Global review of the NetReady requirements documentcolorado.1.0

This patchset enables a global review of the entire NetReady
requirements document. Changes to the document shall be pushed
as new patches to this patchset.

Change-Id: I7cc9290c9260aad5b687253b02d60efbc8a64bb2
Signed-off-by: Georg Kunz <georg.kunz@ericsson.com>

1 files changed, 106 insertions, 0 deletions

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+.. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
+.. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+This document represents and describes the results of the OPNFV NetReady
+(Network Readiness) project. Specifically, the document comprises a selection of
+NFV-related networking use cases and their networking requirements. For every
+use case, it furthermore presents a gap analysis of the aforementioned
+requirements with respect to the current OpenStack networking architecture.
+Finally it provides a description of potential solutions and improvements.
+
+
+Scope
+-----
+
+NetReady is a project within the OPNFV initiative. Its focus is on NFV (Network
+Function Virtualization) related networking use cases and their requirements on
+the underlying NFVI (Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure).
+
+The NetReady project addresses the OpenStack networking architecture,
+specifically OpenStack Neutron, from a NFV perspective. Its goal is to identify
+gaps in the current OpenStack networking architecture with respect to NFV
+requirements and to propose and evaluate improvements and potential complementary
+solutions.
+
+
+Problem Description
+-------------------
+
+Telco ecosystem's movement towards the cloud domain results in Network Function
+Virtualization that is discussed and specified in ETSI NFV. This movement opens
+up many green field areas which are full of potential growth in both business
+and technology. This new NFV domain brings new business opportunities and new
+market segments as well as emerging technologies that are exploratory and
+experimental in nature, especially in NFV networking.
+
+It is often stated that NFV imposes additional requirements on the networking
+architecture and feature set of the underlying NFVI beyond those of data center
+networking. For instance, the NFVI needs to establish and manage connectivity
+beyond the data center to the WAN (Wide Area Network). Moreover, NFV networking
+use cases often abstract from L2 connectivity and instead focus on L3-only
+connectivity. Hence, the NFVI networking architecture needs to be flexible
+enough to be able to meet the requirements of NFV-related use cases in addition
+to traditional data center networking.
+
+Traditionally, OpenStack networking, represented typically by the OpenStack
+Neutron project, targets virtualized data center networking. This comprises
+originally establishing and managing layer 2 network connectivity among VMs
+(Virtual Machines). Over the past releases of OpenStack, Neutron has grown to
+provide an extensive feature set, covering both L2 as well as L3 networking
+services such as virtual routers, NATing, VPNaaS and BGP VPNs.
+
+It is an ongoing debate how well the current OpenStack networking architecture
+can meet the additional requirements of NFV networking. Hence, a thorough
+analysis of NFV networking requirements and their relation to the OpenStack
+networking architecture is needed.
+
+Besides current additional use cases and requirements of NFV networking,
+more importantly, because of the **green field** nature of NFV, it is foreseen
+that there will be more and more new NFV networking use cases and services,
+which will bring new business, in near future. The challenges for telco ecosystem
+are to:
+
+- Quickly catch the new business opportunity;
+
+- Execute it in agile way so that we can accelerate the time-to-market and improve
+  the business agility in offering our customers with innovative NFV services.
+
+Therefore, it is critically important for telco ecosystem to quickly develop and deploy
+new NFV networking APIs on-demand based on market need.
+
+Goals
+-----
+
+The goals of the NetReady project and correspondingly this document are the
+following:
+
+- This document comprises a collection of relevant NFV networking use cases and
+  clearly describes their requirements on the NFVI. These requirements are
+  stated independently of a particular implementation, for instance OpenStack
+  Neutron. Instead, requirements are formulated in terms of APIs (Application
+  Programming Interfaces) and data models needed to realize a given NFV use
+  case.
+
+- The list of use cases is not considered to be all-encompassing but it
+  represents a carefully selected set of use cases that are considered to be
+  relevant at the time of writing. More use cases may be added over time. The
+  authors are very open to suggestions, reviews, clarifications, corrections
+  and feedback in general.
+
+- This document contains a thorough analysis of the gaps in the current
+  OpenStack networking architecture with respect to the requirements imposed
+  by the selected NFV use cases. To this end, we analyze existing functionality
+  in OpenStack networking.
+
+- Beyond current list of use cases and gap analysis in the document, more importantly,
+  it is the future of NFV networking that needs to be made easy to innovate, quick to
+  develop, and agile to deploy and operate. A model-driven, extensible framework
+  is expected to achieve agility for innovations in NFV networking.
+
+- This document will in future revisions describe the proposed improvements
+  and complementary solutions needed to enable OpenStack to fulfill the
+  identified NFV requirements.
+