Networking

The present document provides a list of features which the performance and portability templates (Virtual Machine Descriptor and Compute Host Descriptor) should contain for the appropriate deployment of Virtual Machines over a Compute Host (i.e. a "telco datacentre").
 
In addition, the document provides a set of recommendations and best practises on the minimum requirements that the HW and hypervisor should have for a "telco datacentre" suitable for data-plane workloads. The recommendations and best practises are based on tests results from the performance evaluation of data-plane workloads. It is recognized that the recommendations are required for VNFs supporting data plane workloads and that a small portion of the recommended list are not required in all cases of VNFs, such as VNFs related to control plane workloads.

Use case and functional requirements for Inter-Cloud Computing (The Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum is discontinued).

Inter-Cloud interface specification on protocols (the Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum is discontinued)

Inter-Cloud interface specification on resources data model for network control (the Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum is discontinued).

Network and technical requirements in support of Inter-Cloud (the Global Inter-Cloud Technology Forum is discontinued).

This Standard specifies the minimum requirements for telecommunications infrastructure of data centers and computer rooms, including single tenant enterprise data centers and multi-tenant data centers. The topology specified in this document is intended to be applicable to any size data center.

Recommendation ITU-T Y.3512 describes the concept of Network as a Service (NaaS) and its functional requirements. It provides typical use cases of NaaS and specifies the functional requirements of three aspects, ranging from NaaS application, NaaS platform and NaaS connectivity which are based on the corresponding uses cases and cloud capabilities types.

ITU-T Study Group 11 (SG11) is responsible for 'signalling', producing international standards (ITU-T Recommendations) that define how telephone calls and other calls (such as data calls) are handled in the network.
 
SG11 is home to Signaling System 7 (SS7), the set of signalling protocols that underpins telephone calls in both fixed and mobile networks, without which telecom systems around the world would not interoperate. All telephone switching systems need signalling. It provides the means for monitoring the status of a line to see if it is busy or idle, the alerts that indicate the arrival of a call, and the addressing system that routes calls. Before SS7's implementation, not all nations were party to the standards agreements enabling international telephone calls. SS7's implementation thus paved the way for the efficient operation of international telecommunication networks.
 
SG11 is tasked with developing signalling requirements and protocols for Software-defined Networking (SDN), and this work aligns with the functional requirements and architectures developed by ITU-T Study Group 13 (Future networks). Considered a major shift in networking technology, SDN will give network operators the ability to establish and manage new virtualized resources and networks without deploying new hardware technologies. ICT market players see SDN and network virtualization as critical to countering the increases in network complexity, management and operational costs traditionally associated with the introduction of new services or technologies.
 
SG11 is also responsible for the development of test specifications. This work focuses on global interoperability testing and covers technical means, services, quality of service (QoS) and testing parameters. Activities encompass establishing benchmark testing procedures and investigating the testing of next-generation networks (NGN), ubiquitous sensor networks (USN) and emerging technologies such as the internet of things (IoT), distributed service network (DSN), home networking (HN), etc.
 
SG11 leads ITU’s work on conformance and interoperability (C&I) testing and is responsible for coordinating ITU’s C&I programme. Conformance with international standards is one of the core principles underlying the global interoperability of ICT networks and devices. The C&I programme was initiated at the request of ITU’s membership in light of the challenges faced by developing countries in improving interoperability. The programme rests on four central pillars: conformance assessment; interoperability events; human resource and capacity building; and assistance in the establishment of test facilities in developing countries. SG11 is also investigating whether the ITU C&I programme could play a role in battling counterfeit goods.
 
When meeting at ITU headquarters in Geneva, SG11 holds its meetings in collocation with SG13.

The present document describes a study of how today's Cloud/Data Centre techniques can be adapted to achieve scalability, efficiency, and reliability in NFV environments. These techniques are designed for managing shared processing state with low-latency and high-availability requirements. They are shown to be application-independent that can be applied generally, rather than have each VNF use its own idiosyncratic method for meeting these goals. Although an individual VNF could manage its own scale and replication, the techniques described here require a single coherent manager, such as an orchestrator, to manage the scale and capacity of many disparate VNFs. Today's IT/Cloud Data Centres exhibit very high availability levels by limiting the amount of unique state in a single element and creating a virtual network function from a number of small replicated components whose functional capacity can be scaled in and out by adjusting the running number of components. Reliability and availability for these type of VNFs is provided by a number of small replicated components. When an individual component fails, little state is lost and the overall VNF experiences minimal change in functional capacity. Capacity failures can be recovered by instantiating additional components. The present document considers a variety of use cases, involving differing levels of shared state and different reliability requirements; each case is explored for application-independent ways to manage state, react to failures, and respond to increased load. The intent of the present document is to demonstrate the feasibility of these techniques for achieving high availability for VNFs and provide guidance on Best Practices for scale out system architectures for the management of reliability. As such, the architectures described in the present document are strictly illustrative in nature.
 
Accordingly, the scope of the present document is stated as follows:

• Provide an overview of how such architectures are currently deployed in Cloud/Data Centres.
• Describe various categories of state and how scaling state can be managed.
• Describe scale-out techniques for instantiating new VNFs in a single location where failures have occurred or unexpected traffic surges have been experienced. Scale-out may be done over multiple servers within a location or in a server in the same rack or cluster within any given location. Scaling out over servers in multiple locations can be investigated in follow-up studies.
• Develop guidelines for monitoring state such that suitable requirements for controlling elements (e.g. orchestrator) can be formalized in follow-up studies.

The present document describes the models and methods for end-to-end reliability in NFV environments and software upgrade from a resilience perspective. The scope of the present document covers the following items:

• Study reliability estimation models for NFV including modelling architecture.
•  Study NFV reliability and availability methods.
• Develop reliability estimation models for these methods, including dynamic operational aspects such as impact of load and life-cycle operations.
• Study reliability issues during NFV software upgrade and develop upgrade mechanisms for improving resilience.
• Develop guidelines to realise the differentiation of resiliency for different services.

The present document identifies the most common design patterns for using SDN in an NFV architectural framework. It also identifies potential recommendations to be fulfilled by the entities that perform the integration.
 
ETSI ISG NFV has defined an NFV architectural framework operating on the basis of the principle of separating network functions from the hardware they run on by using virtual hardware abstraction. The major components in this framework are (From ETSI GS NFV 002):

• Network Functions Virtualisation Infrastructure (NFVI): subsystem which encompasses Compute, Network and Storage resources, i.e. the totality of all hardware and software components that build up the environment in which VNFs are deployed.
• Management and Orchestration (MANO): subsystem which includes the Network Functions Virtualisation Orchestrator (NFVO), the Virtualised Infrastructure Manager (VIM) and Virtual Network Function Manager (VNFM).
• Virtual Network Functions (VNFs): deployed in the NFVI.

The present document provides an overview of SDN in relation to this ETSI NFV architectural framework as well as a summary of current industry work including a comparison of network controllers and PoCs including NFV and SDN.