TEAS Working Group                                               J. Dong
Internet-Draft                                                    Huawei
Intended status: Informational                                 S. Bryant
Expires: January 14, 2021                                      Futurewei
                                                                   Z. Li
                                                            China Mobile
                                                             T. Miyasaka
                                                        KDDI Corporation
                                                                  Y. Lee
                                                                 Samsung
                                                           July 13, 2020


    A Framework for Enhanced Virtual Private Networks (VPN+) Service
                    draft-ietf-teas-enhanced-vpn-06

Abstract

   This document describes the framework for Enhanced Virtual Private
   Network (VPN+) service.  The purpose is to support the needs of new
   applications, particularly applications that are associated with 5G
   services, by utilizing an approach that is based on existing VPN and
   Traffic Engineering (TE) technologies and adds features that specific
   services require over and above traditional VPNs.

   Typically, VPN+ will be used to form the underpinning of network
   slicing, but could also be of use in its own right providing enhanced
   connectivity services between customer sites.

   It is envisaged that enhanced VPNs will be delivered using a
   combination of existing, modified, and new networking technologies.
   This document provides an overview of relevant technologies and
   identifies some areas for potential new work.

   Comparing to traditional VPNs, It is not envisaged that quite large
   numbers of VPN+ services will be deployed in a network.  In other
   word, it is not intended that all existing VPNs supported by a
   network will use VPN+ related techniques.

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/.



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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 January 14, 2021.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2020 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
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   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   3.  Overview of the Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.1.  Isolation between Enhanced VPN Services . . . . . . . . .   6
       3.1.1.  A Pragmatic Approach to Isolation . . . . . . . . . .   8
     3.2.  Performance Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     3.3.  Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
       3.3.1.  Abstraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.4.  Dynamic Management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     3.5.  Customized Control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     3.6.  Applicability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     3.7.  Inter-Domain and Inter-Layer Network  . . . . . . . . . .  12
   4.  Architecture of Enhanced VPN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
     4.1.  Layered Architecture  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
     4.2.  Multi-Point to Multi-Point (MP2MP) Connectivity . . . . .  17
     4.3.  Application Specific Network Types  . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     4.4.  Scaling Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  17
   5.  Candidate Technologies  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
     5.1.  Layer-Two Data Plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
       5.1.1.  Flexible Ethernet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
       5.1.2.  Dedicated Queues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
       5.1.3.  Time Sensitive Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19
     5.2.  Layer-Three Data Plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.1.  Deterministic Networking  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20



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       5.2.2.  MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE)  . . . . . . . . .  20
       5.2.3.  Segment Routing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     5.3.  Non-Packet Data Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     5.4.  Control Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  21
     5.5.  Management Plane  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  22
     5.6.  Applicability of Service Data Models to Enhanced VPN  . .  22
       5.6.1.  Network Slice Delivery via Coordinated Service Data
               Models  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
   6.  Scalability Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     6.1.  Maximum Stack Depth of SR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
     6.2.  RSVP Scalability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
     6.3.  SDN Scaling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
   7.  OAM Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
   8.  Telemetry Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   9.  Enhanced Resiliency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  26
   10. Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
   11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
   12. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
   13. Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  28
   14. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
   15. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     15.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
     15.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  35

1.  Introduction

   Virtual private networks (VPNs) have served the industry well as a
   means of providing different groups of users with logically isolated
   connectivity over a common network.  The common or base network that
   is used to provide the VPNs is often referred to as the underlay, and
   the VPN is often called an overlay.

   Customers of a network operator may request a connectivity services
   with advanced characteristics such as enhanced isolation from other
   services so that changes in some other service (such as changes in
   network load, or events such as congestion or outages) have no or
   acceptable effect on the throughput or latency of the services
   provided to the customer.  These services are "enhanced VPNs" (known
   as VPN+) in that they are similar to VPN services as they provide the
   customer with required connectivity, but have enhanced
   characteristics.

   Driven largely by needs surfacing from 5G, the concept of network
   slicing has gained traction [NGMN-NS-Concept] [TS23501] [TS28530]
   [BBF-SD406].  According to [TS28530], a 5G end-to-end network slice
   consists of three major types network segments: Radio Access Network
   (RAN), Transport Network (TN) and Mobile Core Network (CN).  The



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   transport network provides the required connectivity between
   different entities in RAN and CN segments of an end-to-end network
   slice, with specific performance commitment.

   A transport network slice is a virtual (logical) network with a
   particular network topology and a set of shared or dedicated network
   resources, which are used to provide the network slice consumer with
   the required connectivity, appropriate isolation and specific Service
   Level Objective (SLO).

   A transport network slice could span multiple technologies (such as
   IP or Optical) and multiple administrative domains.  Depending on the
   consumer's requirement, a transport network slice could be isolated
   from other, often concurrent transport network slices in terms of
   data plane, control plane, and management plane resources.

   In this document the term "network slice" refers to a transport
   network slice, and is considered as one typical use case of enhanced
   VPN.

   Network slicing builds on the concept of resource management, network
   virtualization, and abstraction to provide performance assurance,
   flexibility, programmability and modularity.  It may use techniques
   such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) [RFC7149], network
   abstraction [RFC7926] and Network Function Virtualization (NFV)
   [RFC8172] [RFC8568] to create multiple logical (virtual) networks,
   each tailored for a set of services or a particular tenant or a group
   of tenants that share the same or similar set of requirements, on top
   of a common network.  How the network slices are engineered can be
   deployment-specific.

   VPN+ could be used to form the underpinning of transport network
   slice, but could also be of use in general cases providing enhanced
   connectivity services between customer sites.

   The requirement of enhanced VPN services cannot be met by simple
   overlay networks, as they require tighter coordination and
   integration between the underlay and the overlay network.  VPN+ is
   built from a VPN overlay and a underlying Virtual Transport Network
   (VTN) which has a customized network topology and a set of dedicated
   or shared network resources.  It may optionally include a set of
   invoked service functions allocated from the underlay network.  Thus
   an enhanced VPN can achieve greater isolation with strict performance
   guarantees.  These new properties, which have general applicability,
   may also be of interest as part of a network slicing solution.  It is
   not envisaged that VPN+ services will replace traditional VPN
   services that can continue to be deployed using pre- existing
   mechanisms.



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   This document specifies a framework for using existing, modified, and
   potential new technologies as components to provide a VPN+ service.
   Specifically we are concerned with:

   o  The design of the enhanced data plane.

   o  The necessary protocols in both the underlay and the overlay of
      the enhanced VPN.

   o  The mechanisms to achieve integration between overlay and
      underlay.

   o  The necessary Operation, Administration, and Management (OAM)
      methods to instrument an enhanced VPN to make sure that the
      required Service Level Agreement (SLA) is met, and to take any
      corrective action to avoid SLA violation, such as switching to an
      alternate path.

   The required layered network structure to achieve this is shown in
   Section 4.1.

   Note that, in this document, the relationship of the four terms
   "VPN", "VPN+", "VTN", and "Transport Network Slice" are described as
   below:

   o  A VPN refers to the overlay virtual private network which provides
      the required service connectivity and traffic separation between
      different VPN customers.

   o  A Virtual Transport Network (VTN) is a virtual underlay network
      that connects customer edge points with the additional capability
      of providing the isolation and performance characteristics
      required by an enhanced VPN customer.

   o  An enhanced VPN (VPN+) can be considered as an evolution of VPN
      service, but with additional service-specific commitments.  An
      enhanced VPN (VPN+) is made by integrating an overlay VPN and a
      VTN with a set of network resources allocated in the underlay
      network.

   o  A transport network slice could be provided with an enhanced VPN
      (VPN+).

