Application Delivery Network (ADN): Take the lead in setting up the "highway" of "Eastern data and Western calculation"

Abstract: cloud-native ADN network is a means of reducing the cost of public cloud Internet access, as well as a supplement to the self-built optical fiber backbone network, which strongly supports the new infrastructure layout of the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" country.

This article is shared from Huawei Cloud Community " Huawei Cloud Gu Jiongjiong: Application Delivery Network (ADN), Redefining Media Network Cloud Native Era", author: Technical Torchbearer.

With the gradual diversity and fascinating of media content, it has become an inevitable trend to move the production and production of media content from local studios to the cloud. The entire process of media content from production to consumption is inseparable from media content producers, cloud digital content production infrastructure, platform systems, and media content consumers. And behind these roles is a high-quality media network.

On September 24, HUAWEI CLOUD held a theme forum on "Digital Content Cloud Production, Chief Architect of HUAWEI brought you this year’s HUAWEI CLOUD’s cloud-native media And blockbuster innovative services in the network field: Application Delivery Network (Application Delivery Network), referred to as ADN service.

Cloud Native Application Delivery Network ADN: Multi-level QoS, Highly Reliable, and Highly Elastic Media Service Network Cornerstone

ADN provides multi-level QoS, highly reliable, and highly resilient network cornerstones for cloud-native media services and even more broadly cloud-based Internet applications. Compared with the Internet based on the "best effort" transport IP network routing mechanism, the ADN network is An overlay network superimposed on the Internet, HUAWEI CLOUD's global cloud and distributed edge infrastructure and dedicated line networks.

The network completely solves the problems of lack of QoS guarantee on the Internet, slow convergence of local routing congestion, high cost of dedicated lines, and limited coverage area. It has software-defined programmability and can support minute-level updates without upgrading or modifying the existing carrier network. The addition of routing nodes and routing changes make the media network possess the core characteristics of cloud "flexibility and agility". This provides media services with basic network transmission services that have the advantages of full Internet coverage, low cost, and deterministic QoS guarantee for dedicated lines, and can support application-driven SLA and QoS.

Cloud native application delivery network (ADN) architecture: application-driven, software-defined, agile intelligence

On the whole, the cloud-native application delivery network ADN corresponds to the name of the content delivery network CDN. The positioning of CDN is to detect the hotspots of Web and video content, and to further reduce the bandwidth cost through caching and storage of hotspot content, and The user experience of access delay is improved.

The scope of application of ADN is wider than that of CDN. It can cover almost all distributed Internet applications, breaking through the limitation of Web pages where CDN cannot accelerate the dynamic production of Web content. This is the reason for the name of ADN.

1. Three-layer architecture of ADN network: physical layer, logical layer, application layer

The overall technical architecture of ADN is divided into three layers, the physical layer, the logical layer, and the application layer. The physical layer corresponds to the global cloud backbone of Huawei Cloud and the Internet of various telecom operators. The core of the ADN network is superimposed here. A unified logical overlay network on top of the two physical bearer networks, that is, the route between any two nodes in the logical layer ADN network, corresponding to the direct Internet or dedicated line physical route between physical layer nodes, or through several hops A splicing combination of multi-segment Internet routing and physical dedicated line routing relayed by ADN nodes.

The reason why the optimal route between any two specific nodes in the ADN network may correspond to the indirect, multi-segment and circuitous forwarding physical route is that the traditional physical routing mechanism, such as OSPF, BGP, etc., uses the neighbor discovery algorithm. When some physical nodes are congested, timely and rapid adjustment of physical layer routing cannot be realized. At this time, the physical routing combination based on the ADN Overlay forwarding node may avoid the local congestion point and give a better path selection.

The application layer of ADN includes the cloud native media services mentioned above, that is, media production, media distribution, and media applications. It also includes pan-Internet apps running on the cloud, such as games, entertainment, office, and even through REST APIs. Various distributed applications for remote interaction and collaboration, the logical layer ADN application delivery network service interacts with the cloud native media service and Internet App at the application layer through the AND API defined by the contract. The input parameters include the ADN route specified by the application layer The start and end nodes, and the QoS/SLA indicators of the application layer, transport layer, and network layer that must be met by the route between the start and end nodes, and the return output parameters of the API include the starting point to the end point of the ADN The final sequence between routing nodes.

2. Three core technical features of ADN network

A network topology with wide coverage, high agility, and full interconnection. is ubiquitous, interconnected with each other, and has a global coverage of more than 2500 ADN nodes. The ADN network enables end users to jump into the network; at the same time, by supporting the distributed containerized deployment of ADN nodes, it realizes the addition, deletion, and deletion of nodes at a minute level. The high flexibility and agility of network topology update; through logical and physical hierarchical decoupling, and full Mesh-based point-to-point measurement between any ADN nodes, it provides a dynamic optimal path selection between any two ADN nodes Basis and guarantee.

Multi-target drive intelligent routing, diversified access protocol transmission. supports minute-level end-to-end routing graph optimization algorithm to realize intelligent routing calculation; supports single stream splitting into multiple streams, multi-stream merging single stream, with real-time selection ability of multiple priority paths; with enhanced anti-weak network protocol and high reliability Realizes intelligent congestion control; through Huawei's self-developed nStack protocol stack, DPDK/user mode-driven forwarding technology, achieves near-line-speed Overlay forwarding capabilities; Provides TCP/UDP/domain name resolution, and SDK mode, etc. Flexible and diversified ADN network access protocol options.

