2021 is the first year of the mainland's "14th Five-Year Plan", the Central Cyberspace Administration of China issued the "Notice on Accelerating the Promotion of the Deployment and Application of the Sixth Edition of the Internet Protocol (IPv6)" in July, pointing out that the "14th Five-Year Plan" period is an important strategic opportunity period for accelerating digital development, building a network power and digital China, with comprehensively promoting IPv6 technology innovation and integrated application as the main line, with improving the breadth and depth of application as the main direction of attack, and realizing the transformation of IPv6 scale deployment and application from available to easy to use. From quantity to quality, from external promotion to endogenous drive, to create new advantages in innovation and development, to provide solid support for the construction of a network power and digital China.
China Unicom conscientiously implements the relevant policies of the state to promote the large-scale deployment of IPv6, and actively promotes the innovation work related to "IPv6+" on the basis of the extensive deployment of IPv6 across the network. "IPv6+" technology includes a series of protocol and technological innovations represented by SRv6 network programming, network slicing, current-on detection (iFIT), emerging multicast (BIERv6), business chain (SFC), deterministic network (DetNet) and sensory application network (APN), which are divided into three stages according to the maturity of technical standards. "IPv6+" 1.0 introduces SRv6 network programming capabilities based on IPv6, which can provide VPNs, FRR and other features in IPv6 networks. "IPv6+" 2.0 is based on "IPv6+" 1.0, in view of the new service and new function requirements in the 5G and cloud era, further expanding a series of technological innovations such as SFC and BIERv6. "IPv6+" 3.0 includes APN6, CFN and other technologies. At present, China Unicom has deployed the application of "IPv6+" 1.0 in Beijing, Xiong'an, the Greater Bay Area and other places, and has carried out a series of innovative practices in combination with "IPv6+" 2.0 and "IPv6+" 3.0 related technologies.
"IPv6+" empowers the construction of a comprehensive bearer private network for the Beijing Winter Olympics
As the official and only communication partner of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (hereinafter referred to as the "Beijing Winter Olympics"), China Unicom has been thinking about how to build an Olympic private network with simple and advanced technology, safe and reliable services and rich applications from the planning stage of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games communication services, providing the best experience for all parties to host, participate in and watch the games, and actively promote the debut of the "IPv6+" series of new technologies on the Olympic field to fully display the latest development results of China's communications industry.
The Beijing Winter Olympics will require a variety of network communication services, including shared Internet, Internet dedicated lines, and "media +" services, around three competition areas in the two regions, 87 Olympic venues, and around multiple traffic arteries between Beijing and Zhangjiakou. The Beijing Winter Olympics have strict requirements for terminal access efficiency, network packet loss rate, network round-trip delay, network availability rate at the access layer and core layer, and network fault recovery time, and have formulated differentiated index requirements for venues of different levels. Traditional IP networks mainly use IPv4 MPLS technology, which cannot meet the requirements in terms of rapid service provisioning, deterministic experience, and intelligent O&M. In order to ensure the communication services of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, China Unicom has built a comprehensive winter Olympics bearer private network (hereinafter referred to as the "Winter Olympics Private Network") with "IPv6+" as the technical base, using advanced technologies such as SRv6, iFIT, EVPN to solve the pain points of traditional networks and realize the intelligence, reliability and security of the network.
"SRv6+EVPN" is implemented
"Zero-aware" access for multiple services
The Beijing Olympic Games media private network (providing "media +" services) puts forward higher requirements for the network in terms of connection quantity, connection quality, or connection opening speed, and the Olympic network must have the following two points to achieve "arbitrary connection": first, the service demand can be guaranteed, and the network must be able to meet the requirements of the service for the opening speed, SLA (bandwidth, delay, jitter) and reliability; the second is that the connection operation and maintenance is more efficient, and the connection is visible, manageable and adjustable in the whole life cycle of operation and maintenance.
To achieve "arbitrary connectivity," the protocols in the network should be as few and simple as possible, as shown in Figure 1. On the one hand, it can reduce the pressure on the equipment and achieve a larger number of connections; on the other hand, it can reduce the configuration workload during service provisioning and achieve faster connection opening speed. In addition, it can also reduce the positioning workload in the event of network failure and better ensure the quality of the connection.
Figure 1 "IPv6+" implements "arbitrary connection"
"SRv6+EVPN" simplifies the network protocol type to only IGP and BGP, and the forwarding surface returns to IP forwarding, becoming the best bearer technology solution. On the basis of protocol simplification and Native IP forwarding, "SRv6+EVPN" can easily realize the unification of the bearing scheme in various domains, realize the "arbitrary connection" between the venue and the media center, and realize the service information of the end-to-end SRv6 only in the service creation and endpoint awareness, and the intermediate nodes do not need to maintain the service information, which improves the scalability of the network.