2.  Terminologies

   The following terms are used in this document.  Some of them are
   newly defined, some others reference existing definitions:




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   ACTN: Abstraction and Control of TE Networks [RFC8453]

   Detnet: Deterministic Networking [DETNET]

   FlexE: Flexible Ethernet [FLEXE]

   TSN: Time Sensitive Networking [TSN]

   VN: Virtual Network [I-D.ietf-teas-actn-vn-yang]

   VPN: Virtual Private Network.  IPVPN is defined in [RFC2764], L2VPN
   is defined in [RFC4664].

   VPN+: Enhanced VPN service.  An enhanced VPN service (VPN+) can be
   considered as an evolution of VPN service, but with additional
   service-specific commitments such as enhanced isolation and
   performance guarantee.

   VTP: Virtual Transport Path.  A VTP is a virtual underlay path which
   connects two customer edge points with the capability of providing
   the isolation and performance characteristics required by an enhanced
   VPN customer.  A VTP usually has a customized path with a set of
   reserved network resources along the path.

   VTN: Virtual Transport Network.  A VTN is a virtual underlay network
   that connects customer edge points with the capability of providing
   the isolation and performance characteristics required by an enhanced
   VPN customer.  A VTN usually has a customized topology and a set of
   dedicated or shared network resources.

3.  Overview of the Requirements

   In this section we provide an overview of the requirements of an
   enhanced VPN service.

3.1.  Isolation between Enhanced VPN Services

   One element of the SLA demanded for an enhanced VPN is a guarantee
   that the service offered to the customer will not be perturbed by any
   other traffic flows in the network.  One way for a service provider
   to guarantee the customer's SLA is by controlling the degree of
   isolation from other services in the network.  Isolation is a feature
   that can be requested by customers.  There are different grades of
   how isolation may be enabled by a network operator and that may
   result in different levels of service perceived by the customer.
   These range from simple separation of service traffic on delivery
   (ensuring that traffic is not delivered to the wrong customer), all




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   the way to complete separation within the underlay so that the
   traffic from different services use distinct network resources.

   The terms hard and soft isolation are used to illustrate different
   levels of isolation.  A VPN has soft isolation if the traffic of one
   VPN cannot be received by the customers of another VPN.  Both IP and
   MPLS VPNs are examples of VPNs with soft isolation: the network
   delivers the traffic only to the required VPN endpoints.  However,
   with soft isolation, traffic from VPNs and regular non-VPN traffic
   may congest the network resulting in packet loss and delay for other
   VPNs operating normally.  The ability for a VPN service or a group of
   VPN services to be sheltered from this effect is called hard
   isolation, and this property is required by some applications.  Hard
   isolation is needed so that applications with exacting requirements
   can function correctly, despite other demands (perhaps a burst of
   traffic in another VPN) competing for the underlying resources.  In
   practice isolation may be offered as a spectrum between soft and
   hard, and in some cases soft and hard isolation may be used in a
   hierarchical manner.  An operator may offer its customers a choice of
   different degrees of isolation ranging from soft isolation up to hard
   isolation.

   An example of the requirement for hard isolation is a network
   supporting both emergency services and public broadband multi-media
   services.  During a major incident the VPNs supporting these services
   would both be expected to experience high data volumes, and it is
   important that both make progress in the transmission of their data.
   In these circumstances the VPN services would require an appropriate
   degree of isolation to be able to continue to operate acceptably.  On
   the other hand, VPNs servicing ordinary bulk data may expect to
   contest for network resources and queue packets so that traffic is
   delivered within SLAs, but with some potential delays and
   interference.

   In order to provide the required level of isolation, resources may
   have to be reserved in the data plane of the underlay network and
   dedicated to traffic from a specific VPN or a specific group of VPNs
   to form different enhanced VPNs in the network.  This may introduce
   scalability concerns, thus some trade-off needs to be considered to
   provide the required isolation between some enhanced VPNs while still
   allowing reasonable sharing.

   An optical layer can offer a high degree of isolation, at the cost of
   allocating resources on a long term and end-to-end basis.  On the
   other hand, where adequate isolation can be achieved at the packet
   layer, this permits the resources to be shared amongst a group of
   services and only dedicated to a service on a temporary basis.




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   There are several new technologies that provide some assistance with
   these data plane issues.  Firstly there is the IEEE project on Time
   Sensitive Networking [TSN] which introduces the concept of packet
   scheduling of delay and loss sensitive packets.  Then there is
   [FLEXE] which provides the ability to multiplex multiple channels
   over one or more Ethernet links in a way that provides hard
   isolation.  Finally there are advanced queueing approaches which
   allow the construction of virtual sub-interfaces, each of which is
   provided with dedicated resource in a shared physical interface.
   These approaches are described in more detail later in this document.

   Section 3.1.1 explores pragmatic approaches to isolation in packet
   networks.

3.1.1.  A Pragmatic Approach to Isolation

   A key question is whether it is possible to achieve hard isolation in
   packet networks that were never designed to support hard isolation.
   On the contrary, they were designed to provide statistical
   multiplexing, a significant economic advantage when compared to a
   dedicated, or a Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) network.  However,
   there is no need to provide any harder isolation than is required by
   the applications.  An approximation to this requirement is sufficient
   in most cases.  Pseudowires[RFC3985] emulate services that would have
   had hard isolation in their native form.

   This spectrum of isolation is shown in Figure 1:

        O=================================================O
        |          \---------------v---------------/
    Statistical                Pragmatic             Absolute
    Multiplexing               Isolation            Isolation
   (Traditional VPNs)        (Enhanced VPN)     (Dedicated Network)


                    Figure 1: The Spectrum of Isolation

   Figure 1 shows the spectrum of isolation that may be delivered by a
   network.  At one end of the figure, we have traditional statistical
   multiplexing technologies that support VPNs.  This is a service type
   that has served the industry well and will continue to do so.  At the
   opposite end of the spectrum, we have the absolute isolation provided
   by dedicated transport networks.  The goal of enhanced VPNs is
   "pragmatic isolation".  This is isolation that is better than is
   obtainable from pure statistical multiplexing, more cost effective
   and flexible than a dedicated network, but is a practical solution
   that is good enough for the majority of applications.  Mechanisms for




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   both soft isolation and hard isolation would be needed to meet
   different levels of service requirement.

3.2.  Performance Guarantee

   There are several kinds of performance guarantee, including
   guaranteed maximum packet loss, guaranteed maximum delay, and
   guaranteed delay variation.  Note that these guarantees apply to
   conformance traffic, out-of-profile traffic will be handled according
   to other requirements.

   Guaranteed maximum packet loss is a common parameter, and is usually
   addressed by setting packet priorities, queue size, and discard
   policy.  However this becomes more difficult when the requirement is
   combined with latency requirements.  The limiting case is zero
   congestion loss, and that is the goal of the Deterministic Networking
   work that the IETF [DETNET] and IEEE [TSN] are pursuing.  In modern
   optical networks, loss due to transmission errors already approaches
   zero, but there are the possibilities of failure of the interface or
   the fiber itself.  This can only be addressed by some form of signal
   duplication and transmission over diverse paths.

   Guaranteed maximum latency is required in a number of applications
   particularly real-time control applications and some types of virtual
   reality applications.  The work of the IETF Deterministic Networking
   (DetNet) Working Group [DETNET] is relevant, however additional
   methods of enhancing the underlay to better support the delay
   guarantees may be needed, and these methods will need to be
   integrated with the overall service provisioning mechanisms.

   Guaranteed maximum delay variation is a service that may also be
   needed.  [RFC8578] calls up a number of cases where this is needed,
   for example in electrical utilities.  Time transfer is one example of
   a service that needs this, although it is in the nature of time that
   the service might be delivered by the underlay as a shared service
   and not provided through different enhanced VPNs.  Alternatively a
   dedicated enhanced VPN may be used to provide this as a shared
   service.

