TWI701925B - Method for providing network service through edge computing - Google Patents

Abstract

Method for providing network service by a mobile edge computing platform is provided. The method includes detecting a data tunnel connecting a user equipment and a core network by the mobile edge computing platform,; redirecting a packet that is sent from a base station and received via the data tunnel to an application server on the mobile edge computing platform by the mobile edge computing platform; and sending the packet that is returned by the application server back to the via the data tunnel by the mobile edge computing platform.

Description

Edge computing network service provision method

The present invention relates to a method for providing network services, and more particularly to a method for providing network services through edge computing.

In a cellular network, the user device must wirelessly connect to the cellular network base station, establish a connection with the core network, and then connect to various application servers on the Internet. server). Deploy the application server on the mobile edge computing platform adjacent to the cellular network base station, allowing users to send packets to the application server without going through the Internet, thereby achieving low latency The effectiveness of.

However, in order to make the conventional edge computing platform comply with 4G or 5G network standards such as 3GPP, it is necessary to modify the base station so that the edge computing platform can be combined with it, or upgrade the core network to make the platform compatible with the cellular network The operation of the road. When you want to deploy a large number of edge computing platforms, you need to upgrade the base station or core network on a large scale, which will bring huge costs to telecoms, and the high complexity may also cause the cellular network to become less stable than the previous one. .

An object of the present invention is to provide an edge computing platform and a service providing method thereof, which can simplify the requirements on system settings.

An object of the present invention is to provide an edge computing platform and a service providing method thereof, which can increase the stability of the system.

One aspect of the present invention provides a method that can be executed by an edge computing platform. The method includes detecting a data tunnel connecting a user equipment with a core network; storing the IP address of the user equipment and the Correspondence of the data tunnel; disassemble a first packet received through the data tunnel, the first packet may be a packet transmitted by the user equipment through a base station and through the data tunnel; disassemble the first packet A packet is forwarded to an application server on the edge computing platform; and the data returned by the application server is encapsulated into a second packet according to the corresponding relationship, so that the second packet can comply with 4G or 5G networks such as 3GPP The standard of the road can be transmitted via the data tunnel, and the second packet can be returned via the data tunnel. By using the data tunnel to transmit packets, the user equipment can be connected to the application services on the edge computing platform without modifying the settings of the base station and the core network.

Another aspect of the present invention provides an edge computing platform that includes an application server, a domain name system server (DNS server), a packet sniffer, a memory device, and an uplink Link and down link. The packet listener can detect a data tunnel connecting a user equipment with a core network; the data tunnel has a corresponding relationship with the IP address of the user equipment, and the memory device can store the corresponding relationship; the uplink The link can disassemble and forward a first packet received from a base station through the data tunnel to the domain name system server; the domain name system server can forward the disassembled first packet to The application server; the downlink can encapsulate the data returned by the application server into a second packet according to the correspondence relationship, so that the second packet can be transmitted through the data tunnel, and the data can be returned through the data tunnel The second packet. Due to the above features, the edge computing platform provided by the present invention can be plug-and-play deployed in a cellular network system without modifying the settings of the base station and the core network.

1100‧‧‧User Equipment

1200‧‧‧Base station

1300‧‧‧Edge Computing Platform

1400‧‧‧Core network

1500‧‧‧Internet

1310‧‧‧Packet Listener

1320‧‧‧Memory device

1330‧‧‧Application Server

1340‧‧‧Uplink

1350‧‧‧Downlink

1360‧‧‧Proxy server

1370‧‧‧DNS server

1380‧‧‧Packet Scheduler

1390‧‧‧Processor

300‧‧‧Edge computing network service provision method

S301~305‧‧‧Step

310‧‧‧Edge computing network service provision method

S311~313‧‧‧Step

400‧‧‧The method of connecting to the core network through the edge computing platform

S401‧‧‧Step

Fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a network system according to some embodiments of the present invention; Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of an edge computing platform according to some embodiments of the present invention; Fig. 3A is a schematic diagram of some according to the present invention A flowchart of a method for providing edge computing network services shown in the embodiments; FIG. 3B is a flowchart of a method for providing edge computing network services shown in other embodiments of the present invention; FIG. 4 is based on this Some embodiments of the invention show a schematic diagram of a method of connecting to a core network through an edge computing platform.

