KR20170067582A - Gateway Capable of Accommodating IPv4 Member and IPv6 Member, and Policy and Charging Processing Method - Google Patents

Abstract

A gateway capable of accommodating both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber, and a policy and a charging processing method are disclosed. According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a gateway including an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber, the gateway comprising: an identifier storage unit for storing an identifier to be recognized as an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address; A packet determination unit for determining whether an incoming packet includes an identifier stored in an identifier storage unit when a packet is received from the terminal; And a rule processing unit for processing policies and charging rules based on the corresponding IPv4 addresses when it is determined that the incoming packet includes an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit.

Description

{Gateway Capable of Accommodating IPv4 Member and IPv6 Member, and Policy and Charging Processing Method}, which is a gateway capable of accommodating both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber,

The present invention relates to a gateway capable of accommodating both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber, and a policy and a billing method. More particularly, the present invention relates to a gateway for accommodating both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber in the process of transition from IPv4 to IPv6, It is unnecessary to add a filter and addition of memory resources such as TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) for filter mapping processing, and policy and billing processing for both IPv4 subscribers and IPv6 subscribers can be performed using existing IPv4 filters only And a policy and a charging processing method.

The network protocol that is currently widely used based on the Internet is an Internet protocol called IP (Internet Protocol). The IP protocol plays a crucial role in connecting a large number of networks and users to a large network, called the Internet, in a short time.

The IP protocol has evolved through several design changes. Previously, a relatively simple and flexible version of IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) has been mainly used, but the lack of available IP addresses, the inefficiency of IP packet routing processing, and the complexity of various configuration processes required for an IP node to operate Due to the disadvantages, the trend is shifting to IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6), a new version.

However, since it is not practically impossible for all Internet service servers to switch to IPv6 at the same time, it is necessary to first convert the subscriber's network to IPv6, and to use the DNS 6 (Domain Name System 6) and NAT64 Network Address Translation 64) conversion, and so on.

In LTE EPC (Long Term Evolution Evolved Packet Core), IP anchor role and PCEF (Policy and Charging Enforcement Function) processing are handled in order to mix the IPv4 and IPv6 terminals in the transitional stage of transition to IPv6. The role of the PDN gateway (Packet Data Network Gateway; PGW) is the key. However, in the case of mixed reception of IPv4 and IPv6, there is no increase in complexity or performance load due to session management for each version as IP anchor processing. However, in the PCEF processing process for controlling and accounting for each service, The number of IPv6 filters must be added to the number of IPv4-related filters of the existing service server.

Published Japanese Patent Application No. 10-2002-0090982 (published on December 05, 2002)

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and it is not necessary to add an IPv6 service server band filter in order to accommodate both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber in the process of transition from IPv4 to IPv6, A gateway that can perform policy and billing processing for both IPv4 subscribers and IPv6 subscribers using existing IPv4 filters without needing to add memory resources such as TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory), and policies and billing processing methods are provided .

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a gateway including an IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) subscriber and an IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) subscriber together, An identifier storage unit for storing and storing an identifier to be recognized; A packet determination unit for determining whether an incoming packet includes an identifier stored in an identifier storage unit when a packet is received from the terminal; And a rule processing unit for processing policies and charging rules based on the corresponding IPv4 addresses when it is determined that the incoming packet includes an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit.

The gateway may further include a matching process performing unit for performing a TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) -based matching process on an IP address which is a service separator of an incoming packet.

The gateway may further include an address acquisition unit for extracting the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 address matched with the IPv4 address to acquire the IPv4 address when the incoming packet includes the identifier stored in the identifier storage unit have. In this case, the matching processing performing unit performs the TCAM-based matching process using the IPv4 address obtained by the address obtaining unit as the service separator.

According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a policy and a charging method of a gateway that accommodates both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber, wherein the IPv4 address is recognized as a matched IPv6 address Setting and storing an identifier; Determining whether an incoming packet includes a stored identifier if the packet is received from the terminal; And processing the rules of the policy and the charging based on the corresponding IPv4 address if it is determined that the incoming packet includes the stored identifier.

The above-described policy and charging processing method may further include performing a TCAM-based matching process on an IP address which is a service separator of an incoming packet.

The method may further include extracting the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 address matched with the IPv4 address to obtain the IPv4 address when the received packet includes the identifier stored in the packet. In this case, the matching process step performs a TCAM-based matching process using the obtained IPv4 address as a service identifier.

According to the present invention, there is no need to add an IPv6 service server bandwidth filter in order to accommodate IPv4 subscribers and IPv6 subscribers in the process of transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

According to the present invention, there is no need to add memory resources such as TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) for filter mapping processing, and it is possible to perform policy and accounting processing for both IPv4 subscribers and IPv6 subscribers by using only existing IPv4 filters do.

