System and Method for Flow-Based Addressing in a Mobile Environment

摘要

Embedding a flow handle (FH) in an IPv6 address portion of a packet may reduce the amount of overhead needed to support path selection in flow-based packet forwarding. The FH may replace an interface identifier in a standard IPv6 address such that the FH does not add any additional overhead to the IPv6 packet itself. Information specified by the FH embedded in the IPv6 address may be used to select the path or next-hop. In addition, the FH may identify a quality of service (QoS) requirement associated with the packet, and the route selection function may identify a path capable of satisfying the QoS requirement, a service function chain (SFC) ID, an access point (AP) ID, a radio bearer ID, a path ID, and/or a device ID.

主权项

1. A method for communicating a packet flow in a communication network, the method comprising:
embedding, by a first network node, a first flow handle (FH) into an Internet Protocol (IP) version six (IPv6) address of a first packet, the first FH including flow information for processing the first packet; and transmitting the first packet to a second network node for one of forwarding or processing of the first packet in accordance with the flow information included in the first FH.