Internet DRAFT - draft-tf-ocn-ps

draft-tf-ocn-ps







Internet Area Working Group                                    T. Faisal
Internet-Draft                                     King's College London
Intended status: Informational                                  D. Lopez
Expires: 3 January 2023                                   Telefonica I+D
                                                       J. Ordóñez-Lucena
                                                              Telefonica
                                                            K. Makhijani
                                                               Futurewei
                                                             2 July 2022


    Problem Statement and Requirements for the Operation and Control
                            Networks (OCNs)
                           draft-tf-ocn-ps-00

Abstract

   The emergence of applications based on machine-to-machine
   communications require control systems to be extended beyond their
   closed environments.  Specifically, autonomous systems that bring
   about physical and mechanical changes to an environment, heavily rely
   on their remote operations and control.

   This document provides an overview of the issues associated with the
   communications in the control systems to support network-based
   operations in a generic manner at any-scale environments.

   The term Operations and Control networks (OCN) is used to describe
   the common characteristics emerging from the requirements for such
   control systems.

   The OCNs are technology-agnostic concept.  This document aims to
   discuss the requirements for establishing common interfaces and
   functions.

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/.







Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 1]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   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 3 January 2023.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2022 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 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  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  Issues and Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Diversity in Service Quality  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.2.  Connected Sensors and Actuators . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Limitations and Complexities  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       3.3.1.  High Precision Data Delivery  . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       3.3.2.  Computational Abilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
       3.3.3.  Use of AI/ML Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       3.3.4.  Cyber-Security Threats  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  Motivation (Problem Statement)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Requirements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.1.  Control Loops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.2.  Traffic distribution  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     5.3.  High Precision Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.4.  Safety and Reliability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.5.  Communication model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.6.  Connectivity Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
     5.7.  Accountability  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   6.  State of the Art  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 2]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18

1.  Introduction

   Recently, we have witnessed an inflated number of devices and
   diversity in applications.  With the advent of 5G and soon-to-be-
   reality 6G, several use cases such as autonomous and remote-driving
   vehicles, smart grids and smart healthcare are being introduced and
   demonstrated.

   This introduces new challenges for the network service providers.
   For example, some applications (e.g., V2X) require stringent service
   quality (specific latency, bandwidth at visual quality and extreme
   reliability) whereas in traditional applications, best-effort service
   would have sufficed (e.g., internet browsing for non-urgent emails).

   Industrial applications will be both time-constrained and
   geographically-limited.  This means that service quality requirement
   will need to be handled on case by case basis.  For example, in the
   energy grid, when a transmission line outage disconnects a large
   industrial customer, it leads to a situation in which the total
   electricity generation exceeds the total electricity demand, and
   frequency rises which can lead to unstable power grid [NREL-ESI].  To
   respond quickly in sub-second time period, different components in
   the energy-grid must be continuously monitored in real-time so that
   the control center can take several actions instantaneously, such as
   timely change in the voltage transformer to avoid dangers to the
   equipment and personnel and even re-routing alternate power resource.

   Geographically-limited means, that some of the areas will be more
   dense than others, and vise versa.  If a service provider has
   promised a connection for a remote vehicle, for example, in that
   case, the connection guarantee would be required for complete journey
   of the car.  Naturally, the car may pass through areas where the
   service provider may not have connectivity due to reasons such as
   less-demand, but they still have to provide connectivity to their
   customers, if they have agreed.  Resource sharing arrangements may be
   already in place between the providers to fulfill the demands of
   their customers.  It is the providers' responsibility to ensure that
   they can provide guaranteed service throughout the journey, and if
   they cannot, such limitations must be clearly communicated with the
   customer at the time of service agreement.

   Another challenge with fast-moving devices (vehicles) is that they
   send their data (e.g., GPS locations and service information) to the
   control centre periodically.  The controller will also send updated
   information, for example, route and roadwork data.  The control



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 3]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   centre may be sitting on the edge, cloud or other remote location.
   If the connectivity between the vehicle and the control center is not
   stable and is not up to the minimum required level, the data cannot
   be delivered to/from the vehicle.  The results of such malfunctioning
   can be catastrophic, for instance, accidents and wrong routes.

   The biggest challenge is that the networks are now required to
   support the control systems to bring desired outcome by delivering
   operational instructions to machines and connected devices remotely.

