Network Working Group                                             W. Liu
Internet-Draft                                                   T. Tsou
Intended status: Informational                       Huawei Technologies
Expires: January 4, 2014                                  G. Karagiannis
                                                    University of Twente
                                                              J. Saldana
                                                  University of Zaragoza
                                                            July 4, 2014


    APONF Use Case: Using Abstract View of Network by Application
                         Developers
         draft-liu-aponf-abstract-network-view-use-case-00

Abstract

  This document describes a use case of Application Policy on Network
  Functions (APONF) that presents how service developers can profit by
  using an abstract view of the network during the programming and
  development process, instead of manipulating individual devices. In
  this way one can write software that programs an arbitrary network.
  APONF can be used to interface the programmed arbitrary network into
  network management policies, i.e., device configuration models.

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
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   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on December 30, 2014.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.











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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

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].


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  APONF Use Case: Using Abstract View of Network by Application
       Developers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   7.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5



1.  Introduction

   As the Internet grows, more and more new services keep on
   arising, and network traffic is rapidly increased, which may result
   in slow performance of network devices (e.g., BRAS) and poor end-user
   experience. This also implies that demands and requirements of such
   new services on the supporting communication network will increase.

   In addition, today's network operators are challenged to create an
   abstract view of their network infrastructure and help service
   developers on using and programming this abstraction rather than
   manipulating individual devices. An abstract view of a network
   infrastructure can be realized using a network configuration model,
   that provides a declarative configuration and a network topology
   model that describes a multi-layer network. Network management
   applications are Operational Support System (OSS)-like applications
   that help a communication service provider to monitor, control,
   analyze and manage a communication network.





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   Currently, there are no IETF standard mechanisms or modeling
   languages that can directly be applied to model the network
   configuration nor the network topology. IETF has however created the
   IETF SFC WG [SFC] to document a new approach to service delivery and
   operation, where one of its goals is to realize an abstract view of a
   network by using a service graph instance, denoted as the Service
   Function Path (SFP). This will enable the development of suitable
   models for network configuration and network topology.

   This use case description is based on [Google], and argues that
   service developers can profit by using an abstract view of the
   network during the programming and development process, instead of
   manipulating individual devices. In this way one can write software
   that programs an arbitrary network.

   Application Policy on Network Functions (APONF) [APONF] can be used
   to interface the programmed arbitrary network into network management
   policies, i.e., device configuration models.

   This document is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the
   terminology. Section 3 provides a brief description of this use
   case. Section 4 provides the security considerations.

2.  Terminology

   Device level configuration model: Supports the description of the
   network management policies and describes the configuration
   details at the device level.

   Network Management Application: Operational Support System (OSS)-like
   application that help a communication service provider to monitor,
   control, analyze and manage a communication network.

   Network configuration model: Provides a declarative configuration of
   the network.

   Network topology model: Describes the topology of a multi-layer
   network.

   Service Function Chain (SFC):  It defines an ordered set of service
   functions that must be applied to packets and/or layer-2 frames selected
   as a result of classification.  The implied order may not be a linear
   progression as nodes may copy to more than one branch.  The term
   "service chain" is often used as shorthand for service function chain.

   Service Function Path (SFP):  The instantiation of a Service Function
   Chain in the network. Packets follow a Service Function Path from
   a classifier through the required instances of service functions
   in the network.


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3. APONF Use Case: Using an Abstract View of the Network by Application
   Developers

   This section briefly describes the use case that is based on
   [Google], which argues that service developers can profit by using
   an abstract view of the network during the programming and
   development process instead of manipulating individual devices.

   Suppose that a network service is developed and maintained as a
   network management application. Such network service can enable the
   use of end user applications that require a high security,
   reliability and QoS levels to users that are located in the football
   stadium in Rio during the FIFA soccer World Cup 2014 in Brazil. The
   network service, that for the moment we call "secure applications
   during football match", is developed using the requirements of the
   end user applications and the available information about the
   existing communication infrastructure at the particular football
   stadium.

   The network management application is used to provide the required
   configuration and application programming interfaces to an
   application developer that can develop the end user
   applications using the SFP based network configuration and network
   topology information, associated with the "secure applications
   during football match" network service. The application developer can
   create an application based model associated with this network
   service. This application-based model includes the updates of parts
   of the abstract view of the network, i.e., SFP based network
   configuration and topology associated with the communication network
   infrastructure available at the Rio stadium and the necessary
   application based demands to be applied on this network configuration
   and network topology.

   In this context, APONF can be used to map the application-based model
   associated with the "secure applications during football
   match" network service into specific network management policies,
   i.e., device level configuration models.

4.  Security Considerations

   Security is a key aspect of any protocol that allows state
   installation and extracting of detailed configuration states.  More
   investigation remains to fully define the security requirements, such
   as authorization and authentication levels.

5.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.

6.  Acknowledgements

   The authors of this draft would like to thank the APONF participants
   for their valuable feedback.

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7.  References

7.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
   Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

7.2.  Informative References

   [Google] Google Use Case,
   http://www.sdncentral.com/news/google-open-source-help-policy-based-
   sdn/2014/06/

   [SFC] IETF SFC (Service Function Chaining) WG charter,
   http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/sfc/charter/

   [APONF] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-zhou-aponf-architecture-01

Authors' Addresses

   Will(Shucheng) Liu
   Huawei Technologies
   Bantian, Longgang District
   Shenzhen  518129
   P.R. China

   Email: liushucheng@huawei.com

   Tina Tsou
   Huawei Technologies
   Bantian, Longgang District
   Shenzhen  518129
   P.R. China

   Email: Tina.Tsou.Zouting@huawei.com
   Georgios Karagiannis
   University of Twente

   Email: g.karagiannis@utwente.nl

   Jose Saldana
   University of Zaragoza
   Dpt. IEC Ada Byron Building
   Zaragoza  50018
   Spain
   Phone: +34 976 762 698
   Email: jsaldana@unizar.es







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