Stateless policy and service chaining in neutral host network
AssigneeCisco Technology, Inc.
InventorsNagendra Kumar Nainar, Carlos M. Pignataro, Rajiv Asati
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Presented herein are techniques that provide for a way to associate a policy, or signal the policy for a user equipment (UE), directly from the UE traffic, inband or, in other words, within the data plane. The policies are effectively embedded in the address of the UE traffic. When the Neutral Host Network (NHN) receives the UE traffic, the policy can be determined directly from the address associated with the UE traffic. This provides for a unique way of integrating a service chain identifier in the Internet Protocol address of the UE to identify the services/policies to be applied to UE traffic in a stateless manner.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- obtaining an address request for a user equipment seeking services of a particular participating service provider through a neutral host network, the address request including an indication of a profile of the user equipment or a slice, if requested, by the user equipment;
- determining, based on the profile or slice indicated in the address request, a policy representing one or more services to be applied to traffic associated with the user equipment;
- generating an Internet Protocol (IP) address for the user equipment based on a concatenation of a prefix associated with the particular participating service provider, a policy identifier that identifies the policy determined for the user equipment, and a user equipment identifier;
- and
- providing an address response to be sent to the user equipment, the address response including the IP address assigned to the user equipment.
A method comprising:
- obtaining a packet originating from, or sent to, a user equipment via a neutral host network and destined to, or originating from, a particular participating service provider, the packet having an Internet Protocol (IP) address assigned to the user equipment, the IP address being based on a concatenation of a prefix associated with the particular participating service provider, a policy identifier that identifies a policy determined for the user equipment, and a user equipment identifier;
- obtaining the policy identifier from the IP address of the packet;
- determining, based on the policy identifier, a particular policy among a plurality of policies, each policy representing one or more services to be applied to the packet from the user equipment;
- and
- directing the packet to one or more services according to the particular policy.
An apparatus comprising:
- a communication interface configured to enable network communications;
- and
- at least one processor coupled to the communication interface, wherein the processor is configured to:
- obtain an address request for a user equipment seeking services of a particular participating service provider through a neutral host network, the address request including an indication of a profile of the user equipment or a slice, if requested, by the user equipment;
- determine, based on the profile or slice indicated in the address request, a policy representing one or more services to be applied to traffic associated with the user equipment;
- generate an Internet Protocol (IP) address for the user equipment based on a concatenation of a prefix associated with the particular participating service provider, a policy identifier that identifies the policy determined for the user equipment, and a user equipment identifier;
- and
- provide an address response to be sent to the user equipment, the address response including the IP address assigned to the user equipment.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.