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically illustrating a switching method of connecting a conventional IPv6 subscriber network to an IPv4 server and a receiving structure of an IPv4 / IPv6 subscriber network of a PGW.
FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a problem of a conventional method in which an IPv6 address is added to an IPv4 address, thereby requiring twice as much memory resources for filter matching.
3 is a diagram schematically showing a configuration of a gateway according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a process of binding a PCC rule by matching a TCAM table to an IPv4 address of a lower 32 bits at the time of entering an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address defined in a PGW.
5 is a PCEF processing structure diagram of an IPv6 packet based on an IPv4 PCC rule according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a policy and a billing processing method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Hereinafter, a gateway capable of receiving an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber according to an embodiment of the present invention, a policy thereof, and a billing method will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings.

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically illustrating a switching method of connecting a conventional IPv6 subscriber network to an IPv4 server and a receiving structure of an IPv4 / IPv6 subscriber network of a PGW.

As shown in FIG. 1, the conventional IPv6 conversion technology has already been widely used in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFC) 6146, NAT47 (Network Address Translation 64) and DNS 64 (Domain Name System 6) . However, at all for specific measures, such as ^{3GPP (3 rd Generation Partnership Project)} TS (Transport Channel) 23.401 , such as LTE EPC specifications in. However for Standardization etc. IPv6 PDN Type support, IPv4 filter reuse in the PCEF processing for IPv6 more acceptable There is no mechanism.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a problem of a conventional method in which an IPv6 address is added to an IPv4 address, thereby requiring twice as much memory resources for filter matching.

In the mixed-use structure of IPv4 and IPv6, which is required to accommodate a new IPv6 subscriber network at the same time as the existing IPv4 network, the packet data network gateway (PGW) has a single IPv4 address, It should be managed with one each, ie two filter information. This is a problem of waste of resources that two address resources of IPv4 and IPv6 must be allocated for one service filter when a memory function such as TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) for searching matching rules at the time of packet entry is applied at a high speed .

3 is a diagram schematically showing a configuration of a gateway according to an embodiment of the present invention. Here, the gateway 100 may be implemented as a Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW) that can accommodate both IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) subscribers and IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) subscribers.

3, the gateway 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention includes an identifier storage unit 110, a packet determination unit 120, a rule processing unit 130, a matching processing execution unit 140, 150).

The identifier storage unit 110 sets and stores an identifier to be recognized as an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address. That is, when the packet is received from the IPv6 terminal, the identifier storage unit 110 stores the IPv4 address in the identifier of the set IPv6 address so as to recognize the address of the packet as the IPv4 address.

When the packet is received from the terminal, the packet determination unit 120 determines whether the packet is an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit 110. For example, as shown in FIG. 4, it is shown that an IPv4-embedded IPv6 address (IPv4-embeded IPv6 address, in FIG. 4, a destination address is in the form of AAAA: BBBB: CCCC :: 0101: 0101) ), The packet determination unit 120 may determine whether the packet includes a prefix stored in the identifier storage unit 110.

If it is determined that the incoming packet includes the identifier stored in the identifier storage unit 110, the rule processing unit 130 processes policies and charging rules based on the corresponding IPv4 address. That is, if the incoming packet includes a prefix that allows the IPv4 address to be recognized as the matched IPv6 address, the rule processing unit 130 applies the rule based on the mapped IPv4 address to process the policy and the accounting .

At this time, the matching process performing unit 140 performs a TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) -based matching process on the IP address which is the service separator of the incoming packet. That is, the matching processing performing unit 140 constructs and stores the TCAM table matched with the IPv4 address, sets and stores a PCC (Policy and Charging Control) rule corresponding to each IPv4 address, and stores the prefix And determines the PCC rule matched with the IPv4 address corresponding to the IPv6 address of the packet based on the received packet.

If the incoming packet includes an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit 110, the address obtaining unit 150 may extract the lower 32 bits of the matched IPv6 address to obtain the IPv4 address. That is, the address acquisition unit 150 can match the filter based on the low-order 32 bits if the packet of the IPv6 address format matched with the IPv4 address input from the IPv6 terminal is the NAT 64 prefix. In this case, the matching processing performing unit 140 performs a TCAM-based matching process using the IPv4 address obtained by the address obtaining unit 150 as a service separator.

Accordingly, the gateway 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention binds only one filter having the IPv4 address of the service rule to the TCAM table, so that the packet received from the IPv6 terminal can be matched according to the corresponding service rule . That is, when performing the rule matching process of the packet inputted from the terminal, the gateway 100 sets the IPv4 address of the lower 32-bit area, which is the actual server address, to the TCAM Filter matching processing is performed. In this case, if the service network is IPv4 in the network structure in which the IPv4 subscriber and the IPv6 subscriber are mixed, the PCC rule of the service is matched to both the IPv4 terminal and the IPv6 terminal by using only the existing IPv4 filter even if a new IPv6 filter is not additionally created in the TCAM table So that TCAM resources can be saved.

5 is a PCEF processing structure diagram of an IPv6 packet based on an IPv4 PCC rule according to an embodiment of the present invention.

5, when a service packet having a destination service IP of 1.1.1.1 is received from an IPv4 terminal, the gateway 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention performs traffic control according to a predefined PCC rule, The gateway 100 performs a binding process on a rule to which the packet belongs so that billing data can be generated. To this end, the gateway 100 performs a TCAM-based high-speed rule matching process on an IP address serving as a service identifier of the packet. At this time, the matching process between the packet and the rule is performed based on the IPv4 service band belonging to the corresponding rule bound to the TCAM, that is, the filter information.

