Internet DRAFT - draft-yang-apn-sd-wan-usecase
draft-yang-apn-sd-wan-usecase
Network Working Group F. Yang
Internet-Draft W. Cheng
Intended status: Informational China Mobile
Expires: 23 April 2023 S. Peng
Z. Li
Huawei
20 October 2022
Usage scenarios of Application-aware Networking (APN) for SD-WAN
draft-yang-apn-sd-wan-usecase-06
Abstract
This document describes the usage of Application-aware Networking
(APN) in SD-WAN scenarios. In these scenarios, APN is able to
identify a application group, steer its traffic flows along explicit
path across the network, and provide SLA guaranteed network services
such as low latency and high reliability.
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.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 23 April 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Usage Scenarios of APN for SD-WAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. APN for Traffic Steering into Dedicated WAN . . . . . . . 3
2.2. APN for Traffic Steering into Particular Cloud . . . . . 3
2.3. APN for Value-added Service Provisioning in SD-WAN . . . 4
2.4. APN for Data Processing in SD-WAN . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. APN with SRv6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. APN with In-Flow OAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. APN with Intention based Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. APN for bandwidth utilization optimization . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Business Model of APN enhanced SD-WAN . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
As more and more applications are moved to the cloud, the traditional
WAN architecture starts facing challenges. Software-defined Wide
Area Network (SD-WAN) provides a cloud-friendly way of
interconnecting branch offices and applications in the cloud over any
combination of transport services such as MPLS and 4G LTE, which is
able to optimising application performance with low costs.
Application-aware Networking (APN) is introduced in
[I-D.li-apn-framework] and [I-D.li-apn-problem-statement-usecases].
APN conveys application-aware information (i.e. APN attribute) along
data packets traversing across the APN domain and facilitate fine-
granularity network service provisioning and guarantee their SLA
requirements. The ever-emerging network services such as network
slicing and IOAM can be further enhanced with APN.
This document describes the usage scenarios of APN for SD-WAN.
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2. Usage Scenarios of APN for SD-WAN
In large-scale networks, SD-WAN needs to classify traffic by
application, user, and destination address, and impose different
policies to meet diverse application needs. This is usually
classified according to 5-tuple, because different users and
applications are discrete in IP address and TCP/UDP port, the
configuration work is heavy, and it is difficult to maintain. APN is
a potential technology that can transform these discrete nonlinear
information into linear information to simplify the complexity of
policy matching. This section describes the scenarios that can use
APN to meet the fine-granularity service operations in SD-WAN.
2.1. APN for Traffic Steering into Dedicated WAN
In CPE, different application groups are identified based on the
existing information in the packet header, and APN attribute is added
to the packets along with the tunnel encapsulation. Then the traffic
flows can be steered into different WANs that can guarantee their
corresponding SLA requirements.
+------+ +-----------+ +------+
| APP1 | /------| WAN1 |------\ | APP1 |
+------+ / +-----------+ \ +------+
+------+ +-------+ +-----------+ +--------+ +------+
| APP2 |-----| CPE |------| WAN2 |------| CPE |-----| APP2 |
+------+ +-------+ +-----------+ +--------+ +------+
+------+ \ +-----------+ / +------+
| APP3 | \------| WAN3 |------/ | APP3 |
+------+ +-----------+ +------+
Figure 1: Traffic Steering into WAN
2.2. APN for Traffic Steering into Particular Cloud
In the multi-cloud scenario, a CPE can be deployed by an enterprise
as its gateway to access different clouds. In the CPE (e.g. an
universial CPE, called uCPE), different application groups can be
identified based on the existing information in the packet header,
and APN attribute is added to the packets along with the tunnel
encapsulation. The traffic flows are steered into the corresponding
cloud where the application servers are running through the
corresponding WANs.
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+------+ +-----------+ +----------+
| APP1 | /---------| WAN1 |-----| Cloud1 |
+------+ / +-----------+ +----------+
+------+ +--------+ +-----------+ +----------+
| APP2 |-----| CPE |-----| WAN2 |-----| Cloud2 |
+------+ +--------+ +-----------+ +----------+
+------+ \ +-----------+ +----------+
| APP3 | \---------| WAN3 |-----| Cloud3 |
+------+ +-----------+ +----------+
Figure 2: Traffic Steering into Cloud
2.3. APN for Value-added Service Provisioning in SD-WAN
APN can faciliate the value-added service provisioning in SD-WAN,
either at the CPE or the POP.
At the CPE, network security and application acceleration services
can be provided. With APN, certain malicious traffic can be
identified and blocked, while the traffic that requires acceleration
can be steered through the acceleration service.
At the POP, value-added service can be provisioned for certain
application groups according to the APN attribute carried in their
packets.
+------------+
|POP(VAS/SFC)|
+------------+
|
+-----+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +-----+
| APP |----|CPE(VAS/SFC)|-----| WAN |-----|CPE(VAS/SFC)|-----| APP |
+-----+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +-----+
Figure 3: VAS Provisioning
2.4. APN for Data Processing in SD-WAN
In enterprise, usually important data is kept locally and it is
preferred to be processed locally, while other data can be processed
with the complex processing capabilities in the cloud.