Refer to Figures 1 to 3 below to illustrate the method of providing network services such as streaming media, autonomous driving or augmented reality (AR) through edge computing, and the edge computing platform used to provide these network services.

As shown in FIG. 1, in some embodiments, the edge computing platform 1300 is deployed between the base station 1200 and the core network 1400. More specifically, the edge computing platform 1300 is deployed at the proximal end of the base station 1200 (that is, the node close to the base station in the network topology of the cellular network) to facilitate It provides services to the user equipment 1100 recently. Therefore, compared to using the core network 1400 or the Internet 1500 to provide services to the user equipment 1100, using the edge computing platform 1300 to provide services to the user equipment 1100 can reduce the data round trip time And processing costs. The user equipment 1100 is, for example, a smart phone, a notebook computer, a wearable device, or a personal digital assistant (PDA) and other devices connected to the Internet via a cellular network. The edge computing platform 1300 is, for example, a system including a server, a data center including a plurality of servers, or a gateway with a plurality of servers; the servers may be virtual servers.

In, for example, 4G or 5G mobile networks, packets from user equipment to the core network are transmitted via data tunnels (such as GTP tunnels that comply with 3GPP standards); for example, when using GTP tunnels to transmit packets, Each user's network connection will establish a corresponding GTP tunnel.

Referring to FIG. 1, the part of the solid arrow shows the packet transmission path when the edge computing platform 1300 provides network services to the user equipment 1100. As shown by the solid arrow in Figure 1, in the process of the edge computing platform 1300 providing network services to the user equipment 1100, the user equipment 1100 transmits a packet to the base station 1200, and the base station 1200 then forwards the packet to the edge Computing platform 1300. During the transmission process, the user equipment 1100 transmits the packet to the base station 1200 through the data tunnel (hereinafter referred to as the corresponding tunnel) connecting it and the core network 1400. In order to allow the user equipment 1100 to connect to the application services on the edge computing platform 1300 without modifying the settings of the base station 1200 and the core network 1400, the edge computing platform 1300 also uses the corresponding tunnel from the base station 1200 receives the packet transmitted by 1100 from the user equipment.

Referring to FIGS. 2 and 3, in one embodiment, a packet sniffer 1310 may execute step S301 of the edge computing network service providing method 300. At step S301 , The packet listener 1310 detects the corresponding tunnel. More specifically, in some embodiments, when the edge computing platform 1300 receives a packet whose source or destination IP address is the IP address of the user equipment 1100, the packet listener 1310 may capture the tunnel identification in the packet Symbol (tunnel ID) to detect the existence of the corresponding tunnel. For example, when the packet listener 1310 retrieves a new tunnel identifier, the packet listener 1310 detects a new data tunnel corresponding to a user device newly connected to the core network 1400. The above description is only an example and is not intended to limit the operation of step S301. In other embodiments, the corresponding tunnel may also be detected through other operations.

Referring to FIG. 2 and FIG. 3A, in this embodiment, the processor 1390 can execute step S302 of the edge computing network service providing method 300. In step S302, the processor 1390 controls the memory device 1320 so that the memory device 1320 stores the corresponding relationship between the IP address of the user equipment 1100 and the corresponding tunnel (for example, but not limited to, the IP address of the user equipment 1100 and corresponding data Correspondence of the tunnel identifier of the tunnel).

One of the technical problems overcome by the present invention is that the receiver of the application server needs to be an IP packet, and the packet received via the data tunnel is not necessarily an IP packet, so the edge computing platform 1300 needs to be able to receive the packet via the data tunnel. The ability to convert the packet into an IP packet format. For example, before forwarding a GTP packet received via a GTP tunnel to the application server, it needs to be converted into an IP packet.

