ETSI GR NIN 001 V1.1.1 (2021-03)

Non-IP Networking (NIN); Problem statement: networking with TCP/IP in the 2020s

DGR/NIN-001

General Information

• Status: Not Published
• Technical Committee: NIN - Non-IP Networking
• Current Stage: 12 - Completion
• Due Date: 05-Mar-2021
• Completion Date: 10-Mar-2021

Standards Content (Sample)

ETSI GR NIN 001 V1.1.1 (2021-03)






GROUP REPORT
Non-IP Networking (NIN);
Problem statement: networking with TCP/IP in the 2020s
Disclaimer
The present document has been produced and approved by the Non-IP Networking ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG)
and represents the views of those members who participated in this ISG.
It does not necessarily represent the views of the entire ETSI membership.

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Reference
DGR/NIN-001
Keywords
autonomic networking, core network, fixed
networks, intelligence-defined network, internet,
layer 3, network monitoring, network
performance, network scenarios, next generation
protocol, non 3GPP access

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Contents
Intellectual Property Rights . 5
Foreword . 5
Modal verbs terminology . 5
Introduction . 5
1 Scope . 6
2 References . 6
2.1 Normative references . 6
2.2 Informative references . 6
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations . 7
3.1 Terms . 7
3.2 Symbols . 7
3.3 Abbreviations . 8
4 Efficient use of cellular radio spectrum. 9
4.1 Introduction . 9
4.1.0 Requirement for efficiency . 9
4.1.1 Definition of efficiency . 9
4.2 Radio techniques for spectral efficiency . 9
4.2.1 Space division . 9
4.2.2 Time division . 9
4.2.3 Efficient modulation schemes . 9
4.2.4 Radio resource block allocation . 10
4.2.5 Transmission interval . 10
4.2.6 Narrowband IoT and Non-IP Data Delivery . 10
4.3 Non-radio techniques . 10
4.3.1 RObust Header Compression (ROHC) . 10
4.3.2 Payload compression . 11
4.4 Areas that non-IP networking can help improve . 11
4.4.1 Transmission overheads . 11
4.4.2 The propagation range of ultra-low latency services . 11
4.4.3 Mobility performance . 12
4.4.4 Energy expenditure . 12
4.4.5 Resilience . 12
4.4.6 Congestion control . 12
5 Naming and addressing . 13
5.1 Introduction . 13
5.2 Allocation . 13
5.3 Abundance . 13
5.4 Assignment mode . 14
5.5 End system configuration . 15
5.6 Resolution. 16
5.7 Hierarchy . 17
5.8 Advertisements . 18
6 Security. 18
6.1 IPsec . 18
6.2 Internet routing security and BGP hijacking . 19
6.3 BGP instability . 19
6.4 Control plane security . 20
6.5 Lawful interception . 20
7 Quality of Service and time-sensitive traffic . 20
8 Network management. 21
9 Efficient forwarding . 21
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10 Migration . 22
History . 24