   This suggests that a spectrum of service guarantee be considered when
   deploying an enhanced VPN.  As a guide to understanding the design
   requirements we can consider four types:

   o  Best effort

   o  Assured bandwidth

   o  Guaranteed latency



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   o  Enhanced delivery

   Best effort service is the basic service that current VPNs can
   provide.

   An assured bandwidth service is one in which the bandwidth over some
   period of time is assured.  This can be achieved either simply based
   on best effort with over-capacity provisioning, or it can be based on
   TE-LSPs with bandwidth reservation.  The instantaneous bandwidth is
   however, not necessarily assured, depending on the technique used.
   Providing assured bandwidth to VPNs, for example by using per-VPN TE-
   LSPs, is not widely deployed at least partially due to scalability
   concerns.  VPN+ aims to provide a more scalable approach for such
   kind of service.

   A guaranteed latency service has a latency upper bound provided by
   the network.  Assuring the upper bound is sometimes more important
   than minimizing latency.  There are several new technologies that
   provide some assistance with performance guarantee.  Firstly there is
   the IEEE project on Time Sensitive Networking [TSN] which introduces
   the concept of packet scheduling of delay and loss sensitive packets.
   Then the DetNet work is also of greater relevance in assuring upper
   bound of end-to-end packet latency.  Flex Ethernet [FLEXE] is also
   useful to provide these guarantees.  The usage of such underlying
   technologies for VPN+ service needs to be considered.

   An enhanced delivery service is one in which the underlay network (at
   Layer 3) attempts to deliver the packet through multiple paths in the
   hope of eliminating packet loss due to equipment or media failures.
   Such mechanism may need to be used for VPN+ service.

3.3.  Integration

   The only way to achieve the enhanced characteristics provided by an
   enhanced VPN (such as guaranteed or predicted performance) is by
   integrating the overlay VPN with a particular set of network
   resources in the underlay network which are allocated to meet the
   service requirement.  This needs be done in a flexible and scalable
   way so that it can be widely deployed in operator networks to support
   a reasonable number of enhanced VPN customers.

   Taking mobile networks and in particular 5G into consideration, the
   integration of network and the service functions is a likely
   requirement.  The work in IETF SFC working group [SFC] provides a
   foundation for this integration.






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3.3.1.  Abstraction

   Integration of the overlay VPN and the underlay network resources
   does not need to be a tight mapping.  As described in [RFC7926],
   abstraction is the process of applying policy to a set of information
   about a TE network to produce selective information that represents
   the potential ability to connect across the network.  The process of
   abstraction presents the connectivity graph in a way that is
   independent of the underlying network technologies, capabilities, and
   topology so that the graph can be used to plan and deliver network
   services in a uniform way.

   Virtual networks can be built on top of an abstracted topology that
   represents the connectivity capabilities of the underlay network as
   described in the framework for Abstraction and Control of TE Networks
   (ACTN) [RFC8453] as discussed further in Section 5.5.

3.4.  Dynamic Management

   Enhanced VPNs need to be created, modified, and removed from the
   network according to service demand.  An enhanced VPN that requires
   hard isolation (Section 3.1) must not be disrupted by the
   instantiation or modification of another enhanced VPN.  Determining
   whether modification of an enhanced VPN can be disruptive to that
   VPN, and in particular whether the traffic in flight will be
   disrupted can be a difficult problem.

   The data plane aspects of this problem are discussed further in
   Sections Section 5.1,Section 5.2 and Section 5.3.

   The control plane aspects of this problem are discussed further in
   Section 5.4.

   The management plane aspects of this problem are discussed further in
   Section 5.5.

   Dynamic changes both to the VPN and to the underlay transport network
   need to be managed to avoid disruption to services that are sensitive
   to the change of network performance.

   In addition to non-disruptively managing the network as a result of
   gross change such as the inclusion of a new VPN endpoint or a change
   to a link, VPN traffic might need to be moved as a result of traffic
   volume changes.







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3.5.  Customized Control

   In some cases it is desirable that an enhanced VPN has a customized
   control plane, so that the tenant of the enhanced VPN can have some
   control of how the resources and functions allocated to this enhanced
   VPN are used.  For example, the tenant may be able to specify the
   service paths in his own enhanced VPN.  Depending on the requirement,
   an enhanced VPN may have its own dedicated controller, which may be
   provided with an interface to the control system provided by the
   network operator.  Note that such control is within the scope of the
   tenant's enhanced VPN, any change beyond that would require some
   intervention of the operator.

   A description of the control plane aspects of this problem are
   discussed further in Section 5.4.  A description of the management
   plane aspects of this feature can be found in Section 5.5.

3.6.  Applicability

   The technologies described in this document should be applicable to a
   number types of VPN overlay services such as:

   o  Layer 2 point-to-point services such as pseudowires [RFC3985]

   o  Layer 2 VPNs [RFC4664]

   o  Ethernet VPNs [RFC7209]

   o  Layer 3 VPNs [RFC4364], [RFC2764]

   Where such VPN types need enhanced isolation and delivery
   characteristics, the technologies described in Section 5 can be used
   to provide an underlay with the required enhanced performance.

3.7.  Inter-Domain and Inter-Layer Network

   In some scenarios, an enhanced VPN services may span multiple network
   domains.  A domain is considered to be any collection of network
   elements within a common realm of address space or path computation
   responsibility [RFC5151].  In some domains the operator may manage a
   multi-layered network, for example, a packet network over an optical
   network.  When enhanced VPNs are provisioned in such network
   scenarios, the technologies used in different network planes (data
   plane, control plane, and management plane) need to provide
   mechanisms to support multi-domain and multi-layer coordination and
   integration, so as to provide the required service characteristics
   for different enhanced VPNs, and improve network efficiency and
   operational simplicity.



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4.  Architecture of Enhanced VPN

   A number of enhanced VPN services will typically be provided by a
   common network infrastructure.  Each enhanced VPN consists of both
   the overlay and a corresponding VTN with a specific set of network
   resources and functions allocated in the underlay to satisfy the
   needs of the VPN tenant.  The integration between overlay and various
   underlay resources ensures the required isolation between different
   enhanced VPNs, and achieves the guaranteed performance for different
   services.

   An enhanced VPN needs to be designed with consideration given to:

   o  A enhanced data plane

   o  A control plane to create enhanced VPNs, making use of the data
      plane isolation and performance guarantee techniques.

   o  A management plane for enhanced VPN service life-cycle management.

   These required characteristics are expanded below:

   o  Enhanced data plane

      *  Provides the required resource isolation capability, e.g.
         bandwidth guarantee.

      *  Provides the required packet latency and jitter
         characteristics.

      *  Provides the required packet loss characteristics.

      *  Provides the mechanism to associate a packet with the set of
         resources allocated to the enhanced VPN which the packet
         belongs.

   o  Control plane

      *  Collect information about the underlying network topology and
         resources available and export this to nodes in the network
         and/or the centralized controller as required.

      *  Create the required virtual transport networks (VTNs) with the
         resource and properties needed by the enhanced VPN services
         that are assigned to them.

      *  Determine the risk of SLA violation and take appropriate
         avoiding action.



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      *  Determine the right balance of per-packet and per-node state
         according to the needs of enhanced VPN service to scale to the
         required size.

   o  Management plane

      *  Provides an interface between the enhanced VPN provider (e.g.
         the Transport Network (TN) Manager) and the enhanced VPN
         clients (e.g. the 3GPP Management System) such that some of the
         operation requests can be met without interfering with the
         enhanced VPN of other clients.

      *  Provides an interface between the enhanced VPN provider and the
         enhanced VPN clients to expose transport network capability
         information toward the enhanced VPN client.

      *  Provides the service life-cycle management and operation of
         enhanced VPN (e.g. creation, modification, assurance/monitoring
         and decommissioning).

   o  Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM)

      *  Provides the OAM tools to verify the connectivity and
         performance of the enhanced VPN.

