27 March 2020 / 9:00 AM PDT / Zoom meeting

Attendees 

Tina Tsou, Jane Shen, Jiafeng Zhu, Neal Oliver, Tim Epkes, Dan Druta, Jeff Brower

Meeting Notes - Brower

Agenda

Last Meeting Follow-up

Jane led off by explaining that API subcommittee meetings from this point forward include Developer Facing API and Infrastructure work streams, with 30 min allocated to each, but flexible depending on subjects at hand and members in attendance

New Business

Jane presented slides "API Work Item Request for Feedback". The slide "Mobile Edge Stack Strategies" sparked discussion about the telco - OTT interface and potential "Edge Enabler" APIs exposed by this interface: what do those look like, are they mostly IP bridging functions, or do they include more in order to leverage coming 5G features

Notes

1) The slide presentation showed:

• future 5G functionality supporting MEC in traffic steering and network capability exposure including service continuity and application mobility
• based on Ike’s input, a slide on latest development on 3GPP application support
• business relationships between telco and OTT, including service agreements
• architecture overview of a possible 5G slice providing API functionality between edge connectors and edge gateways
• a Tencent Blueprint example showing an edge connector/gateway interface architecture

2) Tim pointed out the slides contain useful new info but lack mention of organization and subdivision based on telco regulatory requirements. For example, OTT app support and infrastructure will likely be run on segregated hardware and systems in order to comply with federally mandated reliability requirements imposed on telco systems.  Based on his experience, he gave an example of a "wild west" gaming application that brought down servers handling EPC packet forwarding. This included discussion about:

• Application and edge enabler interface, which allows applications to negotiate services. Security and charging are examples of context in addition to the reg/dereg and LCM etc.
• Other example interfaces (e.g. Mp1) that allow applications to negotiate services

3) Further discussion included different boundaries between an operator on the one hand, and edge apps and services on the other, differentiated by sharing/co-location relationships:

• operator and ETSI MEC cases, where there is strict segregation of apps from network functions
• "edge cloud/private network" cases, where in the limit only the network functions may be operated by the operator, because they are virtualized

4) Looking forward, Jane proposed a series of whitepapers, rather than one big one.  No specific timetable or individual responsibilities were given yet.  Neal had a number of questions about whitepaper content.

Action Items

1) Request for feedback closes next week.

2) Specifics are needed on whitepaper dates and content.