5GEx Multi-domain Service Creation - from 90 days to 90 minutes A 5GEx White Paper. March 21, 2016 V1. Table of Contents

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1 5GEx Multi-domain Service Creation - from 90 days to 90 minutes A 5GEx White Paper March 21, 2016 V1 Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary The Challenge facing the 5G ecosystem GEx Vision statement and values Objectives of the 5GEx project Multi-domain Reference Architectural Framework Expected Outcomes Benefits of 5G Exchange Conclusions About the Project/Companies... 14

2 1. Executive Summary Network Service Providers today are limited when trying to maximize usage efficiency of their resources, and limited in revenue generation capability, due to rigid service offerings which often take up to 90 days to provision. This is a particular problem across multiple operator and geographical domains. The 5GEx project is creating an agile exchange mechanism for contracting, invoking, and settling the wholesale consumption of resources and virtual network services which can be provisioned in less than 90 minutes and then rapidly invoked. This exchange mechanism will enable network operators, application providers, and other stakeholders in the 5G supply chain to deliver new service value for 5G customers, while at the same create and enhance revenuegenerating potential for 5G providers, third party verticals, and others in the supply chain. New opportunities from Software Defined Networks 1 (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), as well as heterogeneous resources and service trading across a richer set of actors means more flexibility in terms of service delivery. The goal of the 5G Exchange (5GEx) project is to enable cross-domain orchestration of services over multiple administrations or over multi-domain single administrations. Market fragmentation has resulted in a multitude of network operators, each focused on different countries and regions. This makes it difficult to create infrastructure services spanning multiple countries, such as virtual connectivity or compute resources, as no single operator has a footprint everywhere. 5GEx aims to enable collaboration between operators, regarding 5G infrastructure services, with the view to introducing a unification via NFV/SDN compatible multi-domain orchestration. This will allow end-toend network and service elements to mix in multi-vendor, heterogeneous technology and resource environments. Such 5G infrastructure services will provide a crucial role in making 5G happen, as they provide the foundation of all cloud and networking services. 5GEx aims to enable, through operator collaboration, a unified European infrastructure service market integrating multiple operators and technologies, where service provisioning is fast and automated and results in a stronger economy, via economies of scale. 1 Some large data centre holding companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Amazon are using SDN to optimize their data centre connectivity. With SDN, an operator can separate their hardware and software and use open source software making it cheaper, more flexible to deploy rather than using merchant or branded/customized silicon. 2 of 14

3 2. The Challenge facing the 5G 2 ecosystem The communications infrastructure ecosystem is constrained in maximising usage efficiency and revenue generation capability from infrastructure. As a result service offerings are constrained in today s Internet. There are five fundamental challenges to the current Internet marketplace as the industry moves toward 5G. Weak Service Agility: Traditionally, services are provided as vertically integrated applications (silos) with limited openness, limited interoperability, vendor lock-in, and weak flexibility. This hinders agile service customisation, service enhancement, and reaching new markets. Sequential service design and rollout is dominant today, with long lead times, high IT costs, and limited utility. This service agility challenge exists within a single network infrastructure domain and it also exists globally across the 50,000 autonomous systems which comprise the Internet and are run by different administrative domains. To overcome this issue, it s paramount to increase the level of resource accessibility and exploitation in the service delivery chain.. That s the reason why solving the service agility challenge requires a multi-domain solution. The lack of multi-domain infrastructure service alignment and coordination that could speed up service delivery, enable new services, and serve unmet market needs is a key challenge for 5G. Over the Top (OTT): The OTT 3 challenge arises because networks and applications are aligned differently in terms of economic interest and technical structure. Application providers send traffic over the top of the Internet, across multiple networks to end users without any delivery guarantee. If the networks are over dimensioned then the applications easily cross multiple networks. 5G EXCHANGE A 5G exchange is where parties in the supply chain (e.g. infrastructure operators or application providers) in the supply chain can automatically coordinate the trading, provisioning, and invocation of wholesale services, as part of a structured service lifecycle, in order to deliver end-to-end 5G services in the services market place. There are many types of services that 5G networks are envisaged to run including those mentioned in the 5G HyperService Cube 4 such as emergency, smart sensors, HD interactive TV, multi-user UHD Telepresence, real 3D, cloud office, shipping logistics, augmented reality, virtual reality, and social gaming All of these have different throughput and latency requirements, and with a different number of connections, and persistence coming from different service or application characteristics. 2 5G (5th generation mobile networks or 5th generation wireless systems) denotes the next major phase of mobile telecommunications standards, beyond the current 4G/IMT-Advanced standards. 5G targets data rates of several tens of megabits per second supported for tens of thousands of users 3 Over-the-top is a general term for a service that is utilized over a network that is not offered by that network operator. It is often referred to as "over-the-top" because these services ride on top of the service you already get and don't require any business or technology affiliations with your network operator. 4 5G A Technology Vision White Paper by Huawei 3 of 14