      *  Provide the OAM tools to verify whether the underlay network
         resources are correctly allocated and operated properly.

   o  Telemetry

      *  Provides the mechanism to collect the data plane, control plane
         and management plane data of the network, more specifically:

      *

         +  Provides the mechanism to collect network data from the
            underlay network for overall performance evaluation and the
            enhanced VPN service planning.

         +  Provides the mechanism to collect network data of each
            enhanced VPN for the monitoring and analytics of the
            characteristics and SLA fulfilment of enhanced VPN services.

4.1.  Layered Architecture

   The layered architecture of an enhanced VPN is shown in Figure 2.





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   Underpinning everything is the physical network infrastructure layer
   which provide the underlying resources used to provision the
   separated virtual transport networks (VTNs).  This includes the
   partitioning of link and/or node resources.  Each subset of link or
   node resource can be considered as a virtual link or virtual node
   used to build the VTNs.

                                   A
                                  | |
                         +-------------------+       Centralized
                         | Network Controller|   Control & Management
                         +-------------------+
                                   ||
                                   \/
                     o---------------------------o
                                   /-------------o
                     o____________/______________o    VPN Services
                                ......             (P2P,P2MP,MP2MP...)
                     o-----------\ /-------------o
                     o____________X______________o

                        __________________________
                       /       o----o----o       /
                      /       /         /       /       VTN-1
                     / o-----o-----o----o----o /
                    /_________________________/
                        __________________________
                       /       o----o            /
                      /       /    /  \         /       VTN-2
                     / o-----o----o----o-----o /
                    /_________________________/
                              ......                     ...
                       ___________________________
                      /             o----o       /
                     /             /    /       /       VTN-3
                    /  o-----o----o----o-----o /
                   /__________________________/


                      ++++   ++++   ++++
                      +--+===+--+===+--+
                      +--+===+--+===+--+
                      ++++   +++\\  ++++            Physical
                       ||     || \\  ||
                       ||     ||  \\ ||              Network
               ++++   ++++   ++++  \\+++   ++++
               +--+===+--+===+--+===+--+===+--+  Infrastructure
               +--+===+--+===+--+===+--+===+--+



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               ++++   ++++   ++++   ++++   ++++

            O    Virtual Node

            --   Virtual Link

           ++++
           +--+ Physical Node with resource partition
           +--+
           ++++

            ==  Physical Link with resource partition


                Figure 2: The Layered Architecture of VPN+

   Various components and techniques discussed in Section 5 can be used
   to enable resource partition, such as FlexE, Time Sensitive
   Networking, Deterministic Networking, Dedicated queues, etc.  These
   partitions may be physical, or virtual so long as the SLA required by
   the higher layers is met.

   Based on the network resources provided by the physical network
   infrastructure, multiple VTNs can be provisioned, each with
   customized topology and other attributes to meet the requirement of
   different enhanced VPNs or different groups of enhanced VPNs.  To get
   the required characteristic, each VTN needs to be mapped to a set of
   network nodes and links in the network infrastructure.  And on each
   node or link, the VTN is associated with a set of resources which are
   allocated for the processing of traffic in the VTN.  VTN provides the
   integration between the virtual network topology and the required
   underlying network resources.

   The centralized controller is used to create the VTN, and to instruct
   the network nodes to allocate the required resources to each VTN and
   to provision the enhanced VPN services on the VTNs.  A distributed
   control plane may also be used for the distribution of the VTN
   topology and attribute information between nodes within the VTNs.

   The process used to create VTNs and to allocate network resources for
   use by VTNs needs to take a holistic view of the needs of all of its
   tenants (i.e., of all customers and their associated VTNs), and to
   partition the resources accordingly.  However, within a VTN these
   resources can, if required, be managed via a dynamic control plane.
   This provides the required scalability and isolation.






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4.2.  Multi-Point to Multi-Point (MP2MP) Connectivity

   At the VPN service level, the required connectivity is usually mesh
   or partial-mesh.  To support such kinds of VPN service, the
   corresponding VTN in underlay is also an abstract MP2MP medium.
   Other service requirements may be expressed at different granularity,
   some of which can be applicable to the whole service, while some
   others may be only applicable to some pairs of end points.  For
   example, when particular level of performance guarantee is required,
   the point-to-point path through the underlay of the enhanced VPN may
   need to be specifically engineered to meet the required performance
   guarantee.

4.3.  Application Specific Network Types

   Although a lot of the traffic that will be carried over the enhanced
   VPN will likely be IPv4 or IPv6, the design has to be capable of
   carrying other traffic types, in particular Ethernet traffic.  This
   is easily accomplished through the various pseudowire (PW) techniques
   [RFC3985].  Where the underlay is MPLS, Ethernet can be carried over
   the enhanced VPN encapsulated according to the method specified in
   [RFC4448].  Where the underlay is IP, Layer Two Tunneling Protocol -
   Version 3 (L2TPv3) [RFC3931] can be used with Ethernet traffic
   carried according to [RFC4719].  Encapsulations have been defined for
   most of the common Layer 2 types for both PW over MPLS and for
   L2TPv3.

4.4.  Scaling Considerations

   VPNs are instantiated as overlays on top of an operator's network and
   offered as services to the operator's customers.  An important
   feature of overlays is that they are able to deliver services without
   placing per-service state in the core of the underlay network.

   Enhanced VPNs may need to install some additional state within the
   network to achieve the additional features that they require.
   Solutions must consider minimizing and controlling the scale of such
   state, and deployment architectures should constrain the number of
   enhanced VPNs that would exist where such services would place
   additional state in the network.  It is expected that the number of
   enhanced VPN would be small in the beginning, and even in future the
   number of enhanced VPN will be much fewer than traditional VPNs,
   because pre-existing VPN techniques are be good enough to meet the
   needs of most existing VPN-type services.

   In general, it is not required that the state in the network be
   maintained in a 1:1 relationship with the VPN+ services.  It will
   usually be possible to aggregate a set of VPN+ services so that they



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   share the same VTN and the same set of network resources (much in the
   way that current VPNs are aggregated over transport tunnels) so that
   collections of enhanced VPNs that require the same behaviour from the
   network in terms of resource reservation, latency bounds, resiliency,
   etc. are able to be grouped together.  This is an important feature
   to assist with the scaling characteristics of VPN+ deployments.

   See Section 6 for a greater discussion of scalability considerations.

5.  Candidate Technologies

   A VPN is a network created by applying a demultiplexing technique to
   the underlying network (the underlay) in order to distinguish the
   traffic of one VPN from that of another.  A VPN path that travels by
   other than the shortest path through the underlay normally requires
   state in the underlay to specify that path.  State is normally
   applied to the underlay through the use of the RSVP signaling
   protocol, or directly through the use of an SDN controller, although
   other techniques may emerge as this problem is studied.  This state
   gets harder to manage as the number of VPN paths increases.
   Furthermore, as we increase the coupling between the underlay and the
   overlay to support the enhanced VPN service, this state will increase
   further.

   In an enhanced VPN different subsets of the underlay resources can be
   dedicated to different enhanced VPNs or different groups of enhanced
   VPNs.  An enhanced VPN solution thus needs tighter coupling with
   underlay than is the case with existing VPNs.  We cannot, for
   example, share the network resource between enhanced VPNs which
   require hard isolation.

5.1.  Layer-Two Data Plane

   A number of candidate Layer 2 packet or frame-based data plane
   solutions which can be used provide the required isolation and
   guarantees are described in following sections.

5.1.1.  Flexible Ethernet

   FlexE [FLEXE] provides the ability to multiplex channels over an
   Ethernet link to create point-to-point fixed-bandwidth connections in
   a way that provides hard isolation.  FlexE also supports bonding
   links to create larger links out of multiple low capacity links.

   However, FlexE is only a link level technology.  When packets are
   received by the downstream node, they need to be processed in a way
   that preserves that isolation in the downstream node.  This in turn




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   requires a queuing and forwarding implementation that preserves the
   end-to-end isolation.

