Network Working Group Z. Li
Internet-Draft S. Peng
Intended status: Standards Track Huawei Technologies
Expires: May 7, 2020 D. Voyer
Bell Canada
C. Xie
China Telecom
P. Liu
China Mobile
C. Liu
China Unicom
K. Ebisawa
Toyota Motor Corporation
S. Previdi
Individual
J. Guichard
Futurewei Technologies Ltd.
November 04, 2019
Problem Statement and Use Cases of Application-aware IPv6 Networking
(APN6)
draft-li-apn6-problem-statement-usecases-01
Abstract
Network operators are facing the challenge of providing better
network services for users. As the ever developing 5G and industrial
verticals evolve, more and more services that have diverse network
requirements such as ultra-low latency and high reliability are
emerging, and therefore differentiated service treatment is desired
by users. However, network operators are typically unaware of which
applications are traversing their network infrastructure, which means
that only coarse-grained services can be provided to users. As a
result, network operators are only evolving their infrastructure to
be large but dumb pipes without corresponding revenue increases that
might be enabled by differentiated service treatment. As network
technologies evolve including deployments of IPv6 and SRv6, the
programmability provided by IPv6 and SRv6 encapsulations can be
augmented by conveying application related information into the
network. Adding application knowledge to the network layer allows
applications to specify finer granularity requirements to the network
operator.
This document analyzes the existing problems caused by lack of
application awareness, and outlines various use cases that could
benefit from an Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6)
architecture.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
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.
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/.
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 May 7, 2020.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2019 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Large but Dumb Pipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Network on Its Own . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3. Decoupling of Network and Applications . . . . . . . . . 4
3.4. Challenges of Traditional Differentiated Service
Provisioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
3.5. Challenges of Supporting New 5G and Edge Computing
Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Key Elements of Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) . . 6
5. Use cases for Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) . . . 8
5.1. Application-aware SLA Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.2. Application-aware network slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.3. Application-aware Deterministic Networking . . . . . . . 9
5.4. Application-aware Service Function Chaining . . . . . . . 10
5.5. Application-aware Network Measurement . . . . . . . . . . 10
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
9. Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1. Introduction
Due to the requirement for differentiated traffic treatment driven by
diverse new services, the ability to convey the characteristics of an
application's traffic flow and program the network infrastructure
accordingly to provide fine-grained service assurance is becoming
increasingly necessary for network operators. The Application-aware
IPv6 Networking (APN6) architecture is being defined to address the
requirements and use cases described in this document. APN6 takes
advantage of network programmability by conveying application related
information in the data plane allowing applications to specify finer
grained requirements to the network infrastructure.
2. Terminology
ACL: Access Control List
APN6: Application-aware IPv6 Networking
DPI: Deep Packet Inspection
PBR: Policy Based Routing
QoE: Quality of Experience
SDN: Software Defined Networking
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
3. Problem Statement
This section summarizes the challenges currently faced by network
operators when attempting to provide fine-grained traffic operations
to satisfy the various application-awareness requirements demanded by
new services that require differentiated service treatment.
3.1. Large but Dumb Pipe
In today's networks, the infrastructure through which user traffic is
forwarded is not able to determine information about the packet,
including which application the traffic belongs to, without the
introduction of middleware such as DPI, that is, the network and
applications are decoupled. It is therefore difficult for network
operators to provide fine-grained traffic operations for performance-
demanding applications. In order to satisfy the SLA requirements
network operators continue to increase the network bandwidth but only
carrying very light traffic load (around 30%-40% of its capacity).
This situation greatly increases the CAPEX and OPEX but only brings
very little revenue from the carried services.
3.2. Network on Its Own
As the network evolves, technologies such as VPN/TE/FRR play
important roles in satisfying service isolation, SLA guarantee, and
high reliability, etc. These network technologies have themselves
been evolving, introducing new features that forces the network
operator to be continuously upgrading their network infrastructure.
However, none of these network technologies make the network aware of
which application traffic belongs to and the fine granularity
requirements of the application. Therefore, such continuous network
infrastructure upgrade doesn't always enable true fine-grained
traffic operation, therefore reducing the ability to bring
corresponding revenue increase.
3.3. Decoupling of Network and Applications
MPLS played a very important role in helping the network enter the
generation of All-IP successfully. However, MPLS doesn't allow a
close interworking with the application layer since MPLS
encapsulation is, typically, not used by the packet source.
