Andy Reid, BT Founding Member of ETSI NFV ISGdocbox.etsi.org/Workshop/2013/201304_FNTWORKSHOP/S07_NFV/BT_REID.pdf · Andy Reid, BT Founding Member of ETSI NFV ISG. Background to ETSI

ETSI NFV ISGAndy Reid, BT

Founding Member of ETSI NFV ISG

Background to ETSI NFV ISG

• Many carriers independently progressing research on NFV technology

– independently concluded that technology is ready but would not be commercialised quickly

for scale deployment without industry cooperation and support

• Cooperation amongst the carriers began with informal discussions in April 2012

• With wide carrier support, started informal discussions on convening an industry

forum

• A meeting in Sept 2012 decided - after consideration of several options - to

parent under ETSI as an “Industry Specification Group”

© British Telecommunications plc

parent under ETSI as an “Industry Specification Group”

• The joint white paper on Network Functions Virtualisation was published to

coincide with presentations at the OpenFlow/SDN World Congress, Darmstadt

(Oct 2012), and the ETSI Board approved creation of the NFV ISG (Nov 2012)

• Founding members:

– AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Verizon

• First formal meeting in ETSI HQ, Sophia Antipolis, Jan 2013

Why we believe NFV is the future for Networks


3

• Standard high volume servers have sufficient packet processing performance to cost effectively virtualise network appliances.

• The hypervisor need not be a bottleneck.

• LINUX need not be a bottleneck.

• TCO advantages are scenario specific but expect significant benefits.

• Plus a significant reduction in energy consumption.

ETSI NFV

The basic concept

NFV ApproachClassical Network Appliance Approach

CDN WAN

Acceleration

Message

Router

Session Border

Controller Independent

SoftwareVendors

Co

mp

etitive

& In

no

vative

Eco

system

ISVs


BRAS

FirewallDPI Tester/QoE

monitor

Radio Access

Network

Controller

Carrier

Grade NAT

PE RouterSGSN/GGSN

Vendors

High volume

Ethernet switches

High volume

standard servers

High volume

standard storage

Orchestrated, automatic, & remote install

Co

mp

etitive

& In

no

vative

NFV Infrastructure

• Fragmented non-commodity hardware.• Physical install per appliance per site.• Hardware development large barrier to entry for

new vendors, constraining innovation & competition.

NVF Organization and Structure

Technical Mgt


Technical Steering Committee (chaired by Technical Manager)

WGExpert

Task

GroupWG WG…

ETSI NFV 5

NFV Scope


ETSI NFV 6

NFV Applications Domain

VI Container Interface

Carrier

Management

12

5

43

4

Basic Domain Architecture


Infrastructure Network Domain

Virtual Network Container Interface

Orchestration and Management Domain

Compute Domain

Compute Container Interface

Hypervisor Domain

Virtual Machine Container Interface

Exi

stin

g N

etw

ork

5

6 7

8

9

10

11

12

13 14

Example Use Cases

• Mobile networks:

– HLR/HSS, MME, SGSN, GGSN/PDN-GW, Base Station, vEPC

• NGN signalling:

– SBCs, IMS

• Switching elements:

• Security functions:

– Firewalls, virus scanners, intrusion detection systems, spam protection

• Tunnelling gateway elements:

– IPSec/SSL VPN gateways

• Converged and network-wide


• Switching elements:

– BNG, CG-NAT, routers

• Home environment:

– home router, set top box

• Application-level optimisation:

– CDNs, Cache Servers, Load Balancers, Application Accelerators

• Converged and network-wide functions:

– AAA servers, policy control and charging platforms

• Traffic analysis/forensics:

– DPI, QoE measurement

• Traffic Monitoring,

– Service Assurance, SLA monitoring, Test and Diagnostics

Benefits

• Reduced equipment costs (CapEx) through equipment consolidation equipment and due to economies of scale

• Reduced operational costs (OpEx): labor, power, space

• Increased speed of Time to Market by minimising the typical network

operator cycle of innovation.

• Availability of network appliance multi-version and multi-tenancy, which allows use of a single platform for different applications, users and


allows use of a single platform for different applications, users and tenants.

• Flexibility to easily, rapidly dynamically provision and instantiate new

services in various locations (no need for new equipment install)

• Improved operational efficiency by taking advantage of the higher

uniformity of the physical network platform and its homogeneity to other

support platforms.

• Encouraging innovation to bring new services and generate new

revenue streams

• Mobility of skillset and talent (easy to move around, on need basis)

ETSI NFV ISG

• Carrier-led Industry Specification Group (ISG) under the auspices of ETSI (20 carriers and mobile operators). Wide industry support (more than 50 vendors).

