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Contributors

kalyana@huawei.com

TechonologiesTechonologiesTechonologies

Name	Organization	Email
Aihua Guo (point of Contact)	Huawei Technologies	aihuaguo@huawei.com
Satish K	HuaweiTechonologiesHuawei Technologies	satishk@huawei.com
Dhruv Dhody	Huawei	Technologies	dhruv.dhody@huawei.com
Young Lee	Huawei	Technologies	leeyoung@huawei.com
Haomian Zheng	Huawei	Technologies	zhenghaomian@huawei.com
Kalyana	Huawei Techonologies		Huawei Technologies	kalyana@huawei.com
Tao Liu	Huawei Technologies	liutao61@huawei.com
Fan Cheng	Huawei Technologies	chengfan2@huawei.com
Yixiao Chen	Huawei Technologies	yixiao.chen@huawei.com
Patrick Liu	Huawei Technologies	Patrick.Liu@huawei.com
Jongyoon Shin	SK Telecom	jongyoon.shin@sk.com
Junhee Lee	SK Telecom	ok0315@sk.com
Bin Yeong Yoon	ETRI	byyun@etri.re.kr
ChunglaeCho	ETRI	clcho@etri.re.kr
TaeyoungKim	S & T Soft	kty@sntsoft.co.kr
Peter Park	KT	peter.park@kt.com
TaehyunKwon	ETRI	thkwon@etri.re.kr
ChansungPark	ETRI	chansung18@etri.re.kr

Overview

ACTN refers to the set of virtual network operations needed to
orchestrate, control and manage large-scale multi-domain TE networks
so as to facilitate network programmability, automation, efficient
resource sharing, and end-to-end virtual service aware connectivity
and network function virtualization services.

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      . CNC - Customer Network Controller - 
      . MDSC - Multi Domain Service Coordinator -  
      . PNC - Physical Network Controller -

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Customer Network Controller

A Virtual Network Service is instantiated by the Customer Network
Controller via the CMI (CNC-MDSC Interface). As the Customer Network
Controller directly interfaces the application stratum, it
understands multiple application requirements and their service
needs. It is assumed that the Customer Network Controller and the
MDSC have a common knowledge on the end-point interfaces based on
their business negotiation prior to service instantiation. End-point
interfaces refer to customer-network physical interfaces that
connect customer premise equipment to network provider equipment.
In addition to abstract networks, ACTN allows to provide the CNC
with services. Example of services include connectivity between one
of the customer's end points with a given set of resources in a data
center from the service provider.

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The MDSC (Multi Domain Service Coordinator) sits between the CNC
(the one issuing connectivity requests) and the PNCs (Physical
Network Controllersr - the ones managing the physical network
resources). The MDSC can be collocated with the PNC, especially in
those cases where the service provider and the network provi
der are the same entityarethesameentity.

The MDSC istheonly building block of thearchitecture that is aistheonlybuildingblock of thearchitecturethatisa
ble to implement all the four ACTN main functionalities, i.e. multi
domain coordination function, virtualization/abstraction function,
customer mapping function and virtual service coordination. The key
point of the MDSC and the whole ACTN framework is detaching the
network and service control from underlying technology and help
customer express the network as desired by business needs. The MDSC
envelopes the instantiation of right technology and network control
to meet business criteria. In essence it controls and manages the
primitives to achieve functionalities as desired by CNC
A hierarchy of MDSCs can be foreseen for scalability and
administrative choices. In order to allow for a hierarchy of MDSC,
the interface between the parent MDSC and a child MDSC must be th
e same as the interface between the MDSC and the PNC. This does not
introduce any complexity as it is transparent from the perspectiveperspec
tive of the CNCs and the PNCs and it makes use of the same interfaceinterfac
e model and its primitives as the CMI and MPI.

A key requirement for allowing recursion of MDSCs is that a single
interface needs to be defined both for the north and the south
bounds. In order to allow for multi-domain coordination a
1:N relationship must be allowed between MDSCs and between MDSCs and PNCs
(i.e. 1 parent MDSC and N child MDSC or 1 MDSC and
N PNCs)
. In addition to that it could be possible to have also a M:1 relationship
between MDSC and PNC to allow for network resource partitioning/
sharing among different customers not necessarily connected to the
same MDSC (e.g. different serviceprovidersdifferentserviceproviders).

Physical Network Controller

The Physical Network Controller is PhysicalNetworkControlleris the one in charge of configuring
the network elements, monitoring the physical topology of the
network and passing networkandpassing it, either raw orabstractedraworabstracted, to the MDSC.

The PNC, in addition to being in charge of controlling the physicalthephysical
network, is able to implement two of the four ACTN main
functionalities: multi domain coordination function and
virtualization/abstraction function
A hierarchy of PNCs can be foreseen for scalability and
administrative choicesadministrativechoices.