Carrying Virtual Transport Network (VTN) Identifier in IPv6 Extension Header
draft-dong-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id-06

Abstract

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) provide different customers with logically separated connectivity over a common network infrastructure. With the introduction and evolvement of 5G and other network scenarios, some existing or new customers may require connectivity services with advanced characteristics comparing to traditional VPNs. Such kind of network service is called enhanced VPNs (VPN+). A Virtual Transport Network (VTN) is a virtual underlay network which consists of a set of dedicated or shared network resources allocated from the physical underlay network, and is associated with a customized logical network topology. VPN+ services can be delivered by mapping one or a group of overlay VPNs to the appropriate VTNs as the virtual underlay. In packet forwarding, some fields in the data packet needs to be used to identify the VTN the packet belongs to, so that the VTN-specific processing can be performed on each node the packet traverses. This document proposes a new Hop-by-Hop option of IPv6 extension header to carry the VTN Resource ID, which is used to identify the set of network resources allocated to a VTN for packet processing. The procedure for processing the VTN option is also specified.

Authors

Jie Dong
Zhenbin Li
Chongfeng Xie
Chenhao Ma
Gyan Mishra

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