2 and 3A, in this embodiment, before forwarding the packet received via the data tunnel to the application server 1320, the uplink 1340 can execute step S303 of the edge computing network service providing method 300. In step S303, the uplink 1340 disassembles the packet received via the data tunnel via the edge computing platform 1300 (hereinafter referred to as the first packet). For example, the uplink 1340 can disassemble the first packet that is not an IP packet but a GTP packet into the format of an IP packet, but this is only For illustration, it is not intended to limit the format of the first packet. In other embodiments, the format of the first packet may be any packet format that complies with 4G or 5G standards.

2 and 3A, in this embodiment, the DNS server (domain name system server) 1370 can execute step S304 of the edge computing network service providing method 300. In step S304, the DNS server 1370 forwards the first packet disassembled by the uplink 1340 in step S303 to the application server 1330. However, this is only an example, and is not intended to limit the device through which the edge computing platform 1300 transmits the disassembled packet to the application server 1330.

Another technical problem that the present invention overcomes is that when the application server receives the packet sent by the user equipment and wants to return data to the user equipment, in order to allow the entire process of providing network services to be able to provide network services without modifying the base station Under the conditions of the core network settings, the data returned by the application server must be returned to the base station through the data tunnel corresponding to the user equipment. To return a packet through the data tunnel, the packet must conform to the format of the communication protocol adopted by the data tunnel.

2 and 3A, in this embodiment, when the application server 1330 receives the first packet and wants to return data to the user equipment 1100, the downlink 1350 can execute the steps of the edge computing network service provision method 300 S305. In step S305, the downlink 1350 receives the data to be returned to the user equipment 1100 from the application server 1330, and executes the application server according to the correspondence between the IP address of the messenger equipment 1100 stored in the memory device 1320 and the corresponding tunnel The data returned by the device 1330 is encapsulated into a packet that can be transmitted through the data tunnel corresponding to the user equipment 1100 (hereinafter referred to as the second packet), and the second packet is returned through the corresponding tunnel. For example, the data returned by the application server 1330 can be an IP packet, the downlink 1350 reads the destination IP address of the IP packet returned by the server as the user equipment 1100, and is based on the memory device 1320 The stored correspondence between the IP address of the user equipment 1100 and the corresponding tunnel will encapsulate the IP packet returned by the application server Into a packet that can be transmitted via the corresponding tunnel (for example, but not limited to, a GTP packet). However, this is only an example, and is not intended to limit the data format returned by the application server and the format of the second packet.

It should be noted that in the above embodiment, the edge computing platform 1300 has an application server 1330, but the present invention is not limited to this. In other embodiments, the edge computing platform 1300 may also be equipped with a plurality of application servers for use The user device 1100 provides various network application services.

In other embodiments, the edge computing network service provision method of the present invention may further include more steps to achieve other purposes of the present invention.

Referring to FIGS. 2 and 3B, in another embodiment, the edge computing platform 1300 can selectively perform step S301 of the edge computing network service provision method 310 to direct the packets sent from the user equipment 1100 to the base station 1200. Edge computing platform 1300. Please refer to the foregoing for detailed description of step S301. For example, the proxy server 1360 can execute step S311 of the edge computing network service provision method 310. In step S311, the proxy server 1360 accepts the base station 1200 inquiring about the MAC address corresponding to the IP bit of the core network 1400, and responds to the base station 1200 with the MAC address of the edge computing platform 1300. Similarly, the proxy server 1360 The core network 1400 inquires about the MAC address corresponding to the IP bit of the base station 1200, and responds to the core network 1400 with the MAC address of the edge computing platform 1300. After the operation of step S311, the base station 1200 will transmit the packet whose destination IP address is the IP address of the core network 1400 to the MAC address of the edge computing platform 1300. Similarly, the core network 1400 will transfer the destination IP Packets with the IP address of the base station 1200 are sent to the MAC address of the edge computing platform 1300, that is, the packets sent from the base station 1200 to the core network 1400 will be directed to the edge computing platform 1300 and the core network 1400 The packets sent to the base station 1200 will be directed to the edge computing platform 1300. The proxy server 1360 is, for example, but not limited to, an ARP proxy server. The above description is only an example, and is not intended to limit the operation of step S311. In other embodiments, the base station 1200 may be transmitted to the packet-directed edge computing platform 1300 of the core network 1400 through other operations.