4 The applications will not work satisfactorily, constraining the application provider and the end user, once the network traffic limits are reached. This is especially true with video, industrial control, tactile and other low latency applications. If the networks are over dimensioned to overcome this, then network operators are constrained because of high CAPEX and low return on capital employed. Over dimensioning is costly, especially in the first mile of radio networks. This CAPEX challenge, without adequate return, constrains network investment and inhibits societal benefits from ubiquitous faster networks. Inter-provider Automation: Telcos and application providers cannot efficiently automate resource and information exchange coordination between domains, leading to limited visibility of network conditions and subsequently, sub-optimal traffic delivery, high OPEX, and lost service creation opportunity. In the Internet, telcos exchange control information based on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP 5 ) and billing is often based on wholesale megabit/sec/month at the 95% percentile. SIP or SS7 are used to control mobile voice calls and there are wholesale billing functions to enable settlement, based on per minute billing. In the Internet, there are a number of gaps in automation, for example, a lack of a common specification for infrastructure and services, a lack of automated mechanisms for quality monitoring and assurance, and a shortage of inter-system coordination mechanisms. BGP has limited capability to unleash clever business models and reward the infrastructure providers owning the major investment risk. As a result of this lack of inter-provider automation which also limits service agility there are a number of unmet needs. A reference technical architecture, addressing this problem, is a real must. Validated Standards: The absence of service tools and automation between providers is partly related to the absence of standards for inter-domain functions. European operators focusing over countries or regions, find it extremely difficult to create and to trade world-wide services with any guarantee of quality of service or with a low OPEX component, due to the lack of automation and flexibility. Early standards approaches, like the application function and associated Rx interface for third parties, have had limited adoption in 3G and 4G mainly due to inadequate tools within the whole ecosystem 6. Service creation is therefore time-consuming, inflexible, and costly. Trading Limitation: The lack of a services business model means ad hoc, unstructured and unfair trading between the different suppliers. This has resulted in outdated business models, e.g. a walled garden approach with limited collaboration. Market fragmentation (where these models are localised) and time-consuming establishment (following lengthy negotiations) give rise to mutually harmful effects (e.g. hot-potato routing 7 ). These models tend to be bi-lateral so they do not scale well considering that there are approximately 800 mobile network with multiple connections. 5 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information between autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. 6 More elaborate solutions such as the IPSphere initiative TMF were too far decoupled from the network functionality, which during the period of this initiative from 2006 to 2009 did not have the benefit of network function virtualisation, openflow and P4P techniques. 7 In network routing between autonomous systems which are interconnected in multiple locations, hot-potato routing is the passing of traffic off to another autonomous system as quickly as possible. Cold-potato routing is the opposite, where the originating autonomous system holds onto the packet until it is as near to the destination as possible. 4 of 14