With APN, the traffic can be steered according to the localization
characteristics of the data, either being processed locally or in the
cloud.
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+------+ +-------+ +------------+ +------------------+
| Data |-----| CPE |-----| WAN |-----| Cloud (Computing)|
+------+ +-------+ +------------+ +------------------+
\
\ +---------------------------+
--- | Local DC (Data Processing)|
+---------------------------+
Figure 4: Data Processing
3. APN with SRv6
By carrying the APN attribute (including APN ID and APN parameters)
through data packets, i.e., the delivery of application-aware
information and ensuring the security and reliability of application-
aware information, the network senses the application groups'
requirements and provides high-quality differentiated services
according to the demand of the applications. And when the network
transmits the data packets, it matches the network correspondence
policy according to the APN attribute in the data packets and selects
the corresponding SRv6 path to transmit the data packets (e.g., low
latency path) to meet the SLA requirements and service chain in order
to improve the service quality.
+------+ +-----------+ +------+
| APP1 | /-----| SRv6 path1|-----\ | APP1 |
+------+ / +-----------+ \ +------+
+------+ +-------+ +-----------+ +--------+ +------+
| APP2 |---| CPE |----| SRv6 path2|---| CPE |---| APP2 |
+------+ +-------+ +-----------+ +--------+ +------+
+------+ \ +-----------+ / +------+
| APP3 | \-----| SRv6 path3|-----/ | APP3 |
+------+ +-----------+ +------+
Figure 5: SRv6 enabled SD-WAN
4. APN with In-Flow OAM
SD-WAN needs to guarantee the experience of critical applications,
and APNs can be used to carry application information to
differentiate between different application traffic. At the same
time, it is necessary to conduct end-to-end application-level network
quality awareness to achieve closed-loop control of network quality.
SD-WAN uses Overlay to establish connectivity, which enable flow
classification with APN, and work with In-Flow OAM detection to
identify critical applications from thousands of streams, thus
simplifying network quality assurance technology complexity for
critical applications.
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5. APN with Intention based Policy
By using APNs to identify services, SD-WAN can relate global policies
to user service. This allows SD-WAN to automatically enforce
performance goals and access security for users, regardless of their
location. By identifying and sensing the service type, the global
policy automatically selects a path for the service, such as
Internet, to offload bandwidth-hungry services to the lower-cost
Internet. Based on the global policy, rather than the network
architecture, decisions can be made on how to isolate between
endpoints, applications, and the cloud. Global policies also can be
visualized and changed in real time to achieve sustainable trust as
the network evolves.
6. APN for bandwidth utilization optimization
Bandwidth resource scheduling needs to perceive bandwidth consumption
from a high level rather than a fine-grained application perspective.
Using APN, a group of applications with the same characteristics can
be aggregated into an application group, which is convenient to
analyze the bandwidth resource occupation of the application group,
so as to optimize network bandwidth utilization and application QoE.
7. Business Model of APN enhanced SD-WAN
With the digital transformation, the network infrastructure and
cloud-based applications are emerging as an integrated service of
network operators to provide a complete solution to customer. As an
overlay technology, SD-WAN is able to simplify the network and make
it more service-focused, which has become the de facto option for the
Enterprise WAN Edge. SD-WAN enables the network service providers to
reshape their network to provide more complex products to meet
customers' various requirements.
When SD-WAN is integrated with APN, service providers are able to
provide network services together with cloud services in a fine-
granularity SaaS-like model. The latest functionalities can be
delivered via cloud. Customers benefit from the pay-for-use model in
per application granularity and have the agility to adjust the level
of functionality, capability, and capacity. According to the APN
attribute carried by the packets, corresponding paths/WANs can be
selected, the SLA can be guaranteed, and value-added services can be
provisioned.
8. Security Considerations
The security consideration can refer to [I-D.li-apn-framework] .
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9. IANA Considerations
There are no IANA considerations in this document.
10. Normative References
[I-D.li-6man-app-aware-ipv6-network]
Li, Z., Peng, S., Li, C., Xie, C., Voyer, D., Li, X., Liu,
P., Cao, C., and K. Ebisawa, "Application-aware IPv6
Networking (APN6) Encapsulation", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-li-6man-app-aware-ipv6-network-03,
22 February 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-
li-6man-app-aware-ipv6-network-03.txt>.
[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-06, 30 September 2022,
<https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-li-apn-framework-
06.txt>.
[I-D.li-apn-problem-statement-usecases]
Li, Z., Peng, S., Voyer, D., Xie, C., Liu, P., Qin, Z.,
and G. S. Mishra, "Problem Statement and Use Cases of
Application-aware Networking (APN)", Work in Progress,
Internet-Draft, draft-li-apn-problem-statement-usecases-
07, 30 September 2022, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/
draft-li-apn-problem-statement-usecases-07.txt>.
[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>.
Authors' Addresses
Feng Yang
China Mobile
Beijing
China
Email: yangfeng@chinamobile.com
Weiqiang Cheng
China Mobile
Beijing
China
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Email: chengweiqiang@chinamobile.com
Shuping Peng
Huawei
Beijing
China
Email: pengshuping@huawei.com
Zhenbin Li
Huawei
Beijing
China
Email: lizhenbin@huawei.com
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