   In control system aware networks, promising and adhering to service
   guarantee is not trivial.  They are prone to system level
   catastrophic failures due to violations in service guarantees, such
   as packet drop and jitter.  This work explores ways to provide
   service guarantee such that under no circumstances QoS is affected.

   The document discusses the issues in the connected control system
   scenarios observed in [FACTORY], [ENERGY-GRIDS], and [V2X-UC] and
   introduces a general reference model called Operations and Control
   Networks (OCN) for the support of control systems over any network.
   The details of OCN are covered in [MODEL].

2.  Conventions and Definitions

   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.

   Industrial Control Network:
      Industrial control networks are the interconnection of equipment
      used to operate, control, or monitor machines in the industry
      environment.  It involves different levels of communications -
      between field bus devices, digital controllers, and software
      applications.

   Industry Automation:
      Mechanisms that enable the machine to machine communication by use
      of technologies that enable automatic control and operation of
      industrial devices and processes leading to minimizing human
      intervention.

   Control Loop:







Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 4]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


      Control loops are part of process control systems in with desired
      process response is provided as an input to the controller, which
      performs the corresponding action (using actuators) and reads the
      output values.  Since no error correction is performed, these are
      called open control loops.

   Feedback Control Loop:
      Feedback control loop is a system in which the output of a control
      system is continuously measured and compared to the input
      reference value.  The controller uses any deviation from the input
      value to adjust the output value for the desired response.  Since
      there is a feedback of error signal to the input, these are called
      closed control loops.

   Programmable logic controllers (PLC):
      Industrial computers/servers to control manufacturing processes
      such as assembly lines.

   Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA):
      Software System to control industrial processes and collect and
      manage data.

   Distributed Control Systems (DCS):
      Systems of sensors and controllers that are distributed throughout
      a plant.

   Fieldbus Devices:
      A device which is installed on the field (e.g., solar farm, energy
      grid, autonomous vehicle).  Operational Technology field devices
      include valves, transmitters, switches, actuators, etc.

   Frequency response:
      the ability of the power system to stabilize and restore grid
      frequency following large, sudden mismatches between generation
      and load.  It has always been an operational
      concern.[NREL-REPORT].

3.  Issues and Concerns

   In general-purpose network paradigm which is based on the fairness
   among different flows, mechanisms are designed to deliver as much
   traffic as possible across the networks.  Packets flow through the
   medium and the fate of the packets is uncertain.

   In contrast, in control networks, the performance metrics are
   required to be certain.  Since the packets may be carrying extremely
   important control information such as managing a power surge in a
   smart grid, a packet drop can be catastrophic.



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 5]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


3.1.  Diversity in Service Quality

   The concern for service operators is to provide networks capable of
   delivering control-systems specific services and to have a better
   understanding of the control systems.  They will also benefit from
   knowing what gaps exist and what technologies or tool sets are
   available.

   Service operators can assess three possible categories for service
   quality as below:

   *  Best-Effort Connection -- traditional best-effort services will
      suffice for applications such as video streaming and web browsing.

   *  Bounded-Latency Connection -- These kind of network applications
      will require specifc QoS metrics and beyond and below those
      metrics the applications will not accept.  For example, remote
      surgery, in which an autonomous arm will require specific metrics
      such as speed and delay.

   *  Hard-Service Connection -- These kind of network applications will
      have minimum QoS requirements and any better QoS metrics provided
      to them will not cause any problem.  For example, tele-surgery.

      Note: TODO: Lijun's comment: Those three service qualities should
      sometime match to the below guaranteed and non-guaranteed
      categories.  Do you really only have three sub-categories?  What
      about bounded-loss connection, bandwidth-guaranteed connection.
      It is also hard for me to understand what is hard-service
      connection.  Do you mean better performance would not benefit more
      to those applications?

   What separates control systems from other applications are the
   specific operational requirements on per transaction or on per
   request basis.  In such applications the service quality required
   will be further diversified.  For example, the customers for non-
   essential use cases can be allocated non-guaranteed service
   connection, and the control system applications will be given the
   guaranteed service.

3.2.  Connected Sensors and Actuators

   Industrial systems operate in specific conditions and therefore, are
   challenging to manage and operate.  Requirements such as connectivity
   among devices vary from industry to industry.  For example, an
   automobile plant may require lower latency for its robots dedicated
   for assembly than a solar farm sending its readings to a control
   center.