   If different FlexE channels are used for different services, then no
   sharing is possible between the FlexE channels.  This means that it
   may be difficult to dynamically redistribute unused bandwidth to
   lower priority services in another FlexE channel.  If one FlexE
   channel is used by one tenant, the tenant can use some methods to
   manage the relative priority of his own traffic in the FlexE channel.

5.1.2.  Dedicated Queues

   DiffServ based queuing systems are described in [RFC2475] and
   [RFC4594].  This is considered insufficient to provide isolation for
   enhanced VPNs because DiffServ does not always provide enough markers
   to differentiate between traffic of many enhanced VPNs, or offer the
   range of service classes that each VPN needs to provide to its
   tenants.  This problem is particularly acute with an MPLS underlay,
   because MPLS only provides eight Traffic Classes.

   In addition, DiffServ, as currently implemented, mainly provides per-
   hop priority-based scheduling, and it is difficult to use it to
   achieve quantitive resource reservation.

   In order to address these problems and to reduce the potential
   interference between enhanced VPNs, it would be necessary to steer
   traffic to dedicated input and output queues per enhanced VPN: some
   routers have a large number of queues and sophisticated queuing
   systems, which could support this, while some routers may struggle to
   provide the granularity and level of isolation required by the
   applications of enhanced VPN.

5.1.3.  Time Sensitive Networking

   Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) [TSN] is an IEEE project that is
   designing a method of carrying time sensitive information over
   Ethernet.  It introduces the concept of packet scheduling where a
   packet stream may be given a time slot guaranteeing that it
   experiences no queuing delay or increase in latency.  The mechanisms
   defined in TSN can be used to meet the requirements of time sensitive
   services of an enhanced VPN.

   Ethernet can be emulated over a Layer 3 network using an IP or MPLS
   pseudowire.  However, a TSN Ethernet payload would be opaque to the
   underlay and thus not treated specifically as time sensitive data.
   The preferred method of carrying TSN over a Layer 3 network is
   through the use of deterministic networking as explained in
   Section 5.2.1.



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5.2.  Layer-Three Data Plane

   We now consider the problem of slice differentiation and resource
   representation in the network layer.

5.2.1.  Deterministic Networking

   Deterministic Networking (DetNet) [RFC8655] is a technique being
   developed in the IETF to enhance the ability of Layer 3 networks to
   deliver packets more reliably and with greater control over the
   delay.  The design cannot use re-transmission techniques such as TCP
   since that can exceed the delay tolerated by the applications.  Even
   the delay improvements that are achieved with Stream Control
   Transmission Protocol Partial Reliability Extension (SCTP-PR)
   [RFC3758] may not meet the bounds set by application demands.  DetNet
   pre-emptively sends copies of the packet over various paths to
   minimize the chance of all copies of a packet being lost.  It also
   seeks to set an upper bound on latency, but the goal is not to
   minimize latency.

5.2.2.  MPLS Traffic Engineering (MPLS-TE)

   MPLS-TE [RFC2702][RFC3209] introduces the concept of reserving end-
   to-end bandwidth for a TE-LSP, which can be used to provide point-
   to-point Virtual Transport Path (VTP) across the underlay network to
   support VPNs.  VPN traffic can be carried over dedicated TE-LSPs to
   provide reserved bandwidth for each specific connection in a VPN, and
   VPNs with similar behaviour requirements may be multiplexed onto the
   same TE-LSPs.  Some network operators have concerns about the
   scalability and management overhead of MPLS-TE system, and this has
   lead them to consider other solutions for their networks.

5.2.3.  Segment Routing

   Segment Routing (SR) [RFC8402] is a method that prepends instructions
   to packets at the head-end of a path.  These instructions are used to
   specify the nodes and links to be traversed and allow the packets to
   be routed on paths other than the shortest path.  By encoding the
   state in the packet, per-path state is transitioned out of the
   network.

   An SR traffic engineered path operates with a granularity of a link
   with hints about priority provided through the use of the traffic
   class (TC) or Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field in the
   header.  However to achieve the latency and isolation characteristics
   that are sought by the enhanced VPN users, steering packets through
   specific queues and resources will likely be required.  With SR, it




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   is possible to introduce such fine-grained packet steering by
   specifying the queues and resources through an SR instruction list.

   Note that the concept of queue is a useful abstraction for different
   types of underlay mechanism that may be used to provide enhanced
   isolation and latency support.  How the queue satisfies the
   requirement is implementation specific and is transparent to the
   layer-3 data plane and control plane mechanisms used.

   With Segment Routing, the SR instruction list could be used to build
   a P2P path, a group of SR SIDs could also be used to represent a
   MP2MP network.  Thus the SR based mechanism could be used to provide
   both Virtual Transport Path (VTP) and Virtual Transport Network (VTN)
   for enhanced VPN services.

5.3.  Non-Packet Data Plane

   Non-packet underlay data plane technologies often have TE properties
   and behaviours, and meet many of the key requirements in particular
   for bandwidth guarantees, traffic isolation (with physical isolation
   often being an integral part of the technology), highly predictable
   latency and jitter characteristics, measurable loss characteristics,
   and ease of identification of flows.  The cost is the resources are
   allocated on a long term and end-to-end basis.  Such an arrangement
   means that the full cost of the resources has be borne by the service
   that is allocated with the resources.

5.4.  Control Plane

   Enhanced VPN would likely be based on a hybrid control mechanism,
   which takes advantage of the logically centralized controller for on-
   demand provisioning and global optimization, whilst still relying on
   a distributed control plane to provide scalability, high reliability,
   fast reaction, automatic failure recovery, etc.  Extension to and
   optimization of the distributed control plane is needed to support
   the enhanced properties of VPN+.

   RSVP-TE [RFC3209] provides the signaling mechanism for establishing a
   TE-LSP in an MPLS network with end-to-end resource reservation.  This
   can be seen as an approach of providing Virtual Transport Path (VTP),
   which could be used to bind the VPN to specific network resources
   allocated within the underlay, but there remain scalability concerns
   mentioned in Section 5.2.2.

   The control plane of SR [RFC8665] [RFC8667]
   [I-D.ietf-idr-bgp-ls-segment-routing-ext] does not have the
   capability of signaling resource reservations along the path.  On the
   other hand, the SR approach provides a potential way of binding the



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   underlay network resource and the enhanced VPN service without
   requiring per-path state to be maintained in the network.  A
   centralized controller can perform resource planning and reservation
   for enhanced VPNs, while it needs to ensure that resources are
   correctly allocated in network nodes for the enhanced VPN service.
   The controller could also compute the SR paths based on the planned
   or collected network resource and other attributes, and provision the
   SR paths based on the mechanism in
   [I-D.ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy] to the ingress nodes of the
   enhanced VPN services.  The distributed control plane may be used to
   advertise the network attributes associated with enhanced VPNs, and
   compute the SR paths with specific constraints of enhanced VPN
   services.

5.5.  Management Plane

   The management plane provides the interface between the enhanced VPN
   provider and the clients for the service life-cycle management (e.g.
   creation, modification, assurance/monitoring and decommissioning).
   It relies on a set of service data models for the description of the
   information and operations needed on the interface.

   As an example, in the context of 5G end-to-end network slicing
   [TS28530], the management of enhanced VPNs is considered as the
   management of the transport network part of the end-to-end network
   slice. 3GPP management system may provide the connectivity and
   performance related parameters as requirements to the management
   plane of the transport network.  It may also require the transport
   network to expose the capability and status of the transport network
   slice.  Thus, an interface between the enhanced VPN management plane
   and the 3GPP network slice management system, and relevant service
   data models are needed for the coordination of end-to-end network
   slice management.