Network slicing technology
Achieve business security isolation
The Winter Olympics Private Network has specially deployed a "dedicated lane" for the Olympic business, and through the "IPv6+" network slicing technology, different slices are divided according to the service type on the same physical network, different services enjoy exclusive slice resources, and different slices are isolated, thus meeting the requirements of the security isolation of the Olympic business. During the Beijing Winter Olympics, the "media +" and Internet private line business for media reporters to report on the event will not be affected by other Internet traffic such as athletes and volunteers, ensuring the experience of high-priority services.
"SRv6 Policy+ Intelligent Control System"
Improve the user experience
To achieve any quality of connectivity requirements, the network must have the ability to manage and guarantee service SLAs end-to-end. Traditional IP/MPLS networks only have the ability to perform local path planning for bandwidth, which cannot meet the new service SLA requirements such as latency, and even less can they detect the service SLA and realize the quality difference analysis and path optimization of the service SLA. The combination of SDN controller and SR technology combines global optimization and distribution intelligence to enable various traffic engineering and provide on-demand SLA assurance according to different services, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2 SLA coverage of "IPv6+"
"SRv6 Policy + Intelligent Control System" is a combination of this technological innovation and practice. The Winter Olympics Private Network calculates the path according to the SLA of the media private line service, and issues the routing policies that meet the requirements of the SLA to the network, realizing the differentiated bearing of different services, and can monitor the service SLA status in real time and optimize the service transmission path. In addition, through policy routing, the fault backup and load sharing of the path can be flexibly realized, and the traffic balance in the Winter Olympics private network can be realized, so that the risk of network congestion is greatly reduced.
"iFIT+AI Intelligent O&M"
Improve network quality
As a member of the "national team" of major event communication support, China Unicom has always been required to ensure that the support work is in accordance with the standards of soundness, reliability and foolproofness. Relying on its previous experience in communication support, China Unicom has built an intelligent control system platform and introduced AI-assisted operation and maintenance technology represented by current detection in the Winter Olympics private network, which can 100% cover the protection and inversion of all links. The current-flow detection technology realizes real-time measurement of feature field packet loss and delay measurement by characterizing (dyeing) the actual service flow. Intelligent O&M based on current-based detection realizes the active perception of minute-level granularity, changes from passive processing O&M to active preventive O&M, and realizes minute-level artificial intelligence-assisted fault handling, from relying on O&M personnel to analyze problems to AI-assisted O&M personnel to accurately locate the root cause of failures.
The capabilities and indicators of the Winter Olympics private network in all aspects have far exceeded the requirements of the Olympic Organizing Committee, and the practice of China United General has proved that the service quality of "IPv6+" can be visualized in real time, and has also fully verified the advanced and landable nature of "IPv6+" technology in network services. China Unicom's "IPv6+" winter Olympics private network innovation bearer scheme has the advantages of easy deployment, replicability, simplicity and high quality, and will be fully promoted in major events and sports events at home and abroad in the future.
"IPv6+" was used for the first time
Xiong'an 5G SA single-stack deployment
Hebei Unicom actively responded to the strategy of network power and took the lead in launching the IPv6 end-to-end single-stack commercial pilot of 5G SA network in Xiong'an New Area. By deploying NAT64 on the network and internet DNS upgrade support for dual stack, service system and bearer network single stack transformation, and completing the end-to-end IPv6 single stack pilot verification and existing network deployment of 5G independent networking, the service-oriented IPv6 single stack application demonstration is realized, which provides a solid theoretical foundation and rich practical experience for the comprehensive evolution of national networks and services to IPv6.
Xiong'an Unicom took the lead in deploying the 5G independent networking IPv6 single-stack commercial pilot, based on the "IPv6+" technology, took the lead in passing the "IPv6+" test and evaluation, and obtained the first "IPv6+" Ready1.0 5G slice business evaluation certificate issued by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Practical results show that IPv6 single-stack technology is feasible and mature in the field of 5G SA. Xiong'an Unicom's plan will be replicated on a large scale across the country, which will greatly promote the large-scale deployment of IPv6.
"IPv6+" serves Gree Electric Appliances in the Greater Bay Area
5G private network construction
In July 2019, Guangdong Unicom and Gree Electric Appliances launched the "5G + Industrial Internet" 5G private network transformation project to build the first 5G SA slice private network based on "MEC edge cloud + intelligent manufacturing" in China, marking the application and promotion of 5G private network technology in the field of intelligent manufacturing.