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 6]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   Another nuance in the Industry control systems relate to type of end-
   points and the type of traffic between the end-points.  The data
   traffic essentially carry instructions that cause machines or
   equipments to move and do things within or at a specific time.
   Moreover, there is little to no context as a session between the two
   endpoints.

   One end in such systems is a controlling entity and other two are the
   sensors and actuators.  Both the actuators and sensors do not perform
   decision making tasks.  The controller has those responsibilities.

   The packets delivered from the controller are the actionable
   instructions to actuating device and largely fit into a single
   packet.  Also, the data exchange is peer to peer between the
   controller and the field-device.

   This forwards to challenge when a single sensor or actuator can
   essentially convey the outdated data to the controller, resulting in
   the wrong readings.  Secondly, the IoTs applications themselves may
   have diverse QoS requirements.  For example, robots working in
   automobile factory may have different QoS requirement than the robots
   working in a solar farm.

      NOTE: I removed malfunctioning because network can not do anything
      if the endpoint is misbehaving.

3.3.  Limitations and Complexities

3.3.1.  High Precision Data Delivery

   Large control systems, such as energy grid and V2X depend upon the
   data from the field devices.  The data is essential for smooth
   operation of the field devices.  If the data is somehow delayed, it
   will convey the wrong and useless information to the control system.
   It is important that the data generated by the field devices are
   timely and must contain the timestamp or some other notion of timing
   service to ensure the validity of the data.

3.3.2.  Computational Abilities

   Control systems would benefit from the use of sophisticated compute
   power.  This allows them to build complex sequences of commands to
   co-ordinate between different machine operations.  This creates a
   requirement to place controllers at the edge or in the cloud where
   advanced software techniques are feasible.  However, field devices
   themselves are not involved in the decision making, thus requiring an
   interface from the edge/cloud controllers to the field devices.




Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 7]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


3.3.3.  Use of AI/ML Technologies

      NOTE: Role of AI in prediction of supply-chain, maintenance
      planning.

   Future control networks are required to be AI-enabled.  Using
   prediction algorithms the control systems will be able to make
   predictions about the health and maintenance of the network.

   Therefore, future control network systems must support AI/ML
   technologies to enable autonomous maintenance and operations tasks.
   For example, in a smart grid, thousands of devices will be installed.
   Using AI/ML algorithms the control centre should be able to predict
   the health of the devices and create alerts when the maintenance is
   due.  Using AI algorithms, the control network should be able to
   order the required tools for maintenance without any delay and even
   before the system stopped working.

   The use of AI in control systems leads to previously mentioned
   Section 3.3.2 capability.  The output of AI models may request
   dynamic unplanned changes to the processes causing changes to traffic
   volume or latency sensitivities.

3.3.4.  Cyber-Security Threats

   Control networks such as energy grids are prone to cyber threats.
   These systems manage hundreds and thousands of field devices,
   controlled by a control system.  Two main types of attacks are
   possible in the large networks such as energy grids:

   *  Passive Attacks: In these types of attacks adversary learn about
      the network through the data generated by the field devices.
      Typically, data is not changed or modified by the adversary in
      this situation and the motive of an adversary is merely to get the
      internal information of the system.

   *  Active Attacks: In Active Attacks, the adversary tempers (e.g.,
      modify, replay) with data.  The adversary, in this case, has some
      access to the devices that allows them to harm the system.  For
      example, the adversary can send the incorrect readings to the
      control system believing the system is working well even if there
      are system errors.  In another example, the adversary can make the
      field devices send large data bursts to the control system causing
      denial-of-service.  Some examples of active attacks are man-in-
      the-middle attacks and flooding.






Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 8]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   Since control systems are far more critical and changes in their
   behavior can potentially be catastrophic or large-scale outages.
   Therefore, every packet in control networks towards actuators/sensors
   should be verifiable and secured against either type of above
   mentioned attacks.

4.  Motivation (Problem Statement)

   Scenarios described in [FACTORY], [ENERGY-GRIDS], and [V2X-UC] are
   only representative scenarios, but they all require automation and
   autonomous decision making and execution of control logic over the
   networks with special capabilities to produce desired outcomes and
   results.  Such a well-defined special-purpose network can minimize
   need for proprietary approaches (which is the current norm),
   integrate heterogeneous controlled environments into a single
   application domain to leverage cloud-native technologies.

