NFV: FROM REQUIREMENTS TO

IMPLEMENTATION A USE CASE

Evangelos Haleplidis (ehalep@ece.upatras.gr) FIA Athens 2014

Thursday 20/3/2014

2/18

LTE

3/18

Questions / Motivation

Can we apply SDN concepts in the EPC Core?

Separate Control/Data Plane

Proof of concept: Use ForCES on the PGW

Motivation:

Scale PGW

Ability to add functionality as LFBs wherever possible.

Chain LFBs to perform new services.

E.g. Firewall/DPI LFBs to the PGW

Remain compatible with 3GPPs standards

4/18

Simplified PGW viewpoint

PGW

SGW

Policy Cloud

PGW - D

PGW - C

Internet

GTP-C

GTP-U

ForCES

Separate PGW control/datapath

Current focus:

Create tunneling endpoints for

connection with Internet

Both for SGW & PGW

Collect usage statistics

5/18

Network Element (NE)

Control Plane

ForCES Framework

Control

Element (CE) Control

Element (CE) Control

Element (CE)

Forwarding Plane

Forwarding

Element (FE) Forwarding

Element (FE) Forwarding

Element (FE)

ForCES protocol

Network Element (NE)

Packet Processing Entity

Constitutes of CEs & FEs

Multiple CEs to FEs for HA

CEs/FEs Physical or Virtual

NE components distributed

Local (within one box)

Geographical distributed

(LAN/WAN/Internet)

6/18

Forwarding Element (FE)

ForCES model - 1

Control

Element (CE)

LFB1 LFB2

LFB3 LFB4

LFB3

LFB4

Model FEs using Logical Functional Blocks.

Fine grained operations

Hardware/Software

Physical/Virtual

FE - graph of LFBs

Graph can be dynamic if supported by implementation

Model Object-oriented approach Classes

Instances

Etc

P: Packet

M: Metadata

P P+M

ForCES

7/18

LFB Definition

ForCES model - 2

LFB Model defined in XML

Datatype definition

C-like datatypes

Atomic

uint16, uint32

string

boolean

etc

Compound

Struct

Arrays

Alias

Building blocks for custom-defined datatypes.

Components

Capabilities

Events

Datatypes definition

8/18

ForCES Protocol

Protocol Layer

(ForCES protocol)

Transport Layer

(SCTP)

Protocol Layer

(ForCES protocol)

Transport Layer

(SCTP)

CE

FE

Protocol & Transport Layer

ForCES

Base ForCES semantics and encapsulation (RFC 5810)

Two phases:

Pre-association

Post-association

Transport depends on underlying media. One is

standardized (RFC 5812) others expected to be

Standardized TML: SCTP with strict priority schedule

High Priority (HP): Strictly reliable channel

Medium Priority (MP): Semi-reliable

Low Priority (LP): Unreliable channel

HP MP LP

9/18

ForCES Protocol (con.)

Protocol Layer

(ForCES protocol)

Transport Layer

(SCTP)

Protocol Layer

(ForCES protocol)

Transport Layer

(SCTP)

CE

FE

Simple Verbs (Model elements are nouns)

Set/Get/Del

Set/Get Properties (for properties & events)

Message Acknowledgment

Always/Never/On Failure/On success

Transactional capability (2 Phase Commit)

Various Execution modes

Execute all or none

Execute till failure

Execute on failure

Scalability

Batching

Command pipeline

Security

IPSec

Traffic Sensitive Heartbeating

High Availability

Hot/Cold Standby

ForCES

10/18

Releasing ForCES

ForCES has a potential to be used where separation is required.

Besides datapath management

Wired Device management (Up/Down)

Change device functionality (if device is capable)

Wireless Channel selection

SSID management

Adjust RF parameters

Access Control

LTE Management of devices (from base stations to backbone) from a

central location

11/18

PGW Tunnel Endpoint Semantics

Each Tunnel Endpoint distinct by:

UE IP Address

Tunnel Endpoint Source IP Address

Tunnel Endpoint Destination IP Address

Tunnel Endpoint Source TEID

Tunnel Endpoint Destination TEID

12/18

PGW Tunnel Statistics Semantics

Statistic Per Tunnel:

Bytes In

Bytes Out

Packets In

Packets Out

Statistics Per Flow (Flow characteristics)

IP Source

IP Destination

TCP/UDP Source port

TCP/UDP Destination port

IP Protocol Type

13/18

Demo prototype architecture

GTPvU

In/Out

(SGW)

Host 2

(Internet) Host 1

(UE)

GTPvU

In/Out

(PGW)

PGW - C

GTPv1-U

SGW - C

ForCES

IP IP

App creating tunnels/collect stats

14/18

PGW Prototype Implementation

PGW - D

PGW - C

ForCES

Port LFB GTP-U

LFB Port LFB

15/18

Use case - 1

PGW - D

PGW - C

ForCES

Port LFB

GTP-U

Encap

Port LFB GTP-U

Decap

1

P

2

P

3

P

4

P

P: GTP-U encapsulated packet

P : Initial Packet

16/18

Use case - 2

PGW - D

PGW - C

ForCES

Port LFB

GTP-U

Encap

Port LFB GTP-U

Decap

4

P

3

P

2

P

1

P

P: GTP-U encapsulated packet

P : Initial Packet

17/18

Demo Sequence

1. VM start-up

2. Initialize PGW/SGW

3. Create Tunnel Endpoints for Hosts

4. See traffic flow

5. Collect statistics

Per UE

Per UE/Flow

18/18

NFV & ForCES

Virtual Infrastructure

Manager

ForCES

Infrastructure

Manager

App

Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) Infrastructure

Hardware Resources

Virtualization Layer

Virtual Resources

Linux ForCES HyperVisor

LFB

Virtualized Functions

VNF PGW-D LFB

EMS PGW-C

App

VNF SGW-D LFB

VNF Manager(s)

Orchestrator

ForCES CE App

(CEM)

ForCES CE App

(FEM)

NFV Management and

Orchestration

Service, VNF and

Infrastructure Description

ForCES Model

FEM

LFB

OSS/BSS

Se-Ma

Ve-Vnfm

Nf-Vi

Or-Vnfm

Or-Vi

Vi-Vnfm

Os-Ma

Vn-Nf

EMS SGW-C

App

Networking Compute

x32, x64, ARM

SDN LFBs

Vi-Ha