The Winter Olympics is about to open, and the on-site communication network technology is deeply revealed!

In 11 days, the world-renowned Beijing Winter Olympics will kick off.

This Winter Olympics is the second time that China has hosted the world's top sporting event since 2008. In the past two years, the global epidemic has been raging, and the anti-epidemic situation has been changing. The Beijing Winter Olympics can be held as scheduled, which is of great significance. It will effectively boost the determination and confidence of countries around the world to fight the epidemic and help usher in the dawn of final victory as soon as possible.

Beijing Winter Olympics Venues

In order to ensure the smooth holding of this Winter Olympics, the organizers have made careful plans and preparations for the relevant preparatory work. Now, the preparation work that has lasted for more than six years has entered the sprint stage. What kind of ice and snow event will be presented to the people of the world?

Top-level events put the Internet to the test

As we all know, modern sports are incorporating more and more technological elements. The Olympic Games, which attract worldwide attention, are not only a competition venue for top athletes, but also a stage for displaying cool black technologies.

In particular, information and communication technology, after decades of rapid development, has entered every corner of the stadium and is a key factor in the success of the event.

The Beijing Winter Olympics is held at a turning point in the global digital revolution. It has proposed new development concepts of "Green Olympics", "Shared Olympics", "Open Olympics" and "Clean Olympics". The core goal is to create a "SMART Winter Olympics" that integrates Safety Olympics, Multimedia Olympics, AI Olympics, Green Olympics and Technology Olympics.

SMART Winter Olympics

As you can see, behind the "SMART" goal is the extensive use of cutting-edge information technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, big data, VR/AR, and artificial intelligence, and it is also a practical test of related capabilities.

Take the broadcast of the games as an example. In order to help global audiences better appreciate the live events, this Winter Olympics will fully adopt 8K ultra-high-definition live broadcasts and introduce video technologies such as "free perspective" and "bullet time".

With the "free viewpoint" technology, viewers can be their own "directors" when watching the game on TV, mobile phones or VR devices, changing the viewing angle at any time and fully appreciating the outstanding performance of the athletes. With the "bullet time" technology, viewers can also "freeze time and space" during the game to experience the wonderful moments.

This interactive and immersive viewing experience not only places high demands on on-site shooting technology, but also brings severe challenges to the processing and transmission of video signals.

The communication network of the Beijing Winter Olympics must not only meet stringent requirements in terms of speed, bandwidth, latency and other performance indicators, but also be watertight in terms of security and reliability. In addition, based on the national strategy of "dual carbon", the communication network must also meet the requirements of low energy consumption and green environmental protection.

Extremely simple architecture, one network for multiple industries

The Beijing Winter Olympics data communication network, jointly built by China Unicom and Huawei, undertakes the communication connection task of the entire event. Let's take a closer look to see whether this network has achieved the "SMART" we mentioned earlier.

First, let’s take a look at the architectural design of the entire network.

The network architecture of the Winter Olympics data network

From a macro perspective, this network uses a standard leaf-spine network architecture. Through two MCF spine switch nodes, it is directly connected to more than 20 venues and connected to the Internet area, business management area, media MPC, etc. For mobile scenarios such as media buses, 5G is used for connection.

Compared with the previous method of using different networks to carry different services, this time only one network was used to carry multiple services such as media broadcasting, event reporting, and communication support for staff. This is "one network for multiple industries."

Behind the “one network supporting multiple industries”, there is a key technology that needs support, and that is the “IPv6+” that is attracting much attention now.

"IPv6+" is an upgrade of the IPv6 next-generation Internet and an IP network innovation system for the 5G and cloud era.

Based on IPv6, it has improved and innovated the technical system, has stronger network capabilities, and can provide a more perfect user experience.

The data communication network for this Winter Olympics is the first "IPv6+" network certified by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, and it is also the first time that an "IPv6+" private network has been used in the Olympics. Let's analyze in detail how this network enables the SMART Olympics.

"IPv6+" has a much larger number of addresses than IPv4, and no longer requires a "private network", avoiding address conversion. It is combined with the leaf-spine architecture to achieve network flattening, significantly reduce network nodes, and achieve two-hop direct access to any Leaf node.

The reduction in network nodes means a reduction in equipment, computer rooms and optical fibers, which also means a decrease in electricity consumption and carbon emissions, thus practicing the concept of the "Green Winter Olympics".

The leaf-spine architecture also has obvious advantages in terms of network reliability. It implements dual-node protection, and there are multiple non-overlapping paths between any leaf nodes, which has strong disaster recovery capabilities.

Application awareness, slicing to ensure experience

When a network carries multiple services, the most important thing is to ensure the service quality of services of different priorities.

At the Olympic Games, there are different Internet user roles and different Internet application scenarios.

