ +------------+ +---------+ +------+
Figure 3: Figure 3.APN for Steering into Dedicated Game
Acceleration Channel
Head-end node in the APN identifies the data flow of games (maybe one
or more games), and steers it into a dedicated game acceleration path
according to its SLA requirements.
Midpoint in the APN forwards game data stream along the path.
The end point in the APN receives the game data stream and steers it
to the data center for processing the users control instruction or to
the user for playing.
The whole process requires APN not only to identify the game traffic
but also to provide customized network services for it, in order to
achieve better gaming experience.
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2.2. Fine-granularity Interactive Action Game Acceleration
In some interactive action games, some flows are more important than
others since the packets in these flows are carrying action control
instructions. These flows have even lower latency requirement.
With APN technology, these important data flows could be further
indicated by adding corresponding information in the application-
aware information. According to this information, operators can
provide paying users a game acceleration tunnel with ultra-low
latency to guarantee the gaming experience of the users.
Client A
+---------+
|Game Data|-\
+---------+ | +---------+ +------------+ +---------+ +------+
\->|App-aware|-A-| Game |-A-|App-aware| | Data |
| process | |Acceleration| | process |->|Center|
Clinet B /->|Head-end |-B-| Path |-B-|End point| | |
+---------+ | +---------+ +------------+ +---------+ +------+
|Game Data|-/
+---------+
Figure 4: Figure 4.Game Acceleration with APN
As shown in the Figure 4, Client A and B are playing an interactive
action game. The head-end node in the APN identifies the data flow
of an important scene in an action game sent by Client A, and steers
it into a specific game acceleration path according to its SLA
requirements.
Midpoint in the APN forwards game data stream along the path and
provides network services enabled by APN.
The end point in the APN receives the game data stream and steers
into the gaming server in the Data center, while the game server
processes the game data and encapsulates the information for
identifying the game data stream of the important action scene at the
head end node, which forwards it to a dedicated game acceleration
path to the involved gamer Client B.
During the game, different transmission paths are used to distinguish
service effects. In this way, highly customized and guaranteed
services can be provided.
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3. Game Acceleration Business Model
With the 5G era evolving, the emerging gaming mode will inject new
vitality into the game market.
VR, AR and other emerging technologies are widely used in the game
field, which provide new human-computer interaction method, improve
the immersive and realistic sense, and reshape the expression form
and development direction of game products. Based on cloud
computing, cloud games emerge. At present, there are 120 million
domestic users of cloud games in China, and the number of users
continues to increase.
Cloud game deploys game applications in data centers, and realizes
the functions including the logical process of game command control,
video rendering and other tasks that have high requirements for
chips, and the tasks of game acceleration. In this way, the terminal
is a video player. Users can get a good game experience without the
support of high-end system and chips.
At present, in most cases, with centralized deployment, the network
transmission distance is too long, which is a huge challenge to the
network load, so the latency demand can't be met.
For cloud games, operators and OTT vendors can cooperate with each
other and adopt on-demand edge computing deployment methods. The
edge data center sends the game video stream information to the
terminal, and receives the user's control instruction information for
processing. Users can make corresponding operation instructions
according to the received video stream information, and get quick
response.
At the same time, APN technology is needed to ensure deterministic
latency of multi-party network of multiple players. The whole
process requires APN not only to identify the cloud game traffic and
provide customized network services for it, but also to ensure the
deterministic latency of multi-user in the same game and provide
better gaming experience.
For online games, as mentioned above, operators cooperate with the
game agents, by choosing or creating a corresponding network path
based on the application information carried in the APN packets,
ensuring the corresponding SLA through SR acceleration tunnel, to
provide highly customized and flexible services for applications and
improve the quality of experience of users.
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Operators and OTTs cooperate with each other to achieve mutual
benefit and win-win, so as to better provide customers with highly
customized services and great QoE.
4. Security Considerations
The security consideration can refer to the [I-D.li-apn-framework].
5. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA considerations in this document.
6. Normative References
[I-D.li-apn-framework]
Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Li, C., Liu, P., Cao, C.,
Mishra, G., Ebisawa, K., Previdi, S., and J. N. Guichard,
"Application-aware Networking (APN) Framework", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-framework-04, 25
October 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-li-
apn-framework-04.txt>.
[I-D.li-apn-problem-statement-usecases]
Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Xie, C., Liu, P., Qin, Z.,
Mishra, G., Ebisawa, K., Previdi, S., and J. N. Guichard,
"Problem Statement and Use Cases of Application-aware
Networking (APN)", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft,
draft-li-apn-problem-statement-usecases-04, 16 June 2021,
<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-li-apn-problem-
statement-usecases-04.txt>.
[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>.
Authors' Addresses
Shuai Zhang
China Unicom
Beijing
100048
China
Email: zhangs366@chinaunicom.cn
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Chang Cao
China Unicom
Beijing
100048
China
Email: caoc15@chinaunicom.cn
Shuping Peng
Huawei
Beijing
100053
China
Email: pengshuping@huawei.com
Zhenbin Li
Huawei
Beijing
100053
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
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