Internet-Draft APN Deployment Status March 2024
Liu, et al. Expires 5 September 2024 [Page]
Workgroup:
Network Working Group
Internet-Draft:
draft-lxm-rtgwg-apn-deployment-status-00
Published:
Intended Status:
Informational
Expires:
Authors:
Y. Liu
China Unicom
Q. Xu
Agricultural Bank of China
J. Mao
Huawei Technologies

Application-aware Networking (APN) Implementation and Deployment Status

Abstract

This draft provides an overview of Application-aware Networking (APN) deployment status. It lists various APN features that have been deployed in the production networks. It also provides an overview of APN implementation status.

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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This Internet-Draft will expire on 5 September 2024.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

This draft provides an overview of Application-aware Networking (APN) deployment status. It lists various APN features that have been deployed in the production networks. It also provides an overview of APN implementation status.

2. Requirements Language

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.

3. Deployment Status

3.1. Agricultural Bank of China (ABC)

Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) has deployed APN at the load balancers of the product data center in Beijing, and has enabled APN at the PE nodes of the IP Backbone network.

It decouples the IP address and the application on the network, that enables rapid network service provisioning for massive software upgrade and delivery services, and makes network rules stable to adapt to the changes in the IP addresses of thousands of applications.

The APN option is carried by IPv6 packets of applications and traverses the network from the load balancer to the user terminals, e.g., PC and laptop.

The APN ID in the APN option is first planned in the APN domain, and then configured to the network controller and the management plane of the applications. The network controller delivers the configurations of the APN ID to the network devices.

To use the APN ID on the data plane, the management plane forms and maintains an APN ID policy after an APN ID is allocated to a specific application. The policy specifies the mapping from the current 5 tuples of the application to the APN ID, and is similar to the APN-marking policy [I-D.li-apn-framework].

The APN-capable load balancer obtains APN ID policies and get updates from the management plane. After that, the load balancers initiate packets with APN option towards application clients in the user terminals. The packets enter the IP Backbone network from its PE nodes.

The SRv6 TE tunnels have been deployed in the IP Backbone network, which provide different SLA levels and forwarding paths. The APN-capable PE nodes steer traffic in application granularity among the tunnels according to the APN ID carried in the APN option of IPv6 extension header. Then the packets enter the Access network.

The Access network has not enabled APN yet. According to the highest two bits of the option type field of APN option, the APN option is skipped over when the packets are processed. The packets are forwarded to the user terminals normally, and the APN option is transparently transmitted.

By offloading APN from the application to the load balancer, thousands of applications can benefit from APN while they are not required to be upgraded, i.e., they can keep APN-uncapable or APN-unaware.

The deployment case is shown in Figure 1.

                  +-------------------------------+          +------------------+
                  |           Network             |          |   Application    |
                  |          Controller           |          | Management Plane |
                  +-------------------------------+          +------------------+
                     |                         |                           |
                     |                         |                           |
                     |                         |             +-------------|--------------+
                     v                         v             | Data Center |    +-------+ |
                                                             |             |    |  App  | |
+-------+                                   +----+           |             |    |Server1| |
|  App  |                               /---|B-P1|---\       |             |   /+-------+ |
|Client1|      /------------\          /    +----+    \      |             v  /           |
+-------+\    /              \        /                \     | +-------------+  +-------+ |
   PC     \+-----+        +-----+  +-----+    IP    +-----+  | | APN-capable |  |  App  | |
           |A-PE1| Access |A-PE2|--|B-PE1|          |B-PE2|----|Load Balancer|--|Server2| |
          /+-----+        +-----+  +-----+ Backbone +-----+  | +-------------+  +-------+ |
+-------+/    \              /        \                /     |                \           |
|  App  |      \------------/          \    +----+    /      |                 \+-------+ |
|Client2|                               \---|B-P2|---/       |                  |  App  | |
+-------+                                   +----+           |                  |Server3| |
 Laptop                                                      |                  +-------+ |
                                                             +----------------------------+

                 Skip over             Steer by APN ID
           <--  APN6 option   -->  <-- to SRv6 TE tunnel ->
               (transparency)

   <------ Packets with APN6 option, for the end-to-end connection ------>

            Figure 1: Agricultural Bank of China deployment case

The following APN features have been deployed:

3.2. Government Services and Data Management Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality

Government Services and Data Management Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality has deployed APN to enable quality assurance for video conference service.

The Bureau has deployed APN-capable terminals and servers of a video conference system in an office campus and a data center respectively, and has enabled APN at the PE nodes of the e-Government extranet in Shenzhen. The extranet is a wide area network, which is divided into three levels of global, province and city. Each level consists of two networks of access and backbone.

For the video conference scenario, the APN option is initiated by the terminals and servers, and carried by IPv6 packets. It traverses the network from the terminals to the servers, and vice versa.

The terminals and servers acquire the APN ID to be added from the controller of the video conference application on demand. The network controller delivers the configurations of the APN ID to the network devices in advance and on demand.

The SRv6 TE tunnels and the network slices have been deployed in the e-Government extranet, which provide different forwarding paths, and enable resource isolation. The APN-capable PE nodes distinguish the traffic of common and important conferences according to the APN ID carried in the APN option, then steer the traffic to different tunnels and network slices. When the network quality is downgraded, the quality of important conferences can be assured.

The deployment case is shown in Figure 2.