5 3. 5GEx Vision statement and values The vision of the 5GEx project is to design, build, and validate an exchange platform for delivery of multi-domain services linking multiple telcos, application providers, and other actors in the end-toend supply chain. The 5G Exchange will be a synthesis of a range of existing innovations, extended and combined into a functional platform which will be validated on networks by the five telcos in the consortium (DT, Orange, Telenor, Telefonica and Telecom Italia). Figure 1 shows the interrelationship between the macro technology components and the different business actors involved in the 5G Exchange framework. Figure 1 5G Exchange Framework and Actors The realization of such a vision can bring a number of added values to the future ICT service market, among them: Accelerated Service Delivery: 5GEx aims to become the missing enabler of service and business coordination for multi-operator infrastructure services which will revolutionise the network as a whole. 5GEx will utilise SDN/NFV techniques to enable fast commoditised exchange of services, slicing up the network, delivering the resources, and then reselling them in multiple different ways. Overcoming the OTT issue: 5GEx helps to overcome the OTT challenge by providing an exchange for network operators and application providers to trade infrastructure resources along the path between applications and users. Network operators will continue to configure the current Internet as is, but in parallel they can empower application providers to procure enhanced infrastructure resources (both bandwidth and compute) from the multiple network operators, along the path between the application provider and the user. This creates a win-win-win situation. A win for the user as they have new applications; a win for the application providers as they monetise higher volumes of application usage and they can guarantee the required quality levels for their traffic; and a win for the network operator as they can deliver properly the application service and participate economically in the activity related to the traffic they convey. 5GEx will allow application providers 5 of 14

6 to be network-aware, and network providers to be application-aware, for the common target of end user satisfaction. Automated service provisioning environment: 5GEx is building a virtual API-based exchange for globally reachable automated 5G services creation. The exchange functionality will be provided by the API, not (necessarily) tied to a physical premise. The exchange will allow resources such as access, connectivity, computing, and storage in one network to support different application such as health, robotic communications, media, etc., in another network. Resources can be traded between one provider and another using this exchange, enabling applications to function on a globally reachable basis. The exchange will include automated service orchestration, management, and the trading of the aforementioned heterogeneous resources and services. There will be a pre-built catalogue of infrastructure services tailored for specific customer needs (NSPs, OTTs including CDNs), as well as the capability to setup bespoke services in on-demand basis. In addition, consider a scenario where the exchange is run by a third party, e.g., a 5GEx Provider which has agreements with other service providers to setup infrastructure and services on top of their networks. This would be similar to the currently operating IPXs like AMS-IX or DE-CIX, which are run by profit-oriented companies. Validated technology: The 5GEx project intends to build a sandbox 8 to pilot a range of use cases. Initially the sandbox will contain the networks of Orange, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, and Telenor, These will be extended to other 5G initiatives as the exchange becomes more mature. The sandbox will provide a platform where working code can be validated along with the associated interface definitions and functions. This in-field validation will help to pitch 5GEx technology assets towards the appropriate standardisation bodies. Trading of Infrastructure Resources and managed VNFs: The 5GEx project is creating an exchange mechanism implemented via a specific API whereby network resources can be traded fairly supporting the evolution of multiple open transparent business models to the benefit of the different stakeholders in the eco-system which delivers value to all end users. 4. Objectives of the 5GEx project To step beyond the above challenges, 5GEx has set out a number of objectives to achieve, in order to overcome the related technology obstacles and business barriers. The ultimate goal of 5GEx is to enable new and faster service creation, new markets, new players, richer, more powerful, and flexible services for European end users, and a stronger European economy benefiting from the economies of scale by integrating multiple operators and technologies. While 5Gex is a European vision, ideally it would be extended to other regions giving the potential for global reachability. Design, build, standardize, and share a multi-provider orchestration solution for autonomous infrastructure and NFV management in 5G environments: 5GEx aims to define a reference 8 In computer security, a sandbox is a security mechanism for separating running programs. It is often used to execute untested code, or untrusted programs from unverified third parties, suppliers, users and websites. 6 of 14