   These special-purpose networks are referred to as Operations and
   Control Network's (OCN).  The OCNs need to support capabilities and
   functions that closely emulate process-automation.  For example,
   closed-control of feedback loops, open-control loops, instructions to
   machines, collecting sampled and absolute data.

   Furthermore, Modern paradigms such as distributed ledger technology
   (DLT) may be leveraged on top of the OCNs to validate success of
   operations performed.  DLTs will enable automation, transparency and
   accountability among different stakeholders in industrial systems to
   improve overall security in control systems.  In a typical industrial
   network, several key players are likely to be involved, for example,
   vendors and service providers.  Using smart contracts (a distributed
   ledger-based software code), the agreements and dealings between
   these stakeholders are recorded and executed automatically.

5.  Requirements

   The requirements mentioned emerge from the study of differences
   between the general-purpose networking paradigm and OCN.  Each of the
   characteristic in control system lead to a requirement in the
   network.

   Similar to the mechanisms that Internet technologies deploy to
   support a large variety of applications, OCNs will be required to
   support control loops with different type of message delivery
   constraints.  This may include latency as low as 5ms (e.g. in
   substations, energy grid), 10 ms in factory floors.

   The requirements mentioned below considers communication between the
   three key components - sensors, actuators and their controllers.



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                 [Page 9]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


5.1.  Control Loops

   The performance of a control system is characterized by the success
   of associated one or more requests.  These requests are sensitive to
   when the command actually executes, in effect the expectation from
   the networks is to be aware of the latency constraints.

   The process automation requires that several instructions are
   executed in order.  Not all field devices are capable of remembering
   past actions.  For example, an actuator upon receiving a function
   code will mmediately perform correspondig action.  Therefore, it is
   the responsibility of network and controller to ensure that behavior
   of the sensor and actuator follows the expectations of applications.

   For several such applications the knowledge of a successful operation
   is equally critical, therefore, getting the response back in
   specified time is required, leading to knowledge of timing.

5.2.  Traffic distribution

   *  Well-engineered behavior: Control systems are well-engineered.
      Each OCN application knows how, when and where the commands will
      be executed, including the sequence which will be followed (under
      normal conditions) and the periodicity of sensors.  Random spikes
      in traffic will generally be characterized as an abnormal
      behavior.  The networks are required to observe and report such
      anomalies by recognizing unexpected traffic changes.

   *  Ordering: As mentioned in Section 5.1 out of delivery not
      tolerated and at the same time, field-devices are not equipped to
      run sophisticated transport protocols.  Therefore, networks are
      required to support ordering.

   *  Per-packet expectations: unlike internet applications where
      performance is managed on the flow basis. the instructions for the
      most cases are self-contained therefore, the flow-based techniques
      of policing, buffering and identification do not apply.

   *  Congestion Control: While congestion can be tolerated in general-
      purpose networks on end nodes, OCN packets can not be delayed.
      Therefore, alternatives to priority based and end-point based
      scheduling and delivery methods are necessary.









Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 10]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


5.3.  High Precision Requirements

   Not only that different scenarios have different constraints, even
   commands with in an application have different time requirements.
   Moreover, different types of latencies are feasible for different
   commands such as certain actions must happen at a clock time, or in a
   bounded time , or before a specific time, or periodically.

   In the internet application, with human in the loop tolerance is much
   higher with buffers on endpoints can be upto 100ms depending on the
   application.  Whereas per scenarios in Energy grid [ENERGY-GRIDS]
   latency ranges between 5 to 30 ms.

5.4.  Safety and Reliability

      TODO: how do you guarantee that each operation has correct
      execution.  TODO: what are requirements of safety.

   Industrial systems depend on several components: field devices,
   communication channel and control center all contribute to the
   operations.  If any of these components are not performing correctly,
   the whole system can be compromised.

   The control center must get the correct data from the field devices
   and vise versa.  This includes that the field devices are performing
   in the right conditions.

   Industrial systems must ensure that all the components (i.e., field
   devices, communication channel and the control center) within the
   control network are secured and sending only reliable data.  If the
   data is tempered somehow, or the devices are not performing as
   expected, the fault must be isolated without any delay.

