A two-layered data model approach for network services

Abstract

Connectivity services are ubiquitous to enterprises, and many enterprises are looking to outsource basic networking services traditionally implemented using on-premise network equipment. The rising expectations on service providers to rapidly change the definition of services and the ability to introduce new types of network elements is leading to exploding complexity in the orchestration layer. The severity of this problem is such that the ability to introduce new services and new device vendors in the network is reduced due to the time and cost associated with such changes. We illustrate that a two-layered data model approach using the YANG language can help overcome these challenges. We use an example describing the process of implementing an IP MPLS VPN service in a network comprising sets of provider edge (PE) routers and customer edge (CE) routers. The example includes a service model and decomposition logic using data transformation, and we show the resulting configuration