Internet DRAFT - draft-lxm-rtgwg-apn-deployment-status

draft-lxm-rtgwg-apn-deployment-status







Network Working Group                                             Y. Liu
Internet-Draft                                              China Unicom
Intended status: Informational                                     Q. Xu
Expires: 5 September 2024                     Agricultural Bank of China
                                                                  J. Mao
                                                     Huawei Technologies
                                                            4 March 2024


Application-aware Networking (APN) Implementation and Deployment Status
                draft-lxm-rtgwg-apn-deployment-status-00

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/.

   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 5 September 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.











Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 1]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   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 Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   3.  Deployment Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Agricultural Bank of China (ABC)  . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Government Services and Data Management Bureau of Shenzhen
           Municipality  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  Implementation Status of APN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.1.  Open-source platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.2.  Additional Routing platforms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Interoperability Status of APN  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   6.  Significant industry collaboration for APN standardization  .   8
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   8.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   9.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   10. Contributors  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   11. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     11.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     11.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

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.






Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 2]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


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.




Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 3]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   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:

   *  An APN Header based data plane [I-D.li-apn-header]
      [I-D.li-apn-ipv6-encap].

   *  APN-capable Application Server (AAS): initiation of the packet
      with APN option [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].




Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 4]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   *  APN-Controller: planning and execution of how the APN attribute
      are allocated and maintained [I-D.li-apn-framework].

   *  APN-Controller: processing the request from the AAS and allocating
      the APN resources of the controlled APN domain to the AAS
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Head: APN ID based traffic steering for SRv6 TE
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Endpoint: remove the outer tunnel header and keep the APN
      attribute in packets [I-D.li-apn-framework]
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  END (PSP), END.X (PSP), and END.DT6 functions as per [RFC8986].

   *  BGP EVPN SRv6 extensions [RFC9252].

   *  IS-IS SRv6 extensions [RFC9352].

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.









Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 5]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   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:



Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 6]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   *  An APN Header based data plane [I-D.li-apn-header]
      [I-D.li-apn-ipv6-encap].

   *  APN-capable Application Server (AAS): initiation of the packet
      with APN option [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-capable Application Client (AAC): initiation of the packet
      with APN option, and acquire APN attribute from AAS
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Controller: planning and execution of how the APN attribute
      are allocated and maintained [I-D.li-apn-framework].

   *  APN-Controller: processing the request from the AAS and allocating
      the APN resources of the controlled APN domain to the AAS
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Head: APN ID based traffic steering for SRv6 TE
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  APN-Endpoint: remove the outer tunnel header and keep the APN
      attribute in packets [I-D.li-apn-framework]
      [I-D.li-rtgwg-apn-app-side-framework].

   *  END.X (PSP), END.DT6 functions as per [RFC8986].

   *  BGP EVPN SRv6 extensions [RFC9252].

   *  BGP-LS SRv6 extensions [RFC9514].

   *  IS-IS SRv6 extensions [RFC9352].

   *  NRP extensions for network slice services
      [I-D.ietf-6man-enhanced-vpn-vtn-id].

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]:

   *  Wireshark (from 4.2.0 version): 32/64/128-bit APN ID, APN6 option
      in the Hop-by-Hop Options Header (HBH) and Destination Options
      Header (DOH).[wireshark-release-notes]





Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 7]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   *  Linux: enhanced sendmsg, sendto, and setsockopt API for APN option
      support, custom kernel module for APN option support
      [apn-srv6-demo].

   *  P4 hardware switch: encapsulation action for APN option and all
      four kinds of APN parameters [apn-p4-demo-1] [apn-p4-demo-2],
      steer traffic to SRv6 TE tunnel by APN option and APN parameters.

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:

   *  Huawei ATN with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei CX600 with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei NE40E with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei ME60 with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei NE5000E with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei NE9000 with VRPV8 shipping code.

   *  Huawei NE8000 with VRPV8 shipping code.

5.  Interoperability Status of APN

   .

6.  Significant industry collaboration for APN standardization

   .

7.  IANA Considerations

   .






Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 8]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


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, 20 February 2024,
              <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, 3 April 2023,
              <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, 12 April 2023,
              <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, 10 July 2023,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-li-apn-ipv6-
              encap-07>.






Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024                [Page 9]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   [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, 22 October 2023,
              <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, March 1997,
              <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,
              May 2017, <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, February 2021,
              <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, July 2022,
              <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,
              February 2023, <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, December
              2023, <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", 23 July 2020, <https://github.com/
              IETF-Hackathon/ietf108-project-presentations/blob/master/
              IFIT%20and%20APN6%20Hackathon.pdf>.




Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024               [Page 10]

Internet-Draft            APN Deployment Status               March 2024


   [apn-p4-demo-2]
              Wireshark, "Demo 3: APN implementation based on P4, on
              IETF 109 Hackathon", 12 November 2020,
              <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", 6 March 2021, <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", 15 November
              2023, <https://www.wireshark.org/docs/relnotes/wireshark-
              4.2.0.html>.

Authors' Addresses

   Ying Liu
   China Unicom
   Email: liuy619@chinaunicom.cn


   Qingbang Xu
   Agricultural Bank of China
   Email: michbang@163.com


   Jianwei Mao
   Huawei Technologies
   Beijing
   100095
   China
   Email: maojianwei@huawei.com















Liu, et al.             Expires 5 September 2024               [Page 11]