      Note: this section can be improved.

5.5.  Communication model

   In Operation and Control Networks, choosing a right communication
   model is important.  For example, a smart grid OCN model can help to
   prevent the energy waste and store surplus energy in the distributed
   storage nodes.

   Typically, field devices (sensors and actuators) may send the data to
   the controller in two ways:

   *  Point-to-Point (unidirectional): a field device (e.g., car sensor,
      current transformer actuator) is connected to the controller
      directly and sending/receiving data directly.



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 11]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   *  Relayed communication: a field devices does not have direct
      connectivity to/from the controller and using intermediate devices
      for the communication.

   Operation and Control network advocates the point-to-point
   communication between a field device and the controller, at least
   logically so that the requirements between them are explicit and the
   same with or without the networks.

5.6.  Connectivity Architecture

   The connectivity is hierarchical as covered in [PLC-VIRT].  Data
   flows in particular centralized manner using ICA model.  In this
   document the need for a distributed architecture and virtualization s
   also discussed.

   The high level representative communication model is depicted in
   Figure 1.

                 <-- Applications -->
                   ================
                    /            \
            +-----------+      +------------+
            | controller|      | controller |
            |     A     |      |     N      |
            +-----------+      +------------+
             /      \                |
            /        \               |
           /          \              |
        +------+   +---------+   +---------+
        |sensor|   | actuator|   | actuator|
        | FD1  |   |  FD2    |   |  FDNx   |
        +------+   +---------+   +---------+

              Figure 1: Generalised communication model of OCN

   Control systems have specific data flow.  A field/remote device
   sends/receives both continuous (e.g., temperature readings) and
   bursty data (e.g., camera's visual feeds) to/from the controller.
   For example, an autonomous vehicle will be in communication with the
   controller to get the weather and the route data Figure 1.  On the
   other hand the vehicle will also be sending the field information
   (e.g., GPS info) to the controller.

   Field devices such as sensors and actuators have no computational
   power.  This means if the connection with the control centre cannot
   be established between a device and the control centre they cannot
   make routing decisions.  Consequently, the device cannot send/receive



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 12]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   important control information.  To that end, all the devices must
   have connectivity among themselves to act as a rely on other devices,
   in such a situations.

   Operational and control networks (OCN) should not allow packet loss,
   for some commands.  Therefore, an important consideration here is
   that the OCNs should provide resources such as bandwidth, preferred
   scheduling or alternate path to accommodate for the traffic in the
   region.

5.7.  Accountability

   Operation and control networks are delay intolerant and communication
   channels may suffer from errors causing packet loss and jitter.  This
   means that if the QoS is affected due to any reason, the original
   cause must be known and the responsible party must be held
   accountable.  The reason due QoS change does not need to be the
   operator or service provider.  It is also possible that the devices
   or the controller may malfunction.  Therefore, accountability is of
   paramount requirement in OCN.

   To this end, smart contracts [SMART] like solutions may be beneficial
   in OCN.  Smart contracts are auto-executable software codes that
   executes on some certain predefined conditions.  All the time-
   sensitive and delay-intolerant applications in OCN record the data
   through smart contracts.  Penalty clauses in smart contracts will get
   executed and the responsible party will be held accountable.

      TODO: Do we need details how the blockchain and smart contracts
      will be part of OCN?

   In the example of an energy grid (Figure 2) data about the
   availability of bulk energy will be passed on to the transmission
   grid.  Similarly the usage information will be passed on to the
   distribution center and transmission to know the exact usage of the
   energy.

   +----------------+   +----------------+   +--------------+  +------+
   |                |   |                |   |              |  |Smart |
   |Bulk Generation |----  Transmission  |---| Distribution |--|Meter |
   +----------------+   +----------------+   +--------------+  +------+

                                  Figure 2

   The transmission model is generally in peer-to-peer, that is, a
   control center is in communication with the field device and vise
   versa.  The high level communication model is depicted in Figure 1.




Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 13]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   Industrial system operations are based on service delivery.  The
   field-devices send the field data to the controller.  The controller
   uses this data to make decisions such as temperature increase/
   decrease in a factory or changing engine fluid levels.  This data is
   also sent to the control centre which uses this information to make
   long-term decisions such as keeping track of production costs.