   The management plane interface and data models for enhanced VPN can
   be based on the service models described in Section 5.6

5.6.  Applicability of Service Data Models to Enhanced VPN

   ACTN supports operators in viewing and controlling different domains
   and presenting virtualized networks to their customers.  The ACTN
   framework [RFC8453] highlights how:

   o  Abstraction of the underlying network resources is provided to
      higher-layer applications and customers.

   o  Underlying resources are virtualized and allocated for the
      customer, application, or service.



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   o  A virtualized environment is created allowing operators to view
      and control multi-domain networks as a single virtualized network.

   o  Networks can be presented to customers as a virtual network via
      open and programmable interfaces.

   The type of network virtualization enabled by ACTN managed
   infrastructure provides customers and applications (tenants) with the
   capability to utilize and independently control allocated virtual
   network resources as if they were physically their own resources.
   Service Data models are used to represent, monitor, and manage the
   virtual networks and services enabled by ACTN.  The Customer VPN
   model (e.g.  L3SM [RFC8299], L2SM [RFC8466]) or an ACTN Virtual
   Network (VN) [I-D.ietf-teas-actn-vn-yang] model is a customer view of
   the ACTN managed infrastructure, and is presented by the ACTN
   provider as a set of abstracted services or resources.  The L3VPN
   network model [I-D.ietf-opsawg-l3sm-l3nm] and [I-D.ietf-opsawg-l2nm]
   provide a network view of the ACTN managed infrastructure presented
   by the ACTN provider as a set of transport resources.

5.6.1.  Network Slice Delivery via Coordinated Service Data Models

   In order to support network slice service in transport network, a
   Transport Slice (TS) Northbound Interface (NBI) data model may be
   needed for a consumer to express the requirements for transport
   slices, which can be technology-agnostic.  Then these requirements
   may be realized using technology-specific Southbound Interface (SBI).

   As per [RFC8453] and [I-D.ietf-teas-actn-yang], the CNC-MDSC
   Interface (CMI) of ACTN is used to convey the virtual network service
   requirements, which is a generic interface to deliver various TE
   based VN services.  In the context of network slice northbound
   interface, there may be some gaps in L3SM/L2SM or VN model, or the
   combination of them.  The TS NBI is required to communicate the
   connectivity of the transport slice, along with the service level
   objective (SLO) parameters and traffic selection rules, and provides
   a way to monitor the state of the transport slice.  This can be
   described in a more abstracted manner, so as to reduce the
   association with specific realization technologies of transport
   network slice, such as the VPN and TE technologies.  The transport
   slice model as defined in [I-D.wd-teas-transport-slice-yang] provides
   an abstracted and generic approach to meet the transport slice NBI
   requirement.

   The MDSC-PNC Interface (MPI) models in the ACTN architecture can be
   used for the realization of transport slices, for example, in a TE
   enabled transport network, and may also be used for cross-layer or
   cross-domain implementation of transport slice.



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6.  Scalability Considerations

   Enhanced VPN provides performance guaranteed services in packet
   networks, but with the potential cost of introducing additional
   states into the network.  There are at least three ways that this
   additional state might be presented in the network:

   o  Introduce the complete state into the packet, as is done in SR.
      This allows the controller to specify the detailed series of
      forwarding and processing instructions for the packet as it
      transits the network.  The cost of this is an increase in the
      packet header size.  The cost is also that systems will have
      capabilities enabled in case they are called upon by a service.
      This is a type of latent state, and increases as we more precisely
      specify the path and resources that need to be exclusively
      available to a VPN.

   o  Introduce the state to the network.  This is normally done by
      creating a path using RSVP-TE, which can be extended to introduce
      any element that needs to be specified along the path, for example
      explicitly specifying queuing policy.  It is possible to use other
      methods to introduce path state, such as via a Software Defined
      Network (SDN) controller, or possibly by modifying a routing
      protocol.  With this approach there is state per path, per path
      characteristic that needs to be maintained over its life-cycle.
      This is more state than is needed using SR, but the packets are
      shorter.

   o  Provide a hybrid approach.  One example is based on using binding
      SIDs [RFC8402] to create path fragments, and bind them together
      with SR.  Dynamic creation of a VPN service path using SR requires
      less state maintenance in the network core at the expense of
      larger packet headers.  The packet size can be lower if a form of
      loose source routing is used (using a few nodal SIDs), and it will
      be lower if no specific functions or resources on the routers are
      specified.

   Reducing the state in the network is important to enhanced VPN, as it
   requires the overlay to be more closely integrated with the underlay
   than with traditional VPNs.  This tighter coupling would normally
   mean that more state needed to be created and maintained in the
   network, as the state about fine granularity processing would need to
   be loaded and maintained in the routers.  However, a segment routed
   approach allows much of this state to be spread amongst the network
   ingress nodes, and transiently carried in the packets as SIDs.






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6.1.  Maximum Stack Depth of SR

   One of the challenges with SR is the stack depth that nodes are able
   to impose on packets [RFC8491].  This leads to a difficult balance
   between adding state to the network and minimizing stack depth, or
   minimizing state and increasing the stack depth.

6.2.  RSVP Scalability

   The traditional method of creating a resource allocated path through
   an MPLS network is to use the RSVP protocol.  However there have been
   concerns that this requires significant continuous state maintenance
   in the network.  Work to improve the scalability of RSVP-TE LSPs in
   the control plane can be found in [RFC8370].

   There is also concern at the scalability of the forwarder footprint
   of RSVP as the number of paths through an LSR grows.  [RFC8577]
   proposes to address this by employing SR within a tunnel established
   by RSVP-TE.

6.3.  SDN Scaling

   The centralized approach of SDN requires state to be stored in the
   network, but does not have the overhead of also requiring control
   plane state to be maintained.  Each individual network node may need
   to maintain a communication channel with the SDN controller, but that
   compares favourably with the need for a control plane to maintain
   communication with all neighbors.

   However, SDN may transfer some of the scalability concerns from the
   network to the centralized controller.  In particular, there may be a
   heavy processing burden at the controller, and a heavy load in the
   network surrounding the controller.

7.  OAM Considerations

   The enhanced VPN OAM design needs to consider the following
   requirements:

   o  Instrumentation of the underlay so that the network operator can
      be sure that the resources committed to a tenant are operating
      correctly and delivering the required performance.

   o  Instrumentation of the overlay by the tenant.  This is likely to
      be transparent to the network operator and to use existing
      methods.  Particular consideration needs to be given to the need
      to verify the isolation and the various committed performance
      characteristics.



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   o  Instrumentation of the overlay by the network provider to
      proactively demonstrate that the committed performance is being
      delivered.  This needs to be done in a non-intrusive manner,
      particularly when the tenant is deploying a performance sensitive
      application.

   o  Verification of the conformity of the path to the service
      requirement.  This may need to be done as part of a commissioning
      test.

   A study of OAM in SR networks has been documented in [RFC8403].

8.  Telemetry Considerations

   Network visibility is essential for network operation.  Network
   telemetry has been considered as an ideal means to gain sufficient
   network visibility with better flexibility, scalability, accuracy,
   coverage, and performance than conventional OAM technologies.

   As defined in [I-D.ietf-opsawg-ntf], Network Telemetry is to acquire
   network data remotely for network monitoring and operation.  It is a
   general term for a large set of network visibility techniques and
   protocols.  Network telemetry addresses the current network operation
   issues and enables smooth evolution toward intent-driven autonomous
   networks.  Telemetry can be applied on the forwarding plane, the
   control plane, and the management plane in a network.

   How the telemetry mechanisms could be used or extended for the
   enhanced VPN service is out of the scope of this document.

9.  Enhanced Resiliency

   Each enhanced VPN has a life-cycle, and may need modification during
   deployment as the needs of its tenant change.  Additionally, as the
   network as a whole evolves, there may need to be garbage collection
   performed to consolidate resources into usable quanta.