• Open membership to everyone

– ETSI members sign the “Member Agreement”

– Non-ETSI members sign the “Participant Agreement”

• Operates by consensus (formal voting only when required)

• Deliverables: White papers addressing challenges and operator requirements, as input to standardisation bodies


• Face-to-face meetings quarterly

• Currently four (4) WGs and two (2) expert groups (EG)

– WG1: Infrastructure Architecture EG: Security

– WG2: Management and Orchestration EG: Performance and Portability

– WG3: Software Architecture

– WG4: Reliability & Availability

• Network Operators Council (NOC)

– governing and technical advisory body

• Technical Steering Committee:

– Technical Manager

– WG Chairs, EG Leaders

Do join and contribute



EXTRAS

Implementing Hierarchical-QoS in Software

Progress� The January 2012 vBRAS test implemented Priority QoS and implementing

Hierarchical-QoS in software was seen as a barrier.

� BT & Intel ® initiated a project to implement high performance H-QoS in

software.

� Currently implemented a Hierarchical scheduler with:

5 levels, 64K queues, traffic shaping, strict priority and weighted round robin.

� Preliminary performance per CPU core is close to line rate for hierarchical

scheduling and packet transmission for one 10GbE port at 64 byte packet size

i.e. 13.3 Mpps

13


Slide 13

i.e. 13.3 Mpps

� Hardware: 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680 CPUs @2.7GHz, 8 cores, 20MB L3 cache, 8GT/s QPI, 4x DDR3

memory, 32 GB DDR3 memory: 2x 2GB DIMMs per each of the 4x memory channels of each CPU, 1x Intel X520-SR2 Dual Port 10Gbps Ethernet Controller connected to CPU0 through one PCI-Express Gen2 x8

slot.

� Software: Fedora release 16 (Verne) with Linux kernel 3.1.0-7.fc16.x86_64. Kernel boot time

configuration: 16x 1GB huge memory pages reserved (8 pager for each CPU), CPU isolation enabled to restrict kernel scheduler to CPU0 core 0; Intel DPDK 1.4 Early Access Release 1

� Subject to further development and testing.

� H-QoS may be included in the Intel ® DPDK.

Hierarchical Scheduler Performance

Gbps p

er C

PU

Core

Virtualising Content Distribution Networks� Ran Verivue (now Akamai Aura) HyperCache node and IneoQuest adaptive

stream monitor, measuring Video QoE, virtual machines on VMware ESXi 5.0 on

an HP BL460 G8 server with 2 x 10GigE ports.

Results shown below

� The video traffic from the virtual HyperCache node was “mirrored” to the virtual

IneoQuest ASM using the standard VMware Vswitch.

Currently investigating bottlenecks and testing new version of ASM.

� For BT’s UK network the virtualised solution 8Gbps level of performance would

be sufficient for 77% of Metro nodes.

Virtualisation reduces box count, saving CAPEX & OPEX.

14


Slide 14

18,7

16,6

10,7

8 8 8

4,5 4,5 4,5

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

All PDL All ABR VoD

All ABR Live

Peak Ntwk Thro'put Cache (Gbit/s) with ASM Off

Peak Ntwk Thro'put Cache (Gbit/s) with ASM On

ASM Monitor Capacity (Gbit/s)

Gb

ps

Rank order UK Metro Nodes

Mb

ps C

ach

e T

raff

ic P

er

No

de

<8 Gbps > 77% of

Nodes in 2013/14

<32 Gbps > 77% of

Nodes in 2017/18

PDL = Progressive DownLoad. ABR = Adaptive Bit Rate. VoD = Video on Demand. Live = live linear TV. ASM = Adaptive Stream Monitor from IneoQuest.

Running on 1 HP BL460c G8

Where Virtualisation Improves Performance

� Widely accepted that virtualisation reduces performance compared to running

on “bear metal” but here’s a real application where it improves performance:

� Scalable IPsec solutions are required for FONera roaming WiFi and LTE

services.

Investigated lowest cost IPsec solution for BT’s FON WiFi service.

Requirements: Null encryption, 3DES IKE, ~80Kbps/tunnel, millions tunnels,

high tunnel set-up rate.

� Tested the KAME solution bundled in the Linux kernel (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS)

15

With Virtualisation


Slide 15

� Tested the KAME solution bundled in the Linux kernel (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS)

achieved 7K tunnels.

IPse

c tu

nn

els

pe

r DL

36

0 s

erv

er

Number of E5-2667 Cores

3.2

Gbps

3.8

Gbps

Packets

dro

pped!1.2

G

Tunnel set-uprate

= 100/sec

� Bottleneck was a single core being

used to terminate all IPsec tunnels.

� How to use more CPU cores?

� Rewrite the code �

� Or use KVM and run multiple

virtual Linux kernels to load share

the IPsec tunnels across multiple

cores ☺

Used KVM (redhat 6.3) with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS virtual machines

WithoutVirtualisation

With Virtualisation

Documents

Andy Reid, BT Founding Member of ETSI NFV ISGdocbox.etsi.org/Workshop/2013/201304_FNTWORKSHOP/S07_NFV/BT_REID.pdf · Andy Reid, BT Founding Member of ETSI NFV ISG. Background to ETSI