As new services continuously evolve, more encapsulations are
required, and this isolation and decoupling has further become the
blockage towards the seamless convergence of the network and
applications.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
3.4. Challenges of Traditional Differentiated Service Provisioning
Several IETF activities have been reviewed which are primarily
intended to evolve the IP architecture to support new service
definitions which allow preferential or differentiated treatment to
be accorded to certain types of traffic. The challenge when using
traditional ways to guarantee an SLA is that the packets are not able
to carry enough information for indicating applications and
expressing their service/SLA requirements. The network devices
mainly rely on the 5-tuple of the packets or DPI. However, there are
some challenges for these traditional methods in differentiated
service provisioning:
1. Five Tuples used for ACL/PBR
Five tuples are widely used for ACL/PBR matching of traffic.
However, these features cannot provide enough information for the
fine-grained service process, and can only provide indirect
application information which needs to be translated in order to
indicate a specific application.
2. Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
If more information is needed, it must be extracted using DPI which
can inspect deep into the packets for application specific
information. However, this will introduce more CAPEX and OPEX for
the network operator and imposes security challenges.
3. Orchestration and SDN-based Solution
In the era of SDN, typically, an SDN controller is used to manage and
operate the network infrastructure and orchestrator elements
introduce application requirements so that the network is programmed
accordingly. The SDN controller can be aware of the service
requirements of the applications on the network through the interface
with the orchestrator, and the service requirement is used by the
controller for traffic management over the network. However, this
method raises the following problems:
1) The whole loop is long and time-consuming which is not suitable
for fast service provisioning for critical applications;
2) Too many interfaces are involved in the loop, as shown in
Figure 1, which introduce challenges of standardization and inter-
operability.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
+--------------+
/-----| Orchestrator | -------------------\
/ +--------------+ Resource \
APP Req. / \ Management \
+---------+ +---------+ & +---------+
|SDN Ctrl1| |SDN Ctrl2| Service |SDN Ctrl3|
+---------+ +---------+ Provisioning +---------+
APP Req. / \ / \ / \
+-/-+ +--\--+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
|APP| | DCN | |Network D1|..|Network D3| |Network D4|..|Network D6|
+---+ +-----+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+
Figure 1. Many interfaces involved in the long service-provisioning loop
3.5. Challenges of Supporting New 5G and Edge Computing Technologies
New technologies such as 5G, IoT, and edge computing, are
continuously developing leading to more and more new types of
services accessing the network. Large volumes of network traffic
with diverse requirements such as low latency and high reliability
are therefore rapidly increasing. If traditional methods for
differentiation of traffic continue to be utilized, it will cause
much higher CAPEX and OPEX to satisfy the ever-developing
applications' diverse requirements.
4. Key Elements of Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6)
Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) aims to address the
aforementioned problems associated with fine-grained traffic
operations that are required in order to satisfy the various
application-awareness requirements demanded by new services that need
differentiated service treatment. APN6 conveys information into the
network infrastructure about the characteristics of the application
associated with a traffic flow (including application identification
and network performance requirements), allowing the network to
quickly adapt and perform the necessary network resource adjustments
to maintain SLA performance guarantees, and hence better serve
application fine-grained service requirements.
The advantages of using IPv6 to support APN6 include,
1. Simplicity: Conveying application information with IPv6
encapsulation can just be based on IP reachability.
2. Seamless convergence: Much easier to achieve seamless convergence
between applications and network since both are based on IPv6.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
3. Great extensibility: IPv6 encapsulation including its extension
headers can be used to carry very rich information relevant to
applications.
4. Good compatibility: On-demand network upgrade and service
provisioning. If the application information is not recognized
by the node, the packet will be forwarded based on pure IPv6,
which ensure backward compatibility.
5. Little dependency: Information conveying and service provisioning
are only based on the forwarding plane of devices, which is
different from the Orchestration and SDN-based solution which
involves multiple elements and diverse interfaces.
6. Quick response: Flow-driven and direct response from devices
since it is based on the forwarding plane.