   Systems in which the path is imposed such as SR, or some form of
   explicit routing tend to do well in these applications, because it is
   possible to perform an atomic transition from one path to another.
   This is a single action by the head-end changes the path without the
   need for coordinated action by the routers along the path.  However,
   implementations and the monitoring protocols need to make sure that
   the new path is up and meets the required SLA before traffic is
   transitioned to it.  It is possible for deadlocks to arise as a
   result of the network becoming fragmented over time, such that it is
   impossible to create a new path or to modify an existing path without
   impacting the SLA of other paths.  Resolution of this situation is as



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   much a commercial issue as it is a technical issue and is outside the
   scope of this document.

   There are, however, two manifestations of the latency problem that
   are for further study in any of these approaches:

   o  The problem of packets overtaking one and other if a path latency
      reduces during a transition.

   o  The problem of transient variation in latency in either direction
      as a path migrates.

   There is also the matter of what happens during failure in the
   underlay infrastructure.  Fast reroute is one approach, but that
   still produces a transient loss with a normal goal of rectifying this
   within 50ms [RFC5654].  An alternative is some form of N+1 delivery
   such as has been used for many years to support protection from
   service disruption.  This may be taken to a different level using the
   techniques proposed by the IETF deterministic network work with
   multiple in-network replication and the culling of later packets
   [RFC8655].

   In addition to the approach used to protect high priority packets,
   consideration has to be given to the impact of best effort traffic on
   the high priority packets during a transient.  Specifically if a
   conventional re-convergence process is used there will inevitably be
   micro-loops and whilst some form of explicit routing will protect the
   high priority traffic, lower priority traffic on best effort shortest
   paths will micro-loop without the use of a loop prevention
   technology.  To provide the highest quality of service to high
   priority traffic, either this traffic must be shielded from the
   micro-loops, or micro-loops must be prevented.

10.  Operational Considerations

   It is likely that enhanced VPN service will be introduced in networks
   which already have traditional VPN services deployed.  Depends on
   service requirement, the tenants or the operator may choose to use
   traditional VPN or enhanced VPN to fulfil the service requirement.
   The information and parameters to assist such decision needs to be
   reflected on the management interface between the tenants and the
   operator.

11.  Security Considerations

   All types of virtual network require special consideration to be
   given to the isolation of traffic belonging to different tenants.
   That is, traffic belonging to one VPN must not be delivered to end



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   points outside that VPN.  In this regard enhanced VPNs neither
   introduce, no experience a greater security risks than other VPNs.

   However, in an enhanced Virtual Private Network service the
   additional service requirements need to be considered.  For example,
   if a service requires a specific upper bound to latency then it can
   be damaged by simply delaying the packets through the activities of
   another tenant, i.e., by introducing bursts of traffic for other
   services.

   The measures to address these dynamic security risks must be
   specified as part to the specific solution are form part of the
   isolation requirements of a service.

   While an enhanced VPN service may be sold as offering encryption and
   other security features as part of the service, customers would be
   well advised to take responsibility for their own security
   requirements themselves possibly by encrypting traffic before handing
   it off to the service provider.

   The privacy of enhanced VPN service customers must be preserved.  It
   should not be possible for one customer to discover the existence of
   another customer, nor should the sites that are members of an
   enhanced VPN be externally visible.

12.  IANA Considerations

   There are no requested IANA actions.

13.  Contributors





















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      Daniel King
      Email: daniel@olddog.co.uk

      Adrian Farrel
      Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk

      Jeff Tansura
      Email: jefftant.ietf@gmail.com

      Zhenbin Li
      Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com

      Qin Wu
      Email: bill.wu@huawei.com

      Bo Wu
      Email: lana.wubo@huawei.com

      Daniele Ceccarelli
      Email: daniele.ceccarelli@ericsson.com

      Mohamed Boucadair
      Email: mohamed.boucadair@orange.com

      Sergio Belotti
      Email: sergio.belotti@nokia.com

      Haomian Zheng
      Email: zhenghaomian@huawei.com

14.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Charlie Perkins, James N Guichard,
   John E Drake and Shunsuke Homma for their review and valuable
   comments.

   This work was supported in part by the European Commission funded
   H2020-ICT-2016-2 METRO-HAUL project (G.A. 761727).

15.  References

15.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2764]  Gleeson, B., Lin, A., Heinanen, J., Armitage, G., and A.
              Malis, "A Framework for IP Based Virtual Private
              Networks", RFC 2764, DOI 10.17487/RFC2764, February 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2764>.




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   [RFC3985]  Bryant, S., Ed. and P. Pate, Ed., "Pseudo Wire Emulation
              Edge-to-Edge (PWE3) Architecture", RFC 3985,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3985, March 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3985>.

   [RFC4664]  Andersson, L., Ed. and E. Rosen, Ed., "Framework for Layer
              2 Virtual Private Networks (L2VPNs)", RFC 4664,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4664, September 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4664>.

15.2.  Informative References

   [BBF-SD406]
              "BBF SD-406: End-to-End Network Slicing", 2016,
              <https://wiki.broadband-forum.org/display/BBF/SD-406+End-
              to-End+Network+Slicing>.

   [DETNET]   "Deterministic Networking", March ,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/detnet/about/>.

   [FLEXE]    "Flex Ethernet Implementation Agreement", March 2016,
              <http://www.oiforum.com/wp-content/uploads/OIF-FLEXE-
              01.0.pdf>.

   [I-D.ietf-idr-bgp-ls-segment-routing-ext]
              Previdi, S., Talaulikar, K., Filsfils, C., Gredler, H.,
              and M. Chen, "BGP Link-State extensions for Segment
              Routing", draft-ietf-idr-bgp-ls-segment-routing-ext-16
              (work in progress), June 2019.

   [I-D.ietf-opsawg-l2nm]
              Barguil, S., Dios, O., Boucadair, M., Munoz, L., Jalil,
              L., and J. Ma, "A Layer 2 VPN Network YANG Model", draft-
              ietf-opsawg-l2nm-00 (work in progress), July 2020.

   [I-D.ietf-opsawg-l3sm-l3nm]
              Barguil, S., Dios, O., Boucadair, M., Munoz, L., and A.
              Aguado, "A Layer 3 VPN Network YANG Model", draft-ietf-
              opsawg-l3sm-l3nm-03 (work in progress), April 2020.

   [I-D.ietf-opsawg-ntf]
              Song, H., Qin, F., Martinez-Julia, P., Ciavaglia, L., and
              A. Wang, "Network Telemetry Framework", draft-ietf-opsawg-
              ntf-03 (work in progress), April 2020.







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   [I-D.ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy]
              Filsfils, C., Talaulikar, K., Voyer, D., Bogdanov, A., and
              P. Mattes, "Segment Routing Policy Architecture", draft-
              ietf-spring-segment-routing-policy-08 (work in progress),
              July 2020.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-actn-vn-yang]
              Lee, Y., Dhody, D., Ceccarelli, D., Bryskin, I., and B.
              Yoon, "A Yang Data Model for VN Operation", draft-ietf-
              teas-actn-vn-yang-08 (work in progress), March 2020.

   [I-D.ietf-teas-actn-yang]
              Lee, Y., Zheng, H., Ceccarelli, D., Yoon, B., Dios, O.,
              Shin, J., and S. Belotti, "Applicability of YANG models
              for Abstraction and Control of Traffic Engineered
              Networks", draft-ietf-teas-actn-yang-05 (work in
              progress), February 2020.

   [I-D.wd-teas-transport-slice-yang]
              Bo, W., Dhody, D., Han, L., and R. Rokui, "A Yang Data
              Model for Transport Slice NBI", draft-wd-teas-transport-
              slice-yang-02 (work in progress), July 2020.

   [NGMN-NS-Concept]
              "NGMN NS Concept", 2016, <https://www.ngmn.org/fileadmin/u
              ser_upload/161010_NGMN_Network_Slicing_framework_v1.0.8.pd
              f>.