7 architecture, including necessary functional flows, interfaces, and technical components, to create and deploy multi-domain infrastructural services in a fast and automated manner in 5G. Reduce the average service setup time from 90 days to 90 minutes: 5GEx aims to significantly reduce service setup time. This goal can only be achieved by doing service-centered modelling of the multi-domain context, as a key feature to accomplish the necessary levels of performance and scalability. High availability and full integration within existing operational environments are parts of the objective, as well as the ability to dynamically measure service KPIs and adjust them to keep up with Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Assess, design, and build support for viable business models derived from our operator partners: 5GEx aims to investigate and assess the best possible ways to convey multi-domain services into the marketplace, taking into account the economic and business mechanisms driving the particular market. One key objective of 5GEx is the reduction of CAPEX for individual operators and service providers, due to the ability to use extended sets of resources to offer multi-domain services. 5GEx also aims to provide the market actors with effective models of SLA which can be associated with this innovative class of services, offering ways to realize a common monitoring capability and management of requested QoS attributes. Furthermore, 5GEx seeks charging and billing models which can maximize the return of every actor in this multi-domain scenario. Creation of a Real Reference Implementation: 5GEx looks to get more than a complete specification of a reference architecture and accompanying business models; it also wants to implement a working system prototype, offering a concrete demonstration of the technical viability of its proposal. The interconnection and integration of different technical/administrative domains, as well as the over-arching service orchestration, will be implemented in this prototype, with particular attention to the integration of computational, storage, and networking resources for new multidomain services. Validate, learn, and feedback to design via large scale experiments: 5GEx wants to obtain sound and significant results from a large scale, deep trial campaign of its implemented technology. This will allow a thorough assessment of the feasibility of the 5GEx model, in order to evaluate its achievable quality of service, and understand the key pillars for a follow-on roadmap of its technology. This is envisioned to happen on a 5G Exchange sandbox, realized by interconnecting near-operational facilities of the project participants. Outreach of project results: 5GEx intends to realize its reference implementation by using and reusing basic Open Source components (e.g. OpenStack, ONOS or OpenDaylight) as much as possible, and feeding back potential technology blocks implemented by the project to the respective Open Source communities. This approach maximises the far-reaching impact of 5Gex results in the key stakeholder communities of service providers and developers. In order to complement Open Source engagements, 5GEx will actively contribute to the key standardisation bodies of future 5G networking. Finally, 5GEx wants to create high quality assets for the purpose of industrial (through two big events addressing key stakeholders) and scientific (through selected papers for best-in-class journals and conferences) dissemination. 7 of 14

8 5. Multi-domain Reference Architectural Framework The pre-condition to realize the end-to-end vision summarized by Fig. 1 is to enable multi-domain orchestration. This section presents the reference architectural framework depicted in Fig. 4 for organizing the components and interworking interfaces involved in end-to-end M&O in multidomain environments. At the lower layer in Fig. 2 there are Resource Domains, exposing resource abstraction on interface I5. In the middle layer, Domain Orchestrators perform Resource Orchestration and/or Service Orchestration exploiting the abstractions exposed on I5 by Resource Domains. Interface I4 allows coordination between Domain Orchestrators. A Multi-domain Orchestrator (MdO) coordinates resource and/or service orchestration at multi-domain level, where multi-domain may refer to multi-technology (orchestrating resources and/or services using multiple Domain Orchestrators) or multi-operator scenarios (orchestrating resources and/or services using Domain Orchestrators belonging to multiple administrative domains). The MdO interacts with Domain Orchestrators via interface I3 APIs to orchestrate resources and services within the same administrative domains. The MdO interacts with other MdOs via interface I2 APIs (business-to-business, B2B) to request and orchestrate resources and services across administrative domains. Finally the MdO exposes on interface I1 service specification APIs (Customer-to-Business, C2B) that allow business customers to specify their requirements for a service. The framework considers also MdO service providers, such as C in Fig. 2, which does not own resource domains but operate at multi-domain orchestrator level to trade resources and services. Figure 2 End-to-End Management and Orchestration Reference Architectural Framework 8 of 14

