China Mobile Zhang Geng: IPv6+ has become a new starting point for the next generation of internet

At the "2020 (Third) China IPv6 Development Forum" held recently, Zhang Geng, project manager of China Mobile's Planning and Construction Department, said that the national strategy and endogenous needs are two-wheel drive China Mobile's IPv6 development plan, and China Mobile's fixed-migration and end-to-end network basic capabilities are built: mobile network IPV6 traffic accounts for 10.1%, an increase of 6.5pp fixed network IPv6 traffic accounted for 2.4% compared with the beginning of the year, an increase of 1.1pp over the beginning of the year.

Zhang Geng pointed out that with the advent of the digital wave represented by 5G and the cloud, the scale and complexity of the network continue to increase, and native IPv6 faces great challenges in network simplification, network experience, and network intelligence. After the large-scale deployment of IPv6, a series of new IPv6 technologies came into being and developed rapidly, and IPv6+ will become the starting point of the next generation of the Internet, which is bound to provide stronger support for IPv6 scale deployment.

First to try, SRv6 head compression protocol innovation

Zhang Geng introduced that China Mobile carried out the pilot verification of SRv6 native scheme in Guangdong Mobile CMNet provincial network in 2019. Through the pilot, SRv6-BE can effectively solve the cross-domain problem under the MPLS service mechanism and improve the provisioning speed and maintenance efficiency. In addition, SRv6's specified path capabilities can give network differentiated service capabilities, providing users with a determined path and delay.

In the process of live network deployment, SRv6 has problems such as low packaging efficiency, so China Mobile took the lead in formulating an innovative solution for SRv6 head compression: G-SRv6, which has reached the consensus of many domestic and foreign manufacturers. Through the optimization of the head compression technology, the packaging efficiency of SRv6 messages can be increased by 3-4 times, while reducing the chip requirements for message processing.

Zhang Geng said that G-SRv6 is characterized by the issuance of compressed SRv6 SIDs through the control plane, SRH contains different types of compressed SIDs and standard 128-bit SIDs, the same SID type of the same Container; the introduction of COC flavor indicates the compression type of the next SID; the introduction of SI to indicate the position of G-SID in the current Container, as an Argument extension in the IPv6 destination address.

This scheme has several advantages: first of all, the overhead is relatively small, the compression SID list extracts the common prefix, replacing the original representation of each 128-bit SID; the second is smooth evolution, incremental deployment, SRH SID list can simultaneously encode 128-bit original SRv6 SID and compressed G-SID; third, it is compatible with the standard SRv6 and SRH definitions, there is no change in the SRH header format definition, and the standard SRv6 can ignore the SI field; the fourth is hardware-friendly, and the live network device can be supported by software upgrades , can quickly achieve scale deployment in the existing network; fifth, address savings and easy deployment, flexible address planning, you can use any length prefix; finally, no new router, no need to modify the routing plan, compressed SID can share thelocator with the standard SRv6 SID.

In early July 2020, China Mobile completed the G-SRv6 data surface laboratory test of Huawei, ZTE, and New H3C routers, including single compression domain, cross-compression domain, compression domain and standard domain mixing scenarios. In September 2020, it is planned to start connecting third-party controllers with Huawei, ZTE, and Xinhuasan to carry out comprehensive laboratory interoperability tests of G-SRv6 control panels and data surfaces, as well as the interconnection of reliability solutions such as SRv6 Policy master device protection, so as to accumulate experience for the implementation of live network pilots in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong.

For the IPv6 BIER multicast technology bearer, Zhang Geng introduced that BIER uses the idea of head programming to do multicast protocol, which can reduce the requirements for status in the current network. Multicast video services, especially live broadcast services, can effectively reduce the pressure on the bearer network and service system. At present, the industry has not yet formed a unified opinion on the IPv6 BIER packaging model on the standard, and China Mobile will actively promote the construction of BIER innovative solutions in the IPv6 environment based on the deployment needs of the Internet TV service of the live network.

Application exploration, IPv6+ cloud edge network collaboration and bearer network slicing

In the 5G era, the 2B MEC service is booming, and the cloud core network element and MEC application have sunk to the park, and the cloud-side network collaboration is facing great challenges. First of all, MEC nodes need to use dynamic routing technology and enterprise local network, edge cloud, central cloud, public cloud and Internet to connect to achieve APP distribution and communication; in addition, cloud-network integration needs to realize the end-to-end service provisioning and O&M of cloud, edge and network.

Zhang Geng said that in the future, China Mobile will explore the cloud-side network fusion bearer scheme based on SRv6 technology for 5G. Some relevant research will be done on cloud-network collaboration, intelligent management and control, IP bearer network and basic network to form a solution. In terms of cloud-network collaboration, with the cloud as the core network demand, the network moves with the cloud to realize the transformation of "service passive adaptation network" to "network active, fast and flexible adaptation service"; in terms of intelligent management and control, the orchestrator uniformly controls the network and the cloud, and the service is quickly opened, based on telemetry real-time perception of network status, based on AI and big data predictive operation and maintenance; in terms of IP bearer network, it meets the deployment scenarios of different locations, and realizes the unified bearing of one network multi-cloud and one network and multiple services; in terms of basic network, Using the SRv6 minimalist protocol, one-hop fast into the cloud, fast cross-domain docking.

At the same time, China Mobile is also exploring IPv6+-based bearer network slicing, which is an end-to-end service SLA guarantee solution. "5G slicing is a very distinctive service, 5G service guarantee from the wireless access network to the core network and the SPN between, there is already a relatively mature slicing scheme, some projects have been deployed applications." Zhang Geng said: "However, as an indispensable part of end-to-end service guarantee, the data bearer network slice guarantee scheme from the core network to the content source still needs to be strengthened. ”

From the perspective of control and control, it is necessary to ensure that slices can be controlled independently; from the forwarding point of view, it is necessary to ensure the forwarding ability of physical resources or logical resources; at the same time, it is necessary to do end-to-end service deployment to ensure that different fields can be pulled through end-to-end to present the service as a whole. In terms of architecture, you can choose the VPN Over SRv6 scheme to implement; on the control surface, the bearer network protocol includes Flex AIgo, multi-topology, etc.; for the forwarding surface, there is Flex E hard pipe technology to choose from. In general, the slicing technology of the bearer network may be a combination of soft and hard, and a combination of multiple technologies. C114 Communication Network Nine-Nine