Page 302 - Big data - Concept and application for telecommunications

5 Big data - Concept and application for telecommunications

The CL-RA functional component includes, but is not limited to, the following functional components:

– resource discovery functional component. In cooperation with MMF this functional component
provides discovery of SDN-RL resources. The MMF companion counterpart in the resource layer
management (RLM) functional component (see Annex A.3.2) provides a functionality to handle
and/or discover the network resources of different technologies for connectivity (also referred as
technology-dependent resource discovery in this Recommendation), whereas the resource
discovery functional component in the SDN-CL provides technology-agnostic mechanisms for
resource discovery (also referred as technology-independent resource discovery in this
Recommendation)

– topology repository functional component. This component keeps up-to-date topology of the
network as well as topology of all virtual networks (if created);
– resource allocation functional component. It provides the allocation of abstracted resources for the
creation of virtual networks by the SDN-CL. The virtual networks may use existing components of
the SDN-CL or there is a possibility to activate virtual network related components, i.e., the CL
services, CL-AS, and CL-MSO functional components.

– resource monitoring functional component. This component, in cooperation with the resource layer
control support (RL-CS) functional component, monitors failures and performance of SDN-RL
resources.

7.3 SDN resource layer
The SDN-RL is where the physical or virtual network elements perform transport and/or processing of data
packets according to SDN-CL decisions. The policy-provisioning information (including configuration
information) that result as decisions made by the SDN-CL as well as the information about network resources
are exchanged via the RCI reference point. The SDN-RL also interacts with MMF using the MMF resource
layer (MMFR) reference point.

Information exchanged through the RCI include control information provided by the SDN-CL to the SDN-RL
(e.g., for configuring a network resource or providing policies) as well as the information that pertains to the
(unsolicited) notifications sent by the SDN-RL whenever a network resource change is detected (if such
information is available).

The RCI reference point provides high-level access to network resources regardless of their respective
technology.
Network resources include:
– entities, virtual or physical ones, that support data forwarding functionalities, such as network
switches with data forwarding rules, which are configured by the SDN-CL;
– entities, virtual or physical ones, that support route computation functionalities, such as IP routers
with capabilities of distributed routing control, which are customized by the SDN-CL, as part of the
dynamic enforcement of routing and traffic engineering policies, for example;

– entities, virtual or physical ones, which support data processing functionalities, such as modules for
media transcoding and data compression.

Data forwarding and data routing functionalities are network resources located in the Data Transport
functional component.

Figure 7-4 shows the SDN-RL functional components.

294 Network and infrastructure