In-situ Flow Information Telemetry
Futurewei
China Mobile
China Telecom
LG U+
SK Telecom
For efficient network operation, most network operators rely on traditional Operation, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) methods, which include proactive and reactive techniques, running in active and passive modes. As networks increase in scale, they become more susceptible to measurement accuracy and misconfiguration errors. With the advent of programmable data-plane, emerging on-path telemetry techniques provide unprecedented flow insight and fast notification of network issues (e.g., jitter, increased latency, packet loss, significant bit error variations, and unequal load- balancing). This document outlines a reference architectural framework, In-situ Flow Information Telemetry (iFIT), which enumerates several high level components and describes how these components can be assembled to achieve a complete and closed-loop working solution for on-path telemetry. iFIT addresses several deployment challenges for on-path telemetry techniques, especially in carrier networks. As an open framework, it does not detail the implementation of the components as well as the interface between the components. Rather, the document summarizes the current status and analyzes the gaps on related standard developments.