   If this data is corrupted or damaged due to any (malicious or non-
   malicious) reasons, the whole chain of decisions can be affected.
   Therefore, the data sent by the field-devices must be accurate.  If
   for any reason the data is not accurate, the exact reason for the
   inaccuracy and the party at fault should be identified.

   Similarly, in OCN, applications execute operations on the field-
   devices to extract data through northbound interfaces.  The data from
   the field devices may have sensitive information such as the
   vehicle's location, if this information is compromised by the
   application, the privacy of the vehicle can be jeopardised.

   To this end, OCN may enable accountability through smart contracts.
   The applications which require extracting data from field-devices
   must run a smart contract to request access to the field-devices.  In
   such a way the party, in fact accessing the field-devices will have
   to be recorded by the smart contract and will be held accountable, if
   any wrongdoing happens.

6.  State of the Art

   There have been several mechanisms to provide network support for
   control systems, a large number of them being proprietary approaches.
   In this section we discuss a few prominent ones.

      Note: TODO - comprehensive gaps

   Original communication technologies are field bus technologies.  They
   achieve guarantees associated with time by using serial bus
   protocols.  Over last several decades of industry automation, many
   different serial bus protocols have been designed to address
   different use cases.  The options used to harmonize these protocols
   are designed from the application perspective at a high layer.  The
   issues concerning time-requirements, safety, reliability are not
   seamlessly integrated. see [ADDRESS] for more details.

   Even as transition to Ethernet is taking place, there is no common
   mechanism.  There are real-time Ethernet, Profinet and TSN based
   approaches available.  Time-Sensitive Networking standard provides
   guarantees of time in network services and also methods to mitigate
   packet losses.  Due to their property of determinism, they are ideal



Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 14]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   for control systems.  In spite of their origins and popularity in
   Ethernet, an obvious challenge is the inter-connection of different
   TSNs, since as the scale and geographical expansion of use cases
   occur, mechanisms will be necessary to connect two islands of TSNs.
   In this regard, OCN maybe a TSN or a network that interconnects two
   TSNs while preserving all its properties.

   DETNET [RFC9023] has been actively looking into providing TSN type
   services in the network layer.  The DetNet provides congestion and
   service protection along the path of a DetNet flow [RFC9016].  The
   DetNet flows provide bounded latency, low jitter and low packet loss
   and in-order delivery [DETNET-PRIMER].  It addresses requirements for
   scaling and distance using layer 3 networks.  Detnet provides a
   network that could fulfill the control system requirements to an
   extent.  Several control systems are not flow-centric due to command
   response structure.  Each request is self-contained and not
   necessarily carry the notion of flows.

   Besides, above examples, protocol development work related to end-to-
   end IP in constrained nodes over [IEEE802.15.4], ITU-T [G9959]
   Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) type of media is progressing.  Protocols
   have been developed to support IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal
   Area Networks (6LoWPAN) [RFC6282] [RFC6775] [RFC4944], CoAP
   ([RFC7252]).  These have been involved with the handling of
   constrained, low bandwidth, low memory, battery-powered devices.  A
   large portion of IoT work is focused on the consumer side devices to
   support IPv6 based stack over different media (primarily wireless or
   radio).  In constrained networks, the time related functions are
   handled through message priorities, which may not always produce
   desired outcome.  OCNs can be positioned to complement this work into
   corresponding network support and overcome the gaps in the Industrial
   IoT as discussed in [ADDRESS] and [PLC-VIRT].

   The diversity of the above work and solutions demonstrates that a
   common model and a common interface is needed to make smooth
   transition from local operations to distributed multi-stakeholder use
   of control system.

7.  Security Considerations

   TODO Security

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no IANA actions.

9.  References




Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 15]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


9.1.  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/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4944]  Montenegro, G., Kushalnagar, N., Hui, J., and D. Culler,
              "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4
              Networks", RFC 4944, DOI 10.17487/RFC4944, September 2007,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4944>.

   [RFC6282]  Hui, J., Ed. and P. Thubert, "Compression Format for IPv6
              Datagrams over IEEE 802.15.4-Based Networks", RFC 6282,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6282, September 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6282>.

   [RFC6775]  Shelby, Z., Ed., Chakrabarti, S., Nordmark, E., and C.
              Bormann, "Neighbor Discovery Optimization for IPv6 over
              Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPANs)",
              RFC 6775, DOI 10.17487/RFC6775, November 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6775>.