9 6. Expected Outcomes The 5G Exchange will provide a multi-provider control plane structure, allowing the on-demand setup and tear -down of network and NFV resources and managed services, where these are traded as part of an exchange and marketplace for globally reachable 5G services. At the heart of the 5G Exchange architecture is a set of inter-domain APIs which provide a technical control plane structure for both physical and virtual compute, storage, and networking resources and network functions to be created, configured, invoked, re-configured, settled, and decommissioned dynamically on demand as required. The 5G Exchange will provide a one-stop shop, going beyond connectivity, as an evolution of the current IP exchange (IPX) for 5G services. This will enable the wholesale procurement of network resources such as access (WiFi, 3G, 4G, Ethernet, DSL cable etc.), core and aggregation connectivity, computing, and storage. The globally reachable end-to-end path will be coordinated so that resources owned by different network providers, such as infrastructure, wholesale, retail, and content providers, can be delivered to all participating 5G networks. These resources are traded in the exchange along a supply chain and rented/leased to multiple partners. The vision is to support the global ubiquity of 5G which is an objective of the initiative. From a customer standpoint, infrastructure services will be purchased from a single administrator, who would sub-contract to other operators if it lacks the necessary footprint, capacity, or other capabilities to provide the entire service. A useful parallel can be drawn with the very successful concept of roaming for mobile services, where the subscriber needs only to establish a contract with one mobile operator, yet can seamlessly receive services in all countries of Europe without having to buy and constantly change SIM cards in the phone. Other specific features of the planned solution are enumerated here. The 5GEx project intends to provide an exchange solution for multiple operators which will implement the needed coordination mechanisms as part of the process to accelerate service agility making strong service delivery agility and addressing the so called 90/90/90 issue 9. The 5GEx project will address the over the top issue by providing a 5G exchange for application providers and others to obtain, on a non-discriminatory basis, globally reachable wholesale services in the 5G network, which are supported by reasonable traffic management. These services will be beyond the legacy best-effort Internet, and will be differential in terms of performance, price, and capacity, addressing a wide range of applications functional and societal requirements. The 5GEx Exchange will provide telcos and application providers with the ability to efficiently automate resource and information exchange coordination between domains, leading to increased visibility of network conditions and therefore optimised traffic delivery, leading to lower OPEX and increased service creation opportunity. The 5GEx project will develop standardised tools enabling applications to request end-toend quality from network increasing social utility. 9 9 of 14

10 As the money flow does not follow the traffic flow, this results in limited trading of network resources and therefore in limited network investment. The 5GEx project aims to address this problem, both from a technical and a business/economics viewpoint. A sandbox environment will allow the development of a novel business model using a number of use cases such as mobile applications, video streaming, social gaming, emergency services, and many more. The feasibility of the 5GEx model will be thoroughly tested, creating a working system prototype and offering a concrete technical demonstration of the use cases as reference. 5G integrates networking with Cloud, IoT and machine-to-machine communication, enriching the customer-facing services (verticals), which also motivate the 5G infrastructure services needed to support them. 5GEx envisions a core subset of 5G infrastructure services, namely VPN+, vcdn, GiLAN and Critical XaaS, capable of supporting most 5G use cases and verticals envisioned by the industry [NGMN]. In particular, VPN+ is a connectivity service of Assured Service Quality (ASQ) over multiple domains, supporting next-generation connectivity verticals such as VPNs and broadcast services. vcdn is CDN evolution with advanced management and elasticity capabilities and VNFs for broadband and infotainment verticals. Critical XaaS enhances the VPN+ service with stringent QoS, reliability, and potentially cloud/compute requirements, serving e-health/telemedicine/life-line support verticals. GiLAN is a scalable low-cost 5G roaming service, enabling remote tunnelling and moving the entire h-pgw and Gi-LAN of one operator to remote data centers of another operator to serve roaming 5G users remotely. These 5GEx infrastructure services rely on lower-level fundamental services and SDN/NFV techniques, with the core element being the slice 10. The slice is a managed set of 5G resources and network functions set up within the 5G system that is tailored to support a particular type of user or service. Slices are instantiated on-demand using APIs exposed by the management plane, allowing dynamic service orchestration and management over the network, storage, and cloud domains. 10 A slice is a network of computing, communication, (and measurement resources) capable of running resource containers (Network/Service Functions) or a network service. [~GENI] In the data plane a slice is defined by a set of resource containers spanning a set of network components, plus an associated set of service access points (users) that are allowed to access those resource containers. A slice can be pre allocated or created on demand. In the control plane (from an operator's perspective), slices are the primary abstraction for accounting and accountability resources are acquired via a slice control and management interface (API). 10 of 14