APN6 has the following key elements:
1. Application information should be conveyed in the data plane
through augmentation of existing encapsulations such as IPv6 and/
or SRv6. The conveyed application characteristic information
(application-aware information) includes application
identification and/or its network performance requirements. This
element should not be enforced but provide an open option for
applications to decide whether to input this application-aware
information into their data stream.
2. Application information and network service provisioning matching
providing fine-granularity network service provisioning (traffic
operations) and SLA guarantee based on the application-aware
information carried in APN6 packets. This element provides the
network capabilities to applications. According to the
application-aware information, appropriate network services are
selected, provisioned, and provided to the demanding applications
to satisfy their performance requirements.
3. Network measurement of network performance and update the match
between the applications and corresponding network services for
better fine-granularity SLA compliance. The network measurement
methods include in-band and out-of-band, passive, active, per-
packet, per-flow, per node, end-to-end, etc. These methods can
also be integrated.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
Applications | Network
Element 1: Conveying ------------------->
/|\
Application Info | Network capabilities
| (SLA guarantee)
| /|\
Element 2: Matching |
|
Element 3: Network Measurement
Figure 2. Illustration of the key elements of APN6
5. Use cases for Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6)
This section provides the use cases that can benefit from the
application awareness introduced by APN6. The corresponding
requirements for APN6 are also outlined.
5.1. Application-aware SLA Guarantee
One of the key objectives of APN6 is for network operators to provide
fine-granularity SLA guarantees instead of coarse-grain traffic
operations. Among various applications being carried and running in
the network, some revenue-producing applications such as online
gaming, video streaming, and enterprise video conferencing have much
more demanding performance requirements such as low network latency
and high bandwidth. In order to achieve better Quality of Experience
(QoE) for end users and engage customers, the network needs to be
able to provide fine-granularity and even application-level SLA
guarantee. Differentiated service provisioning is also desired.
One of the key objective of APN6 is for network operators to provide
fine-granularity SLA guarantees instead of coarse-grain traffic
operations. This will enable them to provide differentiated services
for different applications and increase revenue accordingly.
The APN6 architecture design MUST address the following requirements:
o APN6 needs to perform the three key elements as described in
Section 4.
o Support application-level fine-granularity traffic operation that
may include finer QoS scheduling.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
5.2. Application-aware network slicing
More and more applications/services with diverse requirements are
being carried over and sharing the network operators' network
infrastructure. However, it is still desirable to have customized
network transport that can support some application's specific
requirements, taking into consideration service and resource
isolation, which drives the concept of network slicing.
Network slicing provides ways to partition the network infrastructure
in either the control plane or data plane into multiple network
slices that are running in parallel. These network slices can serve
diverse services and fulfill their various requirements at the same
time. For example, the mission critical application that requires
ultra-low latency and high reliability can be provisioned over a
separate network slice.
The APN6 architecture design MUST address the following requirements:
o APN6 needs to perform the three key elements as described in
Section 4 in the context of network slicing. To be more specific,
for element 2, it needs to match to a specific network slice
according to the application information carried in the APN6
packets. The network measurement in element 3 also needs to
happen within each network slice.
5.3. Application-aware Deterministic Networking
[RFC8578] documents use cases for diverse industry applications that
require deterministic flows over multi-hop paths. Deterministic
flows provide guaranteed bandwidth, bounded latency, and other
properties relevant to the transport of time-sensitive data, and can
coexist on an IP network with best-effort traffic. It also provides
for highly reliable flows through provision for redundant paths.
The APN6 architecture design MUST address the following requirements:
o APN6 needs to perform the three key elements as described in
Section 4 in the context of deterministic networking. To be more
specific, for the element 2, it needs to match to a specific
deterministic path according to the application information
carried in the APN6 packets. The network measurement in element 3
also needs to be performed on each application-aware deterministic
path.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
5.4. Application-aware Service Function Chaining
End-to-end service delivery often needs to go through various service
functions, including traditional network service functions such as
firewalls, DPIs as well as new application-specific functions, both
physical and virtual. The definition and instantiation of an ordered
set of service functions and subsequent steering of the traffic
through them is called Service Function Chaining (SFC) [RFC7665].
SFC is applicable to both fixed and mobile networks as well as data
center networks.
Generally, in order to manipulate a specific application traffic
along the SFC, a DPI needs to be deployed as the first service
function of the chain to detect the application, which will impose
high CAPEX and consume long processing times. For encrypted traffic,
it even becomes impossible to inspect the application.