As mentioned above, video shooting, media reporting, work coordination, security dispatch, etc. all require the use of communication networks. These communication needs have different requirements for the QoS (quality of service) of network services.

This means that although these services are carried on the same network, the network must be able to provide differentiated package services.

Ultra-high-definition video broadcasting and VR/AR panoramic live broadcasting are high-priority services that need to be protected. The data volume is huge and the network bandwidth requirements are extremely high. In order to achieve an immersive interactive experience for the audience, the transmission delay requirements are also very high.

Traditional IPv4 and MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) technologies cannot meet the needs well.

The data message structure of IPv6 has been upgraded. Compared with IPv4, the message content has become richer and can record more information.

IPv6 header format

It is like putting an accurate and complete label on a fast package, helping the network to accurately identify the content attributes of the data message. In this way, the network can provide different QoS according to the different attributes of the data message and realize differentiated services.

Accurate identification of data message content can also help telecom operators understand the flow trends of data services in the entire network, coordinate resources more efficiently, and expand network capacity in a timely manner.

The data communication network of the Beijing Winter Olympics also uses Flexible Ethernet (FlexE) technology, which is a hard pipe and hard isolation technology based on high-speed Ethernet interface to realize SDH channelization function, which can provide deterministic delay and meet the transmission requirements of large-bandwidth services.

SRv6, intent-driven networking

The backbone network of the Winter Olympics uses advanced SRv6 technology, which is a segment routing technology based on IPv6.

SRv6 has an unprecedented high-efficiency path selection capability. In the process of transmitting data packets, the upper-level management center plans and issues the best path from the starting point to the end point in advance, which is very convenient for path control and traffic optimization.

SRv6 does not require MPLS. The head and tail support SRv6, and the middle only needs to support IPv6. Cloud data centers can open dual stacks to achieve seamless cloud-network integration and cloud-on-demand network, enabling data to enter the cloud in one hop, greatly improving network transmission efficiency.

This Olympics is the first time that the "Cloud Olympics" has been realized. In other words, there is no offline data center or computer room built specifically for the Olympics. All IT business services of the Olympics are deployed in the cloud.

With the help of SRv6, the massive access terminal applications of the Olympic Games are extended to the cloud, enabling the rapid connection of services such as video broadcasting to the cloud and service quality assurance, ensuring that the services do not take detours, are disconnected, have no packet loss, and are not delayed, further improving the network experience of on-site users.

The combination of SRv6 and SDN technology makes the network open and programmable, facilitating the intelligent orchestration of service chains. In the future, as apps support SRv6, the network can truly be intent-driven.

Intelligent operation and maintenance, AI helps security

As the world's top sports event, the Beijing Winter Olympics cannot afford any mistakes. The security and reliability requirements of the Winter Olympics data communication network are much higher than those of ordinary networks. IPv6+ has laid a solid foundation for the security and reliability of the network.

"IPv6+" achieves inherent security through network layer protocols and is naturally immune.

In the "IPv6+" network, nodes use public network addresses instead of private network addresses, making malicious messages easier to track, which enhances the security and reliability of the network. After the data message structure is upgraded, it is also greatly increased for attackers to forge and eavesdrop, and the security and privacy of data messages are enhanced.

"IPv6+" zero trust authenticates and authorizes all access and only provides the minimum access rights. Based on the cloud network security integrated architecture, coordinated threat disposal can achieve threat containment from hourly to minute level.

The enhanced network security does not increase the workload and difficulty of network operation and maintenance.

The data network at the Beijing Winter Olympics no longer uses LDP/RSVP-TE protocols and does not require MPLS labels, which simplifies the protocol and makes management easier. By combining with EVPN, SRv6 can simplify and unify the IP bearer network.

By combining key technologies such as artificial intelligence, flow detection, and knowledge graphs, the network can be intelligently operated and maintained, network failures can be intelligently predicted, and an automatic, self-healing, self-optimizing, and autonomous self-driving network can be realized, shortening the fault recovery time from hours to minutes.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the future-oriented "IPv6+" technology profoundly interprets the assistance and support of cutting-edge communication technology to the Olympic dream. The data communication network built based on "IPv6+" will lay a solid foundation for the successful hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games.

The theme slogan of the Beijing Winter Olympics is "Together for a Shared Future".

IPv6 is currently recognized worldwide as the only Internet upgrade and evolution solution that can be deployed commercially on a large scale. It is the starting point and an insurmountable stage in the development of the next generation of the Internet. It is the future of communication technology.

"IPv6+", which is based on the further evolution of IPv6, is not only an inevitable trend of Internet upgrading, but also the "foundation" and "base" to help the deep integration of the Internet and the real economy and support the high-quality development of the digital economy.

The full debut of "IPv6+" at the Beijing Olympics will be the first step in carrying hundreds of billions of connections and realizing the intelligent connection of all things. Let us look forward to the more exciting future of "IPv6+"!