[Bec] New draft: Service Function Chaining Applicability in Industrial Edge Computing

["Liubing (Remy)" <[e-mail]>]

Dear all,



Please find our new draft on edge computing at  https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-liu-iiot-sfc-edge-computing-applicability/



In the last edge computing side meeting, task indication and offloading are identified as two of the gaps.



In edge computing, except the applications have to be deployed at the edge gateway due to timely response requirement, or the on cloud due to high computional complexity, the other applcations can be deployed at the edge gateway, edge cloud or public cloud. Thus when the data is forwarded, the device needs to know where the next application is deployed.  That's why task indication is needed.



An edge computing device could be fully loaded if many applications are deployed on it. Then some of the applications need to be offloaded to higher layer devices, e.g. edge could or the cloud. Applications can be offloaded from the cloud to the edge as well.



In this draft, we discussed how to use service function chaining to deal with the aforementioned problems.  Different paths of the same chain can be built and configured to the devices. By choosing a path at the classifier, using the path ID can deliver the packet to the right device holding the next application.  When an applcation on the current path is overloded, the next packet flow will be guided to another path on which the same application is deployed somewhere else.



Please check the draft for more information.



Looking forward to your comments.



Best regards,

Remy