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Intellectual Property Rights
Essential patents
IPRs essential or potentially essential to normative deliverables may have been declared to ETSI. The information
pertaining to these essential IPRs, if any, is publicly available for ETSI members and non-members, and can be found
in ETSI SR 000 314: "Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs); Essential, or potentially Essential, IPRs notified to ETSI in
respect of ETSI standards", which is available from the ETSI Secretariat. Latest updates are available on the ETSI Web
server (https://ipr.etsi.org/).
Pursuant to the ETSI IPR Policy, no investigation, including IPR searches, has been carried out by ETSI. No guarantee
can be given as to the existence of other IPRs not referenced in ETSI SR 000 314 (or the updates on the ETSI Web
server) which are, or may be, or may become, essential to the present document.
Trademarks
The present document may include trademarks and/or tradenames which are asserted and/or registered by their owners.
ETSI claims no ownership of these except for any which are indicated as being the property of ETSI, and conveys no
right to use or reproduce any trademark and/or tradename. Mention of those trademarks in the present document does
not constitute an endorsement by ETSI of products, services or organizations associated with those trademarks.
Foreword
This Group Report (GR) has been produced by ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) Non-IP Networking (NIN).
Modal verbs terminology
In the present document "should", "should not", "may", "need not", "will", "will not", "can" and "cannot" are to be
interpreted as described in clause 3.2 of the ETSI Drafting Rules (Verbal forms for the expression of provisions).
"must" and "must not" are NOT allowed in ETSI deliverables except when used in direct citation.
Introduction
The TCP/IP suite of network protocols is now over 40 years old and was designed for different requirements than the
networking of the 2020s. This raises addressing, mobility, performance, and security issues that have required
significant effort, energy, and cost to mitigate, and have been well documented, for instance in ISO/IEC
TR 29181-1 [i.1].
Any form of wireless comms, whether they be 2/3/4/5G, satellite or Wi-Fi, needs to go through a 'wired' back-haul at
some point, if not multiple points. How do all these technologies converge and connect edges to the fixed 'backbone'?
Connecting across the world on an architecture where ageing network protocols (IP, MPLS and more) are not able to
move beyond best effort networking makes it difficult to meet the increasingly challenging guaranteed end-to-end SLAs
required for high value, business- and safety-critical applications. National and international core networks need to
work in conjunction with future internet protocol paradigms required to satisfy future network demands and deliver the
promised 5G benefits, while being secure, robust, trusted, and resilient by design.
With the increasing challenges placed on modern networks to support new use cases (some of which require ultra-low
latency) and greater connectivity, Service Providers are looking for candidate technologies that may serve their needs
better than the TCP/IP-based networking used in current systems.
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1 Scope
The present document describes the challenges of IP-based networking for fixed and mobile networks and ways in
which new network protocols can result in improved performance and more efficient operation. Topics covered include:
• efficient use of spectrum;
• efficient forwarding;
• naming and addressing (including addressing lifecycle);
• mobility and multihoming;
• Quality of Service (QoS);
• time-sensitive networking;
• performance;
• authenticity, integrity, confidentiality, access control, and identifiers;
• lawful interception;
• ease of management; and
• migration from current technology.
2 References
2.1 Normative references
Normative references are not applicable in the present document.
2.2 Informative references
References are either specific (identified by date of publication and/or edition number or version number) or
non-specific. For specific references, only the cited version applies. For non-specific references, the latest version of the
referenced document (including any amendments) applies.
NOTE: While any hyperlinks included in this clause were valid at the time of publication, ETSI cannot guarantee
their long term validity.
The following referenced documents are not necessary for the application of the present document but they assist the
user with regard to a particular subject area.
[i.1] ISO/IEC TR 29181-1:2012: "Information technology -- Future Network -- Problem statement and
requirements -- Part 1: Overall aspects".
[i.2] T-Mobile/IoT - Whitepaper, March 019: "The Game Changer for the internet of things".
NOTE: Available at https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tfb/pdf/Whitepaper-Narrow-BandIo-T2019.pdf.
[i.3] IETF RFC 1144: "Compressing TCP/IP Headers for Low-Speed Serial Links".
[i.4] IETF RFC 2508: "Compressing IP/UDP/RTP Headers for Low-Speed Serial Links".
[i.5] ETSI TR 103 369: "CYBER; Design requirements ecosystem".
[i.6] ETSI TS 101 158: "Telecommunications security; Lawful Interception (LI); Requirements for
network functions".
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[i.7] ETSI TS 101 331: "Lawful Interception (LI); Requirements of Law Enforcement Agencies".
[i.8] IETF RFC 2205: "Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) -- Version 1 Functional Specification".
[i.9] IETF RFC 8578: "Deterministic Networking Use Cases".
[i.10] IEEE 802.1AS™: "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks -- Timing and
Synchronization for Time-Sensitive Applications".
[i.11] IEEE 802.1Q™: "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks -- Bridges and
Bridged Networks".
