Scalability Considerations for Network Resource Partition

A network slice offers connectivity services to a network slice customer with specific Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Expectations (SLEs) over a common underlay network. RFC 9543 describes a framework for network slices built using networks that use IETF technologies. As part of that framework, the Network Resource Partition (NRP) is introduced as a set of network resources that are allocated from the underlay network to carry a specific set of network slice service traffic and meet specific SLOs and SLEs. As the demand for network slices increases, scalability becomes an important factor. Although the scalability of network slices can be improved by mapping a group of network slices to a single NRP, that design may not be suitable or possible for all deployments, thus there are concerns about the scalability of NRPs themselves. This document discusses some considerations for NRP scalability in the control and data planes. It also investigates a set of optimization mechanisms.