Disposable Containers at the Edge

Michael Kloberdans

CableLabs

Where exactly is “The Edge” Distributed VNFs will eventually move into the Home Gateway

Where is your Edge?

•  SDN/NFV discussions have mainly focused at the Main or Regional Data Center

•  Recently, the “Edge” represents the ISP premise location closest to the home, user, consumer, device, etc.

10/28/15 3

The ISP Data Center

•  Data Centers consist of a myriad of servers that are geographically close.

•  This facilitates control by the ISP

10/28/15 4

The Enterprise Data Center

•  Enterprises also use data centers, but a smaller footprint

10/28/15 5

Home – the “Anti” Data Center

•  Orchestration software was never meant to scale from thousands of servers to millions of homes

10/28/15 6

But VNFs can reside in any cloud – even the home!

10/28/15 7

ISP  Cloud  

Home  Cloud  

VNFs – Why in the home?

10/28/15 8

Why  in  the  home?  

   -­‐  WAN  Fault  

   -­‐  Performance  

   -­‐  Reduce  Traffic  

Introduction to Profiles A new paradigm

Home – the “Anti” Data Center

•  Orchestration software will change from data center orchestrators to ‘profiles’ or ‘templates’

•  These standard profiles can remove the need for SFC (Service Function Chaining) because the home has simpler needs.

10/28/15 10

Home Profiles

•  Imagine a home profile with two VNFs:

10/28/15 11

FW-­‐1   FW-­‐2  

PC-­‐4  PC-­‐3  

FW-­‐3  

PC-­‐1   PC-­‐2   PC-­‐5   PC-­‐6  

FW-­‐5  FW-­‐4  

FW-­‐4   PC-­‐2  Template  #17  

Why is the home of such interest?

•  Competition to control the home is just beginning to appear.

–  Google’s OnHub ( 4GB storage )

–  Amazon’s Alexa ( Records your commands )

–  Google’s NEST ( Tunnels back to Google )

–  Apple’s Home Design Kit ( IoT Control )

–  Smart Phone Apps ( Acts as a TV Remote) 10/28/15 12

The home will be the focus of many ISPs

•  Superior information with customer actions

–  Incredibly rich user data on habits, not just opinions

–  Amazingly complete meta data from all home devices

–  Not just usage: •  Time-based usage

•  Location-based usage

•  Features-based usage 10/28/15 13

A Case for Disposable VNFs Mission Impossible

VNFs can reside in any cloud – even the home!

10/28/15 15

Why  in  the  home?  

   -­‐  WAN  Fault  

   -­‐  Performance  

   -­‐  Reduce  Traffic  

   -­‐  Link  Metrics  

A case for “Disposable Containers”

•  An ISP may want to measure their link to the home

–  Latency values –  Jitter values –  Packet loss values –  QoE voice metrics

•  Echo

•  Background noise

10/28/15 16

A case for “Disposable VNFs”

•  Having a “NID” permanently installed is needless, consumes resources and adds to the cost of the home gateway

•  Sending VNFs to the Home Gateway could be the answer

•  VNFs would “self destruct” when an appropriate trigger event occurs

•  This relieves the orchestrator from managing and removing potentially millions of distributed VNFs

10/28/15 17

A case for “Disposable Containers”

•  Event triggers could include:

–  Time  Limit, such as a TTL counter that counts down seconds

–  Usage  Limit counts down for every external request is received

–  Usage  Limit counts down each time an internal VNF action happens

10/28/15 18

Summary VNFs in the home

Profiles for the home

Disposable VNFs

Summary to this Introduction of Concepts

•  We’ve seen that the edge is moving to the home

•  There is keen interest with user habits in the home

•  Current Orchestrators cannot scale to the needs of a fully distributed home edge (anti-data center)

•  Some VNFs are appropriate to reside on the home gateway

•  There is a need for transient VNFs to self-destruct 10/28/15 20