[i.12] Dr. N. Davies: "The properties and mathematics of data transport quality", 2009.
NOTE: Available at https://www.slideshare.net/mgeddes/intro-dataqualityattenuation.
[i.13] I. Johansson: "Congestion control for 4G and 5G access", Internet Engineering Task Force Internet
Draft, July 2016.
NOTE: Available at https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-johansson-cc-for-4g-5g-02.
[i.14] ETSI TS 133 210: "Digital cellular telecommunications system (Phase 2+) (GSM); Universal
Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); LTE; 5G; Network Domain Security (NDS); IP
network layer security (3GPP TS 33.210)".
NOTE: Available at https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_ts/133200_133299/133210/.
[i.15] "Patterns in network architecture: a return to fundamentals", chapter 6 'Divining Layers', J. Day,
Pearson, 2008, ISBN 0-13-225242-2.
[i.16] P. Teymoori, M. Welzly, S. Gjessingz, E. Grasa, R. Riggio, K. Rauschk, D Siracusa: "Congestion
Control in the Recursive InterNetworking Architecture (RINA)", IEEE ICC 2016 -
Next-Generation Networking and Internet Symposium, 2016.
[i.17] GSMA, June 2019: "NB-IoT Deployment Guide to Basic Feature set Requirements".
NOTE: Available at https://www.gsma.com/iot/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/201906-GSMA-NB-IoT-
Deployment-Guide-v3.pdf.
[i.18] IETF RFC 7426: "Software-Defined Networking (SDN): Layers and Architecture Terminology".
[i.19] IEEE Std 802™: "IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks: Overview and
Architecture".
3 Definition of terms, symbols and abbreviations
3.1 Terms
For the purposes of the present document, the following terms apply:
QUIC: UDP-based transport and session-control protocol with claimed performance improvements over TLS/TCP
3.2 Symbols
Void.
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3.3 Abbreviations
For the purposes of the present document, the following abbreviations apply:
API Application Program Interface
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
AS Autonomous System
BGP Border Gateway Protocol
BLER Block Error Rate
CA Certificate Authority
CBOR Concise Binary Object Representation
DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DNS Directory Name Service
HTTP HperText Transfer Protocol
HTTPS HperText Transfer Protocol Secure
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
IoT Internet of Things
IP Internet Protocol
IPX Internetwork Packet Exchange
JSON JavaScript Object Notation
LAN Local Area Network
LI Lawful Interception
LPWAN Low Power Wide Area Networks
MAC Media Access Control
MIMO Multiple Input and Multiple Output
MPLS Multi-Protocol Label Switching
NAT Network Address Translation
NR New Radio
OSI Open Systems Interconnection
OUI Organizationally Unique Identifier
PST Pacific Standard Time
QoS Quality of Service
RFC Request For Comment
RIR Regional Internet Registry
ROA Route Origin Authorization
ROHC RObust Header Compression
RPKI Resource Public Key Infrastructure
RSVP ReSource Reservation Protocol
RTP Real-time Transport Protocol
SDN Software-Defined Networking
SINR Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio
SIP Session Initiation Protocol
SYN SYNchronize (TCP control flag)
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
TLS Transport Layer Security
TSN Time-Sensitive Networking
TTI Time Transmission Interval
UDP User Datagram Protocol
USA United States of America
VPN Virtual Private Network
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4 Efficient use of cellular radio spectrum
4.1 Introduction
4.1.0 Requirement for efficiency
Radio spectrum is regulated, finite, and expensive for a cellular radio network to acquire and use. Spectrum is shared
among all devices attached to the radio network to enable download (from the network to the device, the 'downlink')
and upload (from the device to the network, the 'uplink'). If the operator can share the spectrum efficiently, among users
and their applications, then the operator may reduce their costs, transmit more data in shorter time intervals, and enable
more devices to communicate simultaneously. This clause summarizes existing techniques to use spectrum efficiently at
the radio and other layers, and how non-IP network protocols could further improve spectral efficiency.
4.1.1 Definition of efficiency
In the present document, networking efficiency is defined as the number of application bits per Hz per second.
Application bits are the data communicated between the client and server applications once all network headers have
been removed.
4.2 Radio techniques for spectral efficiency
4.2.1 Space division
Radio frequencies experience path loss as they travel through space, proportional to the distance they travel and affected
by environmental conditions (absorption losses) along the path. Eventually the signal is attenuated to the point where
the Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) is too low to carry information reliably. Cellular networks calculate
the path loss to determine the boundaries of each cell - after which the frequency ceases to be reliable, assuming a fixed
power level at the transmitter. This allows networks to reuse that same frequency in other cells, although to avoid
interference at the cell boundary, the same frequency is typically not used in adjacent cells that abut that boundary.
Whilst traditional cellular antennae transmit signals in an arc to fill a portion of the cell, Massive Multiple Input and
Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna systems allow the narrow targeting of signals - 'beamforming' - which provides
higher throughput and reduced latency between the MIMO antenna and receiving device.
Spatial multiplexing allows more than one data signal to be transmitted and received simultaneously on the same
channel. MIMO achieves this by utilizing multipath-propagation to increase the number of paths a signal can take from
transmitter to receiver.
4.2.2 Time division