2 and 3B, in this embodiment, the edge computing platform 1300 can optionally execute step S303 of the edge computing network service provision method 310 to determine first Whether the packet is a packet that should be forwarded to the application server 1330. Please refer to the foregoing for detailed description of step S303. For example, the packet scheduler 1380 can execute step S312 of the edge computing network service provision method 310. In step S312, the packet scheduler 1380 identifies the destination IP address of the first packet. If the packet scheduler 1380 determines that the destination IP address belongs to the application server 1330, the packet scheduler 1380 forwards the first packet to the uplink 1340, and the uplink 1340 then executes step S303. Also in step S312, the packet scheduler 1380 can also identify the source IP address of the first packet. If the packet scheduler 1380 determines that the source IP address (ie the IP address of the user equipment 1100) belongs to a subscription application server The user equipment served by the server 1330, that is, if the user equipment 1100 subscribes to the service of the application server 1330, the packet scheduler 1380 also forwards the first packet to the uplink 1340, which is followed by the uplink 1340 Step S303 is executed.

2 and 3B, in this embodiment, step S313 can be selectively performed. In step S313, when the packet listener 1310 does not receive the packet transmitted through the corresponding tunnel for a period of time, it means that the user equipment 1100 may have left the area of the network node where the edge computing platform 1300 is located, or the user equipment 1100 has stopped Using the service of the application server 1330, the processor 1390 controls the memory device 1320 to delete the stored correspondence between the user equipment 1100 and the corresponding tunnel, so as to save memory space.

Hereinafter, referring to FIGS. 1, 2 and 4, the method of connecting to the core network through the edge computing platform and the edge computing platform used to execute the method will be described.

Referring to the dotted arrow in Figure 1, in order for the edge computing platform 1300 to provide network services to the user equipment 1100 without modifying the settings of the base station 1200 and the core network 1400, the user equipment 1100 must be connected through the base station 1200 The transmitted packet is directed to the edge computing platform 1300. And when the packet from the base station 1200 to the core network 1400 is directed to the edge computing platform 1300 When the user equipment 1100 is originally connected to the core network 1500 through the base station 1200, the edge computing platform 1300 is instead provided.

Referring to FIGS. 1, 2 and 4, in one embodiment, after the edge computing platform 1300 executes steps S311 and S301 of the method 400 of connecting to the core network through the edge computing platform, the packet scheduler 1380 may execute step S401. Please refer to the foregoing for detailed description of step S311 and step S301. In step S401, the packet scheduler 1380 identifies the destination IP address of the first packet. If the packet scheduler 1380 determines that the destination IP address of the first packet belongs to the core network 1400, it will pass the first packet to the corresponding The data tunnel is forwarded to the core network 1400. In contrast, when the edge computing platform 1300 receives a packet (hereinafter referred to as the third packet) from the core network 1400, the packet scheduler 1380 forwards the third packet to the base station 1200 via the data tunnel corresponding to the third packet. Through the operation of step S401, the edge computing platform 1300 can provide the Internet access function of the user equipment 1100 to connect to the core network 1400 and the Internet 1500. In this embodiment, the first packet and the third packet are, for example, but not limited to, GTP packets.

In this embodiment, step S313 of the method 400 for connecting to the core network can also be selectively executed. Please refer to the foregoing for detailed description of step S313.

In some embodiments, the application server 1330 and the DNS server 1370 can be virtual servers to save hardware costs.