11 Figure 3-5GEx service and value creation layers: from commodity resources to high-margin tailored services. 11 of 14

12 7. Benefits of 5G Exchange The 5GEx project will develop the architecture and mechanisms for automated and fast provisioning of infrastructure services in a multi-domain and multi-operator 5G environment. This new architecture results in both business and technology benefits. The main business benefits are: - Enabling fast service innovation: Network service providers are subject to limitations in the use of resources, which implies a limited capacity of new services creation. The use of VNFs will enable network operators service chains to deliver new service value for customers and enabling fast service innovation. - Market expansion: Leveraging the evolution of technologies for network virtualization and programmability, the 5GEx architecture aims to foster the emergence of a unique common European market for services, whereby most of the current border segmentation can be overcome, allowing operators to work in previously precluded markets. It can also make it easier to enter the go-to-market for new software players and small companies, since more innovative services can be enabled by the 5G Exchange concept. - Better services for end-users: Thanks to 5GEx, resources such as access, connectivity, computing, and storage in one network will become available to a far bigger set of utilizing applications, enabling the creation and delivery of richer and more powerful services. - Stronger economy via economies of scale: As stated, 5GEx aims to enable a unified European infrastructure service market, integrating multiple operators and technologies, where cross-domain service provisioning is faster and automated. This in turn sparks big economies of scale, thanks to a new pan-european dimension of the operators addressable market. The main technology benefit of the 5G Exchange is decreasing the service creation time from 90 days to 90 minutes. A main objective of 5GEx is the creation of an agile mechanism for contracting, invoking, and setting resources along with the use of virtual network functions and, in general, of composite virtualized resources. This will result in reducing the average service creation time down from 90 days to less than 90 minutes. An additional benefit is the ability to orchestrate services using heterogeneous (computational and network related) resources coming from different domains. This cross-domain feature is declined into both technology multi-domain (technically heterogeneous domains under a common business ownership) and administrative multi-domain (domains under different business ownership). 5GEx will provide the toolset to retrieve such multi-domain resources and orchestrate them into composite multi-domain services. 5GEx will make available the proper management functions to ensure that the services are accessed and executed in a secure and duly isolated environment. A further technical benefit is the functionality for composition and joint orchestration of computational resources along with connectivity (or, more generally, networking) resources, which can be looked at as a large scope extension of the NFV model. This function is one of the key pillars 12 of 14

13 to realize, on the way towards the next generation 5G networks, whereby convergence and unified management will be among the top technology innovations. 8. Conclusions There are a huge number of benefits stemming from the 5G Exchange which is to be built by the 5GEx project. The main ones being the reduction in the service creation times, the optimisation of network resources resulting in lowered CAPEX and OPEX for network providers, the automation of resource application, the definition of new enabling 5G standards, and finally, the trading and monetisation of services. We would like the industry leaders in the 5G ecosystem from Network Service Providers, Internet Service Providers, and Storage Service Providers to provide input to the 5G Exchange based on your needs, your fears, and your vision of the 5G ecosystem. We are interested in cooperating on use cases, such as those mentioned in the Solution section above. We invite you to be part of our ecosystem and to help develop/implement new modules or rule sets, as well as supporting us in standardisation actions and marketing strategies. Together we can develop new business models by testing and deploying 5GEx services/solutions on the partner s testbeds. Interested parties can connect to our 5G Exchange Contact the 5G Ex project at: 5GEx-Contact@5g-ppp.eu. Link to project website: 5GEx Project 13 of 14

14 9. About the Project/Companies The consortium includes five of the leading European network operators, Deutsche Telekom, ORANGE, Telecom Italy, Telefonica and Telenor all of whom have broad international presence. These operators are defining use cases, requirements and the high-level solution architectures. A number of major vendors representing the telecom industry (Ericsson with ETH and TEI, HWDU), and the ICT and software (HP, ATOS) sectors, respectively. Their focus is on the software and services through various open source initiatives: OpenStack Foundation, OpenNFV, OpenDayLight. In addition to the global vendor companies, two SME partners complement the consortium: BISM and, REDZINC, all in the area of SDN technologies and hardware platforms. Finally a set of five leading universities from five different countries, AUEB (Greece), BME (Hungary), KTH (Sweden), UC3M (Spain and University College London (UK), providing expertise across SDN, virtualisation, orchestration strategies, business modelling and standardisation. 14 of 14