The APN6 architecture design MUST address the following requirements:
o APN6 needs to perform the three key elements as described in
Section 4 in the context of service function chaining. To be more
specific, for element 1 class information can be conveyed. For
element 2, it needs to match to a specific service function chain
and subsequent steering according to the application information
carried in the APN6 packets. The network measurement in element 3
also needs to happen within each app-aware service function chain.
5.5. Application-aware Network Measurement
Network measurement can be used for locating silent failure and
predicting QoE satisfaction, which enables real-time SLA awareness/
proactive OAM. Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM)
refers to a toolset for fault detection and isolation, and network
performance measurement. In-situ Operations, Administration, and
Maintenance (IOAM) records operational and telemetry information in
the packet while the packet traverses a path between two points in
the network.
The APN6 architecture MUST address the following requirements:
o APN6 needs to perform the two key elements as described in
Section 4 in the context of network measurement. The network
measurement in element 3 does not need to be considered here.
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
6. IANA Considerations
This document does not include an IANA request.
7. Security Considerations
Since the application information is conveyed into the network, it
does involve some security and privacy issues.
First, APN6 only provides the capability to the applications to
provide their profiles and requirements to the network, but it leaves
the applications to decide whether to input this information. If the
applications decide not to provide any information, they will be
treated in the same way as today's network and cannot get the
benefits from APN6.
Once the application information has been carried in the IPv6 packets
and conveyed into the network, the IPv6 extension headers, AH and
ESP, can be used to guarantee the authenticity of the added
application information.
Any scheme involving an information exchange between layers
(application and network layers in this case) will obviously require
an accurate valuation of security mechanism in order to prevent any
leak of critical information. Some additional considerations may be
required for multi-domain use cases. For example, how to agree upon
which application information/ID to use and guarantee authenticity
for packets traveling through multiple domains (network operators).
8. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Robert Raszuk (Bloomberg LP)
and Yukito Ueno (NTT Communications Corporation) for their valuable
review and comments.
9. Contributors
Liang Geng
China Mobile
China
Email: gengliang@chinamobile.com
Chang Cao
China Unicom
China
Email: caoc15@chinaunicom.cn
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
Cong Li
China Telecom
China
Email: licong.bri@chinatelecom.cn
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[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>.
[RFC7665] Halpern, J., Ed. and C. Pignataro, Ed., "Service Function
Chaining (SFC) Architecture", RFC 7665,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7665, October 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7665>.
[RFC8200] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", STD 86, RFC 8200,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8200, July 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8200>.
[RFC8578] Grossman, E., Ed., "Deterministic Networking Use Cases",
RFC 8578, DOI 10.17487/RFC8578, May 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8578>.
10.2. Informative References
[]
Filsfils, C., Dukes, D., Previdi, S., Leddy, J.,
Matsushima, S., and d. daniel.voyer@bell.ca, "IPv6 Segment
Routing Header (SRH)", draft-ietf-6man-segment-routing-
header-26 (work in progress), October 2019.
[I-D.ietf-spring-srv6-network-programming]
Filsfils, C., Camarillo, P., Leddy, J.,
daniel.voyer@bell.ca, d., Matsushima, S., and Z. Li, "SRv6
Network Programming", draft-ietf-spring-srv6-network-
programming-05 (work in progress), October 2019.
Authors' Addresses
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
Zhenbin Li
Huawei Technologies
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
Shuping Peng
Huawei Technologies
China
Email: pengshuping@huawei.com
Daniel Voyer
Bell Canada
Canada
Email: daniel.voyer@bell.ca
Chongfeng Xie
China Telecom
China
Email: xiechf.bri@chinatelecom.cn
Peng Liu
China Mobile
China
Email: liupengyjy@chinamobile.com
Chang Liu
China Unicom
China
Email: liuc131@chinaunicom.cn
Kentaro Ebisawa
Toyota Motor Corporation
Japan
Email: ebisawa@toyota-tokyo.tech
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft Problem Statement and Use cases of APN6 November 2019
Stefano Previdi
Individual
Italy
Email: stefano@previdi.net
James N Guichard
Futurewei Technologies Ltd.
USA
Email: jguichar@futurewei.com
Li, et al. Expires May 7, 2020 [Page 14]