   [RFC2475]  Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.,
              and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
              Services", RFC 2475, DOI 10.17487/RFC2475, December 1998,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2475>.

   [RFC2702]  Awduche, D., Malcolm, J., Agogbua, J., O'Dell, M., and J.
              McManus, "Requirements for Traffic Engineering Over MPLS",
              RFC 2702, DOI 10.17487/RFC2702, September 1999,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2702>.

   [RFC3209]  Awduche, D., Berger, L., Gan, D., Li, T., Srinivasan, V.,
              and G. Swallow, "RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP
              Tunnels", RFC 3209, DOI 10.17487/RFC3209, December 2001,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3209>.

   [RFC3758]  Stewart, R., Ramalho, M., Xie, Q., Tuexen, M., and P.
              Conrad, "Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
              Partial Reliability Extension", RFC 3758,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3758, May 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3758>.



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   [RFC3931]  Lau, J., Ed., Townsley, M., Ed., and I. Goyret, Ed.,
              "Layer Two Tunneling Protocol - Version 3 (L2TPv3)",
              RFC 3931, DOI 10.17487/RFC3931, March 2005,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3931>.

   [RFC4364]  Rosen, E. and Y. Rekhter, "BGP/MPLS IP Virtual Private
              Networks (VPNs)", RFC 4364, DOI 10.17487/RFC4364, February
              2006, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4364>.

   [RFC4448]  Martini, L., Ed., Rosen, E., El-Aawar, N., and G. Heron,
              "Encapsulation Methods for Transport of Ethernet over MPLS
              Networks", RFC 4448, DOI 10.17487/RFC4448, April 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4448>.

   [RFC4594]  Babiarz, J., Chan, K., and F. Baker, "Configuration
              Guidelines for DiffServ Service Classes", RFC 4594,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4594, August 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4594>.

   [RFC4719]  Aggarwal, R., Ed., Townsley, M., Ed., and M. Dos Santos,
              Ed., "Transport of Ethernet Frames over Layer 2 Tunneling
              Protocol Version 3 (L2TPv3)", RFC 4719,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4719, November 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4719>.

   [RFC5151]  Farrel, A., Ed., Ayyangar, A., and JP. Vasseur, "Inter-
              Domain MPLS and GMPLS Traffic Engineering -- Resource
              Reservation Protocol-Traffic Engineering (RSVP-TE)
              Extensions", RFC 5151, DOI 10.17487/RFC5151, February
              2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5151>.

   [RFC5654]  Niven-Jenkins, B., Ed., Brungard, D., Ed., Betts, M., Ed.,
              Sprecher, N., and S. Ueno, "Requirements of an MPLS
              Transport Profile", RFC 5654, DOI 10.17487/RFC5654,
              September 2009, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5654>.

   [RFC7149]  Boucadair, M. and C. Jacquenet, "Software-Defined
              Networking: A Perspective from within a Service Provider
              Environment", RFC 7149, DOI 10.17487/RFC7149, March 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7149>.

   [RFC7209]  Sajassi, A., Aggarwal, R., Uttaro, J., Bitar, N.,
              Henderickx, W., and A. Isaac, "Requirements for Ethernet
              VPN (EVPN)", RFC 7209, DOI 10.17487/RFC7209, May 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7209>.






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   [RFC7926]  Farrel, A., Ed., Drake, J., Bitar, N., Swallow, G.,
              Ceccarelli, D., and X. Zhang, "Problem Statement and
              Architecture for Information Exchange between
              Interconnected Traffic-Engineered Networks", BCP 206,
              RFC 7926, DOI 10.17487/RFC7926, July 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7926>.

   [RFC8172]  Morton, A., "Considerations for Benchmarking Virtual
              Network Functions and Their Infrastructure", RFC 8172,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8172, July 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8172>.

   [RFC8299]  Wu, Q., Ed., Litkowski, S., Tomotaki, L., and K. Ogaki,
              "YANG Data Model for L3VPN Service Delivery", RFC 8299,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8299, January 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8299>.

   [RFC8370]  Beeram, V., Ed., Minei, I., Shakir, R., Pacella, D., and
              T. Saad, "Techniques to Improve the Scalability of RSVP-TE
              Deployments", RFC 8370, DOI 10.17487/RFC8370, May 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8370>.

   [RFC8402]  Filsfils, C., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Ginsberg, L.,
              Decraene, B., Litkowski, S., and R. Shakir, "Segment
              Routing Architecture", RFC 8402, DOI 10.17487/RFC8402,
              July 2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8402>.

   [RFC8403]  Geib, R., Ed., Filsfils, C., Pignataro, C., Ed., and N.
              Kumar, "A Scalable and Topology-Aware MPLS Data-Plane
              Monitoring System", RFC 8403, DOI 10.17487/RFC8403, July
              2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8403>.

   [RFC8453]  Ceccarelli, D., Ed. and Y. Lee, Ed., "Framework for
              Abstraction and Control of TE Networks (ACTN)", RFC 8453,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8453, August 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8453>.

   [RFC8466]  Wen, B., Fioccola, G., Ed., Xie, C., and L. Jalil, "A YANG
              Data Model for Layer 2 Virtual Private Network (L2VPN)
              Service Delivery", RFC 8466, DOI 10.17487/RFC8466, October
              2018, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8466>.

   [RFC8491]  Tantsura, J., Chunduri, U., Aldrin, S., and L. Ginsberg,
              "Signaling Maximum SID Depth (MSD) Using IS-IS", RFC 8491,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8491, November 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8491>.





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   [RFC8568]  Bernardos, CJ., Rahman, A., Zuniga, JC., Contreras, LM.,
              Aranda, P., and P. Lynch, "Network Virtualization Research
              Challenges", RFC 8568, DOI 10.17487/RFC8568, April 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8568>.

   [RFC8577]  Sitaraman, H., Beeram, V., Parikh, T., and T. Saad,
              "Signaling RSVP-TE Tunnels on a Shared MPLS Forwarding
              Plane", RFC 8577, DOI 10.17487/RFC8577, April 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8577>.

   [RFC8578]  Grossman, E., Ed., "Deterministic Networking Use Cases",
              RFC 8578, DOI 10.17487/RFC8578, May 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8578>.

   [RFC8655]  Finn, N., Thubert, P., Varga, B., and J. Farkas,
              "Deterministic Networking Architecture", RFC 8655,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8655, October 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8655>.

   [RFC8665]  Psenak, P., Ed., Previdi, S., Ed., Filsfils, C., Gredler,
              H., Shakir, R., Henderickx, W., and J. Tantsura, "OSPF
              Extensions for Segment Routing", RFC 8665,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8665, December 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8665>.

   [RFC8667]  Previdi, S., Ed., Ginsberg, L., Ed., Filsfils, C.,
              Bashandy, A., Gredler, H., and B. Decraene, "IS-IS
              Extensions for Segment Routing", RFC 8667,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8667, December 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8667>.

   [SFC]      "Service Function Chaining", March ,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/sfc/about>.

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

   [TS28530]  "3GPP TS28.530", 2016,
              <https://portal.3gpp.org/desktopmodules/Specifications/
              SpecificationDetails.aspx?specificationId=3273>.

   [TSN]      "Time-Sensitive Networking", March ,
              <https://1.ieee802.org/tsn/>.







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Authors' Addresses

   Jie Dong
   Huawei

   Email: jie.dong@huawei.com


   Stewart Bryant
   Futurewei

   Email: stewart.bryant@gmail.com


   Zhenqiang Li
   China Mobile

   Email: lizhenqiang@chinamobile.com


   Takuya Miyasaka
   KDDI Corporation

   Email: ta-miyasaka@kddi.com


   Young Lee
   Samsung

   Email: younglee.tx@gmail.com





















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