                         +----------------------+       +----------------+
                         |       Network        |       |Video Conference|
                         |      Controller      |       |   Controller   |
                         +----------------------+       +----------------+
                             |              |                         |
                             |              |                         |
                             v              v                         |
                                                                      |
+----------------+       /----------------------\       +-------------|--+
| Office Campus  |      /                        \      | Data Center |  |
|                |     /                          \     |             |  |
| +------------+ |    +---+    +--+    +--+    +---+    |             |  |
| | Conference |------|PE1|----|P1|----|P3|----|PE3|    |             |  |
| | Terminal 1 | |    +---+    +--+    +--+    +---+    |             |  |
| +------------+ |     |           \  /           |     |             |  |
|                |     |            \/            |     |             |  |
|                |     |            /\            |     |             v  |
| +------------+ |     |           /  \           |     | +------------+ |
| | Conference | |    +---+    +--+    +--+    +---+    | | Conference | |
| | Terminal 2 |------|PE2|----|P2|----|P4|----|PE4|------|   Server   | |
| +------------+ |    +---+    +--+    +--+    +---+    | +------------+ |
+----------------+     \                          /     +----------------+
                        \  e-Government extranet /
                         \----------------------/

                         Steer to SRv6 tunnel and
                     <-- network slice by APN ID   ->

                         Packets with APN6 option,
                     <-- for surveillance scenario ->

     <------ Packets with APN6 option, for conference scenario ----->

Figure 2: Government Services and Data Management Bureau of Shenzhen
          Municipality deployment case

The following APN features have been deployed:

4. Implementation Status of APN

4.1. Open-source platforms

The following open source platforms supports APN6 including [I-D.li-apn-header] and [I-D.li-apn-ipv6-encap]:

4.2. Additional Routing platforms

To date, 7 publicly known hardware platforms support APN. Specifically, the following hardware platforms (in alphabetical order) supports APN including [I-D.li-apn-header] and [I-D.li-apn-ipv6-encap] :

Huawei:

Huawei hardware platforms supports APN with current status as follows:

5. Interoperability Status of APN

.

6. Significant industry collaboration for APN standardization

.

7. IANA Considerations

.

8. Security Considerations

.

9. Acknowledgements

.

10. Contributors

.

11. References

11.1. Normative References

[I-D.ietf-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id]
Dong, J., Li, Z., Xie, C., Ma, C., and G. S. Mishra, "Carrying Network Resource Partition (NRP) Information in IPv6 Extension Header", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-ietf-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id-06, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id-06>.
[I-D.li-apn-framework]
Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Li, C., Liu, P., Cao, C., and G. S. Mishra, "Application-aware Networking (APN) Framework", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-framework-07, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-apn-framework-07>.
[I-D.li-apn-header]
Li, Z., Peng, S., and S. Zhang, "Application-aware Networking (APN) Header", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-header-04, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-apn-header-04>.
[I-D.li-apn-ipv6-encap]
Li, Z., Peng, S., and C. Xie, "Application-aware IPv6 Networking (APN6) Encapsulation", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-ipv6-encap-07, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-apn-ipv6-encap-07>.
[I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework]
Li, Z. and S. Peng, "Extension of Application-aware Networking (APN) Framework for Application Side", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework-00, , <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework-00>.
[RFC2119]
Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174]
Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8986]
Filsfils, C., Ed., Camarillo, P., Ed., Leddy, J., Voyer, D., Matsushima, S., and Z. Li, "Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6) Network Programming", RFC 8986, DOI 10.17487/RFC8986, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8986>.
[RFC9252]
Dawra, G., Ed., Talaulikar, K., Ed., Raszuk, R., Decraene, B., Zhuang, S., and J. Rabadan, "BGP Overlay Services Based on Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6)", RFC 9252, DOI 10.17487/RFC9252, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9252>.
[RFC9352]
Psenak, P., Ed., Filsfils, C., Bashandy, A., Decraene, B., and Z. Hu, "IS-IS Extensions to Support Segment Routing over the IPv6 Data Plane", RFC 9352, DOI 10.17487/RFC9352, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9352>.
[RFC9514]
Dawra, G., Filsfils, C., Talaulikar, K., Ed., Chen, M., Bernier, D., and B. Decraene, "Border Gateway Protocol - Link State (BGP-LS) Extensions for Segment Routing over IPv6 (SRv6)", RFC 9514, DOI 10.17487/RFC9514, , <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9514>.

11.2. Informative References

[apn-p4-demo-1]
Wireshark, "Demo 2: APN implementation based on P4, on IETF 108 Hackathon", , <https://github.com/IETF-Hackathon/ietf108-project-presentations/blob/master/IFIT%20and%20APN6%20Hackathon.pdf>.
[apn-p4-demo-2]
Wireshark, "Demo 3: APN implementation based on P4, on IETF 109 Hackathon", , <https://github.com/IETF-Hackathon/ietf109-project-presentations/blob/master/Performance%20Evaluation%20of%20APN6.pdf>.
[apn-srv6-demo]
Wireshark, "Demo 1: Application-aware G-SRv6 networking on IETF 110 Hackathon", , <https://github.com/IETF-Hackathon/ietf110-project-presentations/blob/main/Application-aware_G-SRv6_networking__Demo_and_Test.pdf>.
[wireshark-release-notes]
Wireshark, "Wireshark 4.2.0 Release Notes", , <https://www.wireshark.org/docs/relnotes/wireshark-4.2.0.html>.

Authors' Addresses

Ying Liu
China Unicom
Qingbang Xu
Agricultural Bank of China
Jianwei Mao
Huawei Technologies
Beijing
100095
China