   [RFC7252]  Shelby, Z., Hartke, K., and C. Bormann, "The Constrained
              Application Protocol (CoAP)", RFC 7252,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7252, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7252>.

   [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/rfc/rfc8174>.

   [RFC9016]  Varga, B., Farkas, J., Cummings, R., Jiang, Y., and D.
              Fedyk, "Flow and Service Information Model for
              Deterministic Networking (DetNet)", RFC 9016,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9016, March 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9016>.

   [RFC9023]  Varga, B., Ed., Farkas, J., Malis, A., and S. Bryant,
              "Deterministic Networking (DetNet) Data Plane: IP over
              IEEE 802.1 Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN)", RFC 9023,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC9023, June 2021,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9023>.

9.2.  Informative References






Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 16]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   [ADDRESS]  Makhijani, K. and L. Dong, "Requirements and Scenarios for
              Industry Internet Addressing", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-km-industrial-internet-requirements-00, 10
              June 2021, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              km-industrial-internet-requirements-00>.

   [DETNET-PRIMER]
              Varga, B., Farkas, J., Fedyk, D., Berger, L., and D.
              Brungard, "The Quick and the Dead: The Rise of
              Deterministic Networks", January 2021,
              <https://www.comsoc.org/publications/ctn/quick-and-dead-
              rise-deterministic-networks>.

   [ENERGY-GRIDS]
              "Networks for Operating Energy Grids", n.d.,
              <https://kiranmak.github.io/draft-km-energygrid>.

   [FACTORY]  "https://kiranmak.github.io/draft-iotops-iiot-frwk", n.d.,
              <TODO Add smart-factory Networks - Use case>.

   [G9959]    "Short range narrow-band digital radiocommunication
              transceivers - PHY, MAC, SAR and LLC layer specifications.
              ITU-T Recommendation G.9959", January 2015,
              <http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.9959>.

   [IEEE802.15.4]
              "IEEE Standard for Low-Rate Wireless Networks",
              IEEE standard, DOI 10.1109/ieeestd.2016.7460875, n.d.,
              <https://doi.org/10.1109/ieeestd.2016.7460875>.

   [MODEL]    "Operations and Control Networks - Reference Model and
              Taxonomy", n.d., <https://kiranmak.github.io/draft-kmak-
              ocn/draft-km-intarea-ocn.html>.

   [NREL-ESI] "Transient and Dynamic Stability Analysis", n.d.,
              <https://www.nrel.gov/grid/transient-dynamic-
              stability.html>.

   [NREL-REPORT]
              Miller, N.W., Shao, M., Pajic, S., D'Aquila, R., and K.
              Clark, "Western Wind and Solar Integration Study Phase 3 –
              Frequency Response and Transient Stability: Executive
              Summary", January 2014,
              <https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/62906-ES.pdf>.







Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 17]

Internet-Draft         ocn problems & requirements             July 2022


   [PLC-VIRT] Makhijani, K. and L. Dong, "Virtualization of PLC in
              Industrial Networks - Problem Statement", Work in
              Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-km-iotops-iiot-frwk-02, 5
              March 2022, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              km-iotops-iiot-frwk-02>.

   [SMART]    Faisal, T., Maesa, D. D. F., Sastry, N., Mangiante, S.,
              and ACM, "AJIT", DOI 10.1145/3411043.3412506,
              <http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3411043.3412506>.

   [V2X-UC]   Dong, L., Li, R., and J. Hong, "Use Case of Remote Driving
              and its Network Requirements", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-dong-remote-driving-usecase-00, 27 June 2022,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-dong-remote-
              driving-usecase-00>.

Acknowledgments

   TODO acknowledge.

Authors' Addresses

   Tooba Faisal
   King's College London
   Email: tooba.hashmi@gmail.com


   Diego Lopez
   Telefonica I+D
   Email: diego.r.lopez@telefonica.com


   José A. Ordóñez Lucena
   Telefonica
   Ronda de la Comunicacion, s/n Sur-3 building, 3rd floor
   Madrid
   Spain
   Email: joseantonio.ordonezlucena@telefonica.com


   Kiran Makhijani
   Futurewei
   Email: kiran.ietf@gmail.com








Faisal, et al.           Expires 3 January 2023                [Page 18]