Cloud Gateway for Home Computing Networks

Author: Tian Yang, Unit: China Mobile Smart Home Operation Center

Labs Guide

Entering the digital economy era, the amount of data brought by emerging technologies, applications, and scenarios continues to grow, and all walks of life have put forward more urgent demands for computing power and networks. As the main artery connecting users, data, and computing power, the network and computing power are increasingly integrated and symbiotic. As a result, the concept of "computing power network" has become increasingly popular.

What exactly is a computing network? The computing network is a new type of information infrastructure that takes computing as the core, network as the foundation, and deeply integrates network, cloud, data, intelligence, security, edge, terminal, and chain (ABCD-NETS) to provide integrated services.

In plain words, the computing power network is like an electric grid. Computing power is like electricity. In the electric power era, we built a "power grid" where we can use telephones, washing machines, rice cookers, electric fans, and televisions. In the world of artificial intelligence, computing power is needed for autonomous driving, face recognition, games, and videos to be used normally.

Part 01 Background of the Birth of Cloud Gateway

For home users, the computing network currently provided by operators relies heavily on existing home access gateway devices to provide various services, such as basic Internet access functions and personalized value-added functions. However, as a hardware device, the home access gateway faces an 8-10-year replacement cycle due to equipment aging and maintenance issues. On the other hand, to meet the needs of various emerging businesses, the software system needs to be frequently updated and higher requirements are placed on hardware performance.

In order to improve edge computing power, it is necessary to enhance the performance of access gateways and spend a lot of effort to continue upgrading proprietary software for online hardware. Currently, operators spend more than hundreds of billions of yuan each year on hardware purchases for home access terminals alone, and spend hundreds of millions of yuan on terminal software upgrades and adaptations, but still cannot solve the problem of rapid response to emerging value-added services for customers. At the same time, terminal hardware resources are ultimately limited, which is a single-point computing bottleneck and cannot meet the future computing power needs of home users.

Part 02 What is a cloud gateway?

The cloud gateway for home computing networks uses NFV and SDN technologies, based on the idea of ​​edge cloudification of hardware gateway layer 3 and above functions and white-box terminals, to achieve cloudification of PPPoE, NAT, value-added service plug-ins and other functions. The terminal gateway functions are greatly simplified, and the services are no longer restricted by hardware systems and interfaces. The network logic architecture is shown in the figure below:

Schematic diagram of the comparison of the logical architecture of existing home gateways and cloud gateways

The above figure shows the three major components of the cloud gateway, namely the cloud gateway, white box gateway and cloud gateway capability platform. The functions of these three components are explained in detail below.

• Cloud Gateway: Virtualizes hardware gateway functions to the cloud and deploys them in a containerized manner. It is responsible for user dial-up, managing connected terminals, and scheduling broadband Internet traffic.
• White box ONU: focuses on realizing the optical-electrical signal conversion function. Network control and management are handled by the cloud. Local hardware is greatly simplified, and the service is not restricted by the hardware system and interface.
• Cloud Gateway Capability Platform: Cloud gateway resources are uniformly configured and network orchestrated, providing service provisioning configuration management and service monitoring, enabling convenient and rapid deployment of value-added services.

Part 03 Cloud Gateway Features

Feature 1: Cloud deployment

• Cloud gateways are deployed in a containerized manner, without the need for dedicated hardware. Cloud gateways based on cloud-based software architecture are far more flexible than physical gateway devices, and support the provision of new gateway services that can be dynamically upgraded and functionally combined in VNFaaS mode;
• The deployment environment of the cloud gateway can be managed and orchestrated through K8s and controllers;
• The product form conforms to the technical concepts of SDN and NFV;
• The product form is naturally flexible and meets the directional requirements of "the network follows the cloud".

Cloud Gateway System Architecture Diagram

Feature 2: Dual-speed network

Dual-speed network diagram

The cloud gateway can maximize the use of line resources and provide gigabit upstream and downstream rates for APPS in the edge DC. When users access the Internet, they can access it according to the package rate.

While providing high-speed services to users/content service providers, all traffic is terminated at the edge DC, which will not cause a large load on the metropolitan area network egress, and the original access network only needs to expand the OLT. The cloud gateway provides a cost-effective "speed up and reduce fees" solution.

The lines on the access side such as ONU/optical modem are often gigabit ports, but the user's package rate does not maximize the utilization of the link resources on this side. Edge DC and cloud gateway can maximize the utilization of idle bandwidth resources here.

Feature 3: Smart DNS

Deploying intelligent DNS services on the cloud gateway can intelligently provide users with the optimal access address based on their access source and destination, maximizing the advantages of network links.

Smart DNS feature diagram

Feature 4: Intelligent routing

The cloud gateway can support more than 400 protocols, more than 2,500 application fields, and network data flow feature fields. It can flexibly combine multiple fields to complete the routing of specific traffic; it provides flexible rule syntax and efficient matching. Intelligent business is driven according to the specified rules based on business characteristics to achieve intelligent routing and intelligent distribution.

Part 04 Product Value of Cloud Gateway

Cloud gateway products not only completely decouple the strong binding between home broadband customer services and hardware terminals, extend the boundaries of home LAN to the operator's cloud, and provide customers with various value-added services (such as cloud games, cloud NAS, cloud computers and other application services), but also help operators optimize home broadband network architecture, reduce the cost of new installation and maintenance of home broadband gateways, break through the single-point computing power bottleneck of terminal gateways and the difficulty of business adaptation, meet the needs of flexible business deployment and activation, and support emerging businesses and operating models.

• Value 1: Existing home gateway devices do not need to be replaced and can be silently upgraded to support cloud gateway functions.
• Value 2: Support the rapid incubation of new home services for operators, allowing cloud computing power to reach user homes directly, such as supporting new services such as cloud gaming, cloud NAS, and cloud computers.
• Value 3: It can effectively support operators to increase costs and efficiency, optimize network architecture, reduce terminal costs, and reduce operation and maintenance workload.