The above are only some preferred embodiments of the present invention. It should be noted that various changes and modifications can be made to the present invention without departing from the spirit and principle of the present invention. Those with ordinary knowledge in the technical field should understand that the present invention is defined by the scope of the attached patent application, and all possible substitutions, combinations, modifications, and conversions are not beyond the scope of the present invention under the intent of the present invention. The scope defined by the scope of the attached patent application.

300‧‧‧Edge computing network service provision method

S301~S305‧‧‧Step

Claims (9)

A method for providing edge computing network services includes: directing packets sent from a base station to a core network through a proxy server set on an edge computing platform to the edge computing platform; Packets sent from the network to the base station are directed to the edge computing platform; through the edge computing platform, a data tunnel connecting a user equipment with the core network is detected, and the user equipment is connected through the data tunnel through the base station Wire to the core network; store the corresponding relationship between the IP address of the user equipment and the data tunnel through the edge computing platform; through the edge computing platform, receive a first packet from the base station through the data tunnel Disassembling; forwarding the disassembled first packet to an application server on the edge computing platform through the edge computing platform; and encapsulating the data returned by the application server through the edge computing platform according to the corresponding relationship To form a second packet, and return the second packet through the data tunnel. The method for providing an edge computing network service according to claim 1, further comprising: deleting the corresponding relationship through the edge computing platform when a packet transmitted through the data tunnel is not received for a period of time. The method for providing edge computing network services according to claim 1, further comprising: identifying a destination IP address of the first packet through the edge computing platform, if the destination IP is If the address belongs to the application server, disassemble and forward the first packet to the application server, and if the destination IP address belongs to the core network, then forward the first packet to the core network through the data tunnel; And through the edge computing platform, a third packet received from the core network through the data tunnel is forwarded to the base station through the data tunnel. The method for providing edge computing network services according to claim 3, further comprising: identifying a source IP address of the first packet through the edge computing platform, if the source IP address belongs to a subscription to the application server The serving user equipment disassembles and transfers the first packet to the application server. An edge computing platform deployed between a user device and a core network. The user device is connected to the core network through a base station. The edge computing platform includes: a proxy server for connecting Packets sent from the base station to the core network are directed to the edge computing platform, and packets sent from the core network to the base station are directed to the edge computing platform; a memory device; an application server; a domain name system server A packet listener to detect a data tunnel connecting the user equipment and the core network; a processor to control the memory device to store the IP address of the user equipment and the data tunnel A correspondence; an uplink for unpacking a first packet received from the base station via the data tunnel Install and forward to the domain name system server, where, after the domain name system server receives the disassembled first packet, it forwards the disassembled first packet to the application server; and a downstream link The path is used to encapsulate the data returned by the application server into a second packet according to the corresponding relationship, and return the second packet through the data tunnel. The edge computing platform of claim 5, wherein the processor controls the memory device to delete the corresponding relationship when the packet listener does not detect the packet transmitted through the data tunnel for a period of time. The edge computing platform described in claim 5 further includes: a packet scheduler for identifying a destination IP address of the first packet and performing the following operations: if the packet scheduler determines that the destination IP address belongs to The application server forwards the first packet to the uplink. After the uplink receives the first packet, the first packet is unassembled and forwarded to the domain name system server. The domain name The system server receives the disassembled first packet and forwards the disassembled first packet to the application server; and if the packet scheduler determines that the destination IP address belongs to the core network, it The first packet is forwarded to the core network via the data tunnel; and a third packet received from the core network via the data tunnel is forwarded to the base station via the data tunnel. The edge computing platform of claim 7, wherein the packet scheduler is also used to identify a source IP address of the first packet, and if the packet scheduler determines that the source IP address belongs to a subscription The user equipment served by the server then forwards the first packet to the uplink, where the uplink receives the first packet and disassembles the first packet and forwards it to the domain name system server After receiving the disassembled first packet, the domain name system server forwards the disassembled first packet to the application server. The edge computing platform according to claim 5, wherein the application server and the domain name system server are deployed with virtualization technology.

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