According to the 5G network requirements and intelligent manufacturing business scenario planning proposed by Gree Electric Appliances, Guangdong Unicom has formulated the overall scheme of "5G +MEC edge cloud + slice", deployed slices according to business types, realized the physical isolation of enterprise business and public business, and isolated network resources according to business scenarios, ensuring that enterprise data does not leave the park and ensuring production data security. In this project, two slices are deployed on the 5G host network, the default slice service is carried through SRv6-BE, Gree sharding is carried through SRv6-Policy, and the device side is isolated by FlexE, and different VPN services are deployed on the shard.
The "SRv6+5G hard slice" scheme can ensure the security of production data and the exclusive use of bandwidth resources, greatly reduce the latency from 5G terminals to enterprise intranets in Gree Campus, and effectively ensure the independence, security and stability of campus services.
China Unicom actively carried out
Research on the evolution technology of "IPv6+"
On the basis of the deployment of "IPv6+" 1.0 technology on the existing network, China Unicom Research Institute led the joint efforts of various branches, subsidiaries and major equipment manufacturers in China Unicom Group to continue in-depth research on the "IPv6+" 2.0 and "IPv6+" 3.0 evolution technologies, and actively carried out testing and verification.
In November 2020, China Unicom completed the industry's first APN6 live network test in Beijing, accelerating VIPKID's overseas online courses. In view of the challenges of traditional networks that are difficult to perceive applications, difficult to achieve differentiated user experience, and difficult to dispatch network resources, APN technology is used to bring application information and user information into the network by using IPv6 packet programmable space to achieve network-aware applications, refined SLA guarantees, user-level differentiated services, and intelligent traffic tuning.
In February 2021, China Unicom completed the world's first live network pilot of THE BIERv6 multicast video hosting scheme and passed the end-to-end IPTV video service verification. The scheme takes EVPN as the control level, SRv6 as the unicast bearer technology, and BIERv6 as the multicast bearer technology, which greatly simplifies the control level of the network, conforms to the idea of "IPv6+" network architecture, and also meets the requirements of future SDN network evolution, with the advantages of easy deployment, high reliability and perfect functions. From theory to practice, Beijing Unicom basically verified the availability of BIERv6 multicast technology on the bearer network, laying the foundation for large-scale deployment of multicast technology on the Internet.
In June 2021, China Unicom completed the industry's first smart security live network practice based on the "CFN+APN6 protocol", distributing computing power information through the network protocol, and realizing intelligent control and real-time scheduling of computing power resources in the form of "edge-to-edge collaboration".
In September 2021, the "IPv6+" Joint Innovation Lab jointly established by China Unicom Research Institute, Beijing Unicom and Huawei was officially inaugurated. In the same month, China Unicom released the Greater Bay Area Computing Power Network Action Plan, and the Guangdong Demonstration Base of the China Unicom Computing Network Joint Innovation Laboratory was officially completed. Based on the "1+N+X" technical architecture of the computing power network, China Unicom has realized the pilot application of secure business chain services in the Greater Bay Area. By creating a "SID as a service", the scheme realizes one network connection and multiple clouds, one-click network cloud tuning, enhances the network endogenous ability of "connection + computing", and realizes the flexible supply of VAS resources based on the integration of computing and networking, marking that the collaborative technology innovation of "IPv6+" computing network has entered a new stage of development.
Continue to deepen network infrastructure
Accelerate the development of the digital economy
As society accelerates towards digitalization, networking, and intelligence, the importance of the construction of new information infrastructure represented by IPv6 has become more and more prominent. Under the strong guidance of national policies, China Unicom will adhere to the strategy of "strong foundation, integrity innovation, integration and opening up", continue to deepen the transformation of network infrastructure IPv6, provide IPv6 carrying capacity with excellent performance covering the whole country, deepen and expand connectivity, optimize applications, continue to vigorously promote the research and application of new technologies of the "IPv6+" network series, comprehensively promote the research and deployment of the "IPv6+" strategy, enhance network capabilities, enhance product competitiveness, and fully support the digital transformation of thousands of industries. Inject strong impetus into the construction of a network power and the development of the digital economy.
End
Author: China Unicom Research Institute
Cao Chang Tong Tian China Unicom Group Network Department Tu Libiao
Editor-in-Charge/Layout: Fan Fan
Review: Shen Qing
Producer: Liu Qicheng
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