The same frequency may be reused to communicate information if the frequency is divided into timeslots. Attached
devices are allocated a timeslot by the radio network and transmit or receive within that slot. The longer the timeslot,
the more information can be communicated within it - but at the cost of reducing the number of devices that can be
served on that frequency in a given time.
4.2.3 Efficient modulation schemes
Cellular networks from 2G onwards transmit digital data. The transmitter takes digital data as an input, and transmits
analogue radio in a way that allows the receiver to parse and reconstruct the digital data. This is achieved through
modulation - wherein characteristics of the analogue radio wave are controlled and adapted to signal information to the
receiver - with both sender and receiver utilizing modulators-demodulators (modems).
Given that the speed of a radio wave is fixed - defined by the speed of light through air - there are three characteristics
of a radio wave that can be modulated: amplitude, frequency and phase.
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Figure 4.1: Characteristics of a sinusoidal wave
(source: National Institute of Standards & Technology, 2010
Public Domain as per https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscillating_sine_wave.gif)
When a device attaches to the cellular network, it is allocated a frequency from the operator's spectrum. Data to be
communicated to/from the device is encoded into an analogue signal. One of the signal characteristics - amplitude,
frequency, phase - is selected, and used to modulate a number of 'sub-carriers' (sub-divisions of the operator spectrum).
The resulting information is transmitted to the receiver, which demodulates the sub-carriers to retrieve the information.
The goal of a modulation scheme is to balance data throughput - the amount of data that can be modulated per second
per Hz - with resilience from interference between the tightly-spaced frequency sub-carriers.
4.2.4 Radio resource block allocation
Devices continuously signal their received signal strength to the network. The network uses these values, as well as the
size of packet queue for that user, to optimize the amount of radio resource to dedicate to that user, in the form of radio
resource blocks. 5G New Radio (NR) introduces the concept of bandwidth parts, which allows the spectrum to be
flexibly sliced up into groups of resource blocks for different users depending upon their needs: for example small
groups for NB-IoT and large groups for enhanced mobile broadband.
4.2.5 Transmission interval
The Time Transmission Interval (TTI) is the duration of a transmission. A shorter TTI allows more transmissions per
second, but with a reduced data payload (i.e. fewer radio resource blocks). The TTI can be adapted based on the
application, for example a short TTI for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications with small. frequent payloads.
4.2.6 Narrowband IoT and Non-IP Data Delivery
Narrowband-IoT (NB-IoT) [i.17] is used for communication with low-power, low-throughput devices. The use of a
narrow frequency band (200 kHz) at a lower carrier frequency reduces maximum throughput but also allows for signal
penetration indoors.
NB-IoT may operate in a 'Non-IP Data Delivery' mode to remove the IP header from the transmitted payload,
improving efficiency (see [i.2]). This is important as it minimizes radio transmissions, which apply a significant drain to
the batteries of low-power devices.
4.3 Non-radio techniques
4.3.1 RObust Header Compression (ROHC)
IP encapsulation results in a per-packet header overhead: 20 bytes for IPv4, 40 bytes for IPv6 due to the increased
address lengths. Transport protocols contribute an additional 20 bytes (TCP) or 8 bytes (UDP), and for "live" media
such as audio there will also be at least 12 bytes of RTP header.
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To tackle this problem, RObust Header Compression (ROHC, IETF RFC 1144 [i.3] and IETF RFC 2508 [i.4])
identifies redundant information (that which will be sent in every packet of a flow) and only transmits it in the first
packet. Subsequent variable information (segment numbers, etc.) are transmitted in compressed form, and reassembled
by the receiver.
Whilst ROHC may seem ideal to solve the problem of header overheads - reducing them to around 2 or 3 bytes - there
are caveats:
• It incurs a cost to operators if they activate ROHC in a software licence.
• It incurs compute energy and latency.
• It requires a tuning of the Block Error Rate (BLER) used in radio transmission to ensure that the important
information (the flow metadata) is not lost, since that would affect the following packets in the flow.
It may be for these reasons that operators typically only apply ROHC to VoLTE (Voice over LTE) flows. There are two
reasons for this:
• the (IP, UDP, RTP) headers are almost the same size as the VoLTE payload (~60 bytes) , meaning header
compression is more beneficial than e.g. video streams with per-packet payloads of 1 340 bytes;
• operators may be penalized by regulators if their voice call completion rate drops below a certain threshold,
hence operators are more likely to invest in resources to ensure that does not happen.
Operators are less likely to apply ROHC to general Internet traffic due to the processing and licence costs. This is also
the case with Low-Power IoT traffic, where the BLER issue is exacerbated. This has motivated new workarounds, such
as Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) omitting IP from the transmission entirely.
Rather than compressing and inflating IP and transport layer headers, ISG NIN proposes to tackle the problem at source
through an efficient protocol design. This can reduce costs and latency, and avoid issues with Block Error Rates at
transmission.
4.3.2 Payload compression
Payload - the application data carried in packets - is sized according to the amount of data and its serialization. Efficient
serialization schemes reduce
...