Application-driven, software-defined SLA, tenant and business-aware traffic scheduling. In the API definition of ADN, through application-driven, software-defined network layer/transport layer/application layer QoS/SLA indicators, such as network layer delay, packet loss, and media application layer jitter, audio and video MOS, etc., Describe the quality assurance level and goals that the upper-level application App hopes to achieve in the ADN network; in terms of application perception, network traffic prediction based on cloud service type perception, and tenant application traffic profile based on AI and big data statistics. ADN network further supports the analysis of business traffic. Time-staggered peak scheduling, as well as cross-end edge cloud application and data migration synchronization capabilities.

The core value of ADN service: application and media acceleration, extremely agile and reliable cloud access and cloud interconnection

Generally speaking, the ultimate customer value of ADN services is reflected in two aspects: the ability to accelerate the full-path network for Internet applications, media content experience enhancement and guarantee; and provide cloud tenants with extremely agile and reliable cloud access and cloud interconnection services.

The ADN service supports enterprise tenants to access the nearest cloud data center region or edge site from the local IDC data center or office location with the best cost performance and agile reliability, and to solve the problem between different cloud service areas, cloud service areas and edge sites In between, the Internet acceleration capabilities between different end users/edge sites.

1. In terms of application and media transmission full path acceleration, ADN achieves the same QoS quality as dedicated lines, but is 50% cheaper than dedicated lines

Based on the test statistics of the ADN network, for long-distance connections greater than 1,000 kilometers, the average optimization range of the ADN network compared to the native Internet physical network is 20% to 40% or more, such as "Johannesburg-Singapore" and "Mexico City" In the remote connection scenario of “Shanghai”, the optimized paths were adjusted to “Johannesburg-Hong Kong-Singapore” and “Mexico City-Silicon Valley-Shanghai”. The optimization ranges reached 42.5% and 36.7% respectively. In terms of packet loss rate, ADN even Under the premise of Internet physical bearer, it can still eliminate long-distance Internet network connections, especially under the TCP/HTTP connection protocol, due to the impact of the throughput caused by packet loss, it can basically achieve zero packet loss on the same level as the physical leased line. Rate level (under the premise that bandwidth is not a bottleneck). The "Mexico-Kunming" default Internet routing path is adjusted to "Mexico-Shanghai-Kunming" under the optimization of the ADN network, thereby effectively bypassing the default Internet physical path between "Mexico-Kunming" The local congestion point of the route reduces the packet loss rate from 15% to 0, and the default Internet path of "Tokyo-Beijing" is dynamically adjusted to "Tokyo-Zhengzhou-Beijing", thereby reducing the 42% packet loss rate to 0.

And through the multi-path real-time redundancy capability within the ADN, the multi-plane real-time redundancy capability between the network and the physical HBN (Huawei Backbone Network) built by Huawei Cloud, and the resilience protection capability of switching to the Internet after ADN failures, more It further improves the reliability and robustness of HUAWEI CLOUD's wide-area connection by an order of magnitude.

2. In terms of network resilience and agility, ADN uses cloud native technology to break through the physical equipment and geographic area constraints of traditional wide area networks, reducing network topology changes and routing convergence from days to minutes

The access and forwarding nodes of the ADN network can be flexibly deployed in the area network of the telecom operator mall and shared access by multiple tenants; or deployed in the internal network of the enterprise to provide exclusive services for a single tenant; ADN is based on the CCE cluster container and IEF edge container The deployment mode realizes minute-level network topology changes and automatic on-demand elastic scaling of forwarding node capacity; ADN's multi-objective linear programming high-performance routing algorithm supports minute-level routing convergence and optimal/suboptimal path selection .

3. In terms of structured public cloud cost reduction, ADN reduces the cost of public cloud network access by more than 40% by offloading the EIP of the central region to edge sites and CDNs

By sinking the elastic IP for cloud services, cloud hosts, and cloud containers from the central region to the edge nodes, ADN enables cloud tenants to access the distributed edge sites from the metropolitan area network of each operator via static BGP, and then pass Distributed edge sites are connected to cloud services, cloud hosts, and cloud container instances in the main Region service area via physical dedicated lines. The domestic pricing difference between dynamic BGP and static BGP is nearly 10 times, and the ADN access node shares the upstream and downstream bandwidth with the CDN. , So that the idle bandwidth resources of the CDN during the non-busy period can be more fully utilized, thereby further reducing the overall elastic IP access cost of tenants significantly, and reducing the total network access cost of the public cloud by more than 40%.

Outlook

The future of the cloud-native ADN network will mean more to Huawei Cloud than an agile, flexible, and intelligent global premium media network. It is a means of reducing the cost of Internet access in the public cloud and a supplement to the self-built optical fiber backbone network. .

With the increasingly complete construction of ADN networks, and the enormous enrichment and accumulation of operation and operation and maintenance data in cloud-network collaboration, it will surely promote its growth into the "main artery" and "highway" of Huawei's distributed cloud native architecture. , It makes possible the unified resource scheduling and unified application orchestration deployment across different Region cloud service areas, across the edge of the cloud, across the global HUAWEI cloud, partner cloud and HCS, thus strongly supporting Infrastructure layout, and the realization of Huawei Cloud's "One Cloud in the World" and "One Global Network" strategy.

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