If a packet of an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address (for example, when the destination IP address is an IPv6 address 2015 :: 0101: 0101 matched with the IPv4 address 1.1.1.1) is fetched from the IPv6 terminal, The gateway 100 according to the present invention does not proceed with the TCAM-based high-speed rule matching process for the IPv6 address, which is the service identifier of the packet, in the process of binding to the rule to which the packet belongs, After extracting the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 address to obtain the IPv4 address, the TCAM-based high-speed rule matching process is performed using the obtained IPv4 address as the service identifier. As a result, there is no need to manage a separate IPv6-based service address as a filter of the corresponding rule in order to process traffic of an IPv6 terminal, and there is no need to bind an additional IPv6 address to the TCAM, which is a filter fast matching memory, It is possible to handle the Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) of the IPv6 traffic without any additional consumption.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a policy and a billing processing method according to an embodiment of the present invention. The policy and billing method according to an embodiment of the present invention can be performed by the gateway 100 shown in FIG.

Referring to FIG. 3 to FIG. 6, the gateway 100 sets and stores an identifier to be recognized as an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address (S110). That is, when the packet is received from the IPv6 terminal, the gateway 100 matches and stores the IPv4 address in the identifier of the set IPv6 address so that the address of the packet can be recognized as the IPv4 address.

When the packet is received from the terminal, the gateway 100 determines whether the packet includes an identifier (S120). For example, when a packet is received from an IPv6 terminal in the form of an IPv6 address (IPv4-embeded IPv6 address, where the destination address is AAAA: BBBB: CCCC :: 0101: 0101) , The gateway 100 may determine whether the packet includes the stored prefix.

If the gateway 100 includes an identifier for storing an incoming packet, the gateway 32 may extract the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 address matched with the IPv4 address to obtain the IPv4 address (S130). That is, the gateway 100 can match the filter based on the low-order 32 bits if the packet of the IPv6 address format matched with the IPv4 address input from the IPv6 terminal is the NAT 64 prefix.

At this time, the gateway 100 performs a TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) -based matching process on the IP address which is a service identifier of the incoming packet (S140). That is, the gateway 100 constructs and stores a TCAM table matched with an IPv4 address, sets and stores a PCC (Policy and Charging Control) rule corresponding to each IPv4 address, The PCC rule matching the IPv4 address corresponding to the IPv6 address of the packet is determined.

If it is determined that the incoming packet includes the stored identifier, the gateway 100 processes the policy and the charging rule based on the IPv4 address obtained from the packet (S150). That is, if the incoming packet includes a prefix that allows an IPv4 address to be recognized as a matched IPv6 address, the gateway 100 applies a rule based on the mapped IPv4 address to process the policy and the accounting.

Accordingly, the gateway 100 according to the embodiment of the present invention binds only one filter having the IPv4 address of the service rule to the TCAM table, so that the packet received from the IPv6 terminal can be matched according to the corresponding service rule .

Claims (6)

A gateway that accommodates both an IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4) subscriber and an IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) subscriber,
An identifier storage unit for storing and setting an identifier to be recognized as an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address;
A packet judging unit for judging whether the incoming packet includes an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit when a packet is received from the terminal; And
A rule processing unit for processing policies and charging rules based on a corresponding IPv4 address if it is determined that the incoming packet includes an identifier stored in the identifier storage unit;
Lt; RTI ID = 0.0 > 1, < / RTI > The method according to claim 1,
A matching processing unit for performing a TCAM (Ternary Content Addressable Memory) -based matching process on an IP address which is a service identifier of the incoming packet;
Lt; RTI ID = 0.0 > 1, < / RTI > 3. The method of claim 2,
An address obtaining unit for extracting the lower 32 bits of the IPv6 address matched with the IPv4 address to obtain the IPv4 address when the incoming packet includes the identifier stored in the identifier storage unit;
Further comprising:
Wherein the matching processing performing unit performs a TCAM-based matching process using the IPv4 address obtained by the address obtaining unit as a service separator. In a policy and a charging method of a gateway that accommodates both an IPv4 subscriber and an IPv6 subscriber,
Setting and storing an identifier to be recognized as an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address;
Determining whether the incoming packet includes a stored identifier if the packet is received from the terminal; And
Processing the policy and accounting rule based on the corresponding IPv4 address if it is determined that the incoming packet includes the stored identifier;
The method comprising the steps of: 5. The method of claim 4,
Performing a TCAM-based matching process on an IP address that is a service identifier of the incoming packet;
Further comprising the steps < RTI ID = 0.0 > of: < / RTI > 6. The method of claim 5,
Extracting lower 32 bits of an IPv6 address matched with an IPv4 address to obtain an IPv4 address when the incoming packet includes the identifier stored therein;
Further comprising:
Wherein the matching processing step performs a TCAM-based matching process using the obtained IPv4 address as a service identifier.

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