MULTI-ACCESS EDGE COMPUTING NETWORK, TRAFFIC PROCESSING METHOD, AND RELATED DEVICE - Patent application

Abstract

The present application provides a multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances. A target application instance among the plurality of application instances is configured to process a target service whose required latency is lower than a target threshold. The forwarding device is configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element, and to preferentially forward the target service requests belonging to the target service to the target application instance. The target application instance is configured to process the received target service requests. When the target service is a latency-sensitive service (specifically, the multi-access edge computing network is required to provide a service having low latency, e.g., a 5G service, for the target service), the multi-access edge computing network preferentially forwards the target service, so that the target service can be preferentially served, thereby meeting the latency requirement for processing the latency-sensitive service by the user equipment. In addition, the present application further provides a traffic processing method and apparatus, a computer-readable storage medium, and a computer program product.

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] The present application relates to the field of traffic processing technologies, and in particular to a multi-access edge computing network, a traffic processing method, and related devices. [Background technology]

[0002] A multi-access edge computing (MEC) network provides an IT service environment (including computing resources, storage resources, network resources, etc.) at the edge of a mobile network to reduce network operation latency and service delivery latency. In general, a MEC network includes multiple application containers (also called MEC sites) located at the edge of a mobile network, and application programs in the application containers can provide corresponding services to user equipment.

[0003] However, in many practical application scenarios, user equipment has high latency requirements when requesting services, in which case the processing capacity of the MEC network can hardly meet the latency requirements. Summary of the Invention

[0004] The present application provides a multi-access edge computing network to meet the latency requirements of user equipment when the user equipment requests a service. In addition, the present application further provides a traffic processing method and apparatus, a computer-readable storage medium, and a computer program product. [Means for solving the problem]

[0005] According to a first aspect, the present application provides a multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances is configured to process a target service having a required latency lower than a target threshold, the forwarding device is configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element and to preferentially forward a target service request among the plurality of service requests that belongs to the target service, and the target application instance is configured to process the received target service request that belongs to the target service.

[0006] For a target service whose required latency is lower than the target threshold (or may be called a latency-sensitive service), the multi-access edge computing network can preferentially forward the target service, so that the multi-access edge computing network can provide services for the target service preferentially, thereby meeting the latency requirement for processing the latency-sensitive service by the user equipment. In addition, for other services whose required latency is not lower than the target threshold (or may be called a non-latency-sensitive service), the multi-access edge computing network preferentially forwards the target service, so that even if a service with high latency is provided by the multi-access edge computing network for the other services, the latency can generally be within the latency range required by the other services. In this way, the multi-access edge computing network can meet the latency requirement of the user equipment when the user equipment requests services for the target service with higher latency requirements and the other services with lower latency requirements, respectively.

[0007] In a possible embodiment, the target service may specifically be a 5G service, although of course in other embodiments the target service may be other types of services with high latency requirements.

[0008] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device may identify a target service request having a 5G service identifier and a low-latency quality of service from among the multiple service requests. In this manner, the forwarding device may preferentially forward the service request having the 5G service identifier and the low-latency quality of service from among the multiple service requests.

[0009] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device may preferentially forward a target service request having a highest priority among the multiple service requests based on the priority of each service request. Specifically, the forwarding device may preferentially forward a target service request having a highest priority among the multiple service requests based on the identifier of the 5G service and the low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request. service determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on an identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request service determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on a low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request; service The forwarding device is configured to determine that the target service request has a higher priority than the other service requests, so that the forwarding device preferentially forwards the target service request based on the priority.

[0010] In a possible implementation, the forwarding device is further configured to obtain bandwidth for preferentially forwarding the target service request, so as to forward the target service request via the obtained bandwidth.

[0011] In a possible implementation, the bandwidth for forwarding the target service request by the forwarding device is higher than the bandwidth for forwarding other service requests. Specifically, for a target service request having a higher latency requirement, the forwarding device can forward the target service request with a higher bandwidth, so that the transmission latency of the target service request can be further reduced.

[0012] In a possible implementation, the forwarding device is further configured to pre-empt bandwidth for forwarding other service requests in order to forward the target service request. In this way, by allocating more bandwidth to the forwarding device, the transmission latency of the target service request may be further reduced.

[0013] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device is further configured to obtain a location of the user equipment that sent the service request, and refuse to forward the target service request when the location of the user equipment is outside the service range of the forwarding device. In this way, excessively large network transmission latency caused by long-distance network transmission of the target service request sent by the user equipment can be prevented from affecting the latency of the service provided by the multi-access edge computing network for the target service.

[0014] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device may include a gateway and a container network. The gateway may be configured to receive the target service request and forward the target service request to the container network. The container network may be configured to receive the target service request and forward the target service request to the target application instance. When the gateway and the container network forward the target service request, only the gateway preferentially forwards the target service request, only the container network preferentially forwards the target service request, or both the gateway and the container network preferentially forward the target service request. In other examples, the forwarding device may include only the gateway or the container network, or the forwarding device is specifically another device.

[0015] In a possible implementation, the user plane function network element configured to send the target service request to the forwarding device is configured to receive the target service request from a radio access network element, i.e. the radio access network element may send the target service request to the forwarding device via the user plane function network element.

[0016] In a possible embodiment, the user plane function network element is configured to receive a target service request from a user equipment, i.e., the user equipment may send the target service request to the multi-access edge computing network via the user plane function network element, so that the multi-access edge computing network can provide a corresponding service to the user equipment based on the target service request.

[0017] In a possible implementation, the application instance is specifically an application container.

[0018] In a possible embodiment, the multi-access edge computing network further includes an information collecting network element configured to establish a protocol data unit session for the user equipment, such that the user equipment can send a target service request based on the protocol data unit session, and the forwarding device can receive the target service request based on the protocol data unit session.

[0019] According to a second aspect, the present application further provides a network, the network may include a multi-access edge computing network according to the first aspect or any implementation of the first aspect.

[0020] In a possible embodiment, the network may further include a user plane function network element configured to send the target service request to the forwarding device.

[0021] In a possible embodiment, the network may further include a radio access network element configured to transmit the target service request to a user plane function network element.

[0022] In a possible embodiment, the network may further include a user equipment configured to transmit a target service request to a radio access network element, so that a user plane function network element obtains, via the radio access network element, the target service request transmitted by the user equipment.

[0023] According to a third aspect, the present application further provides another multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network includes a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances. A target application instance among the plurality of application instances is configured to process a target service whose latency requirement is lower than a target threshold, the forwarding device is configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element, and forward a target service request among the plurality of service requests that belongs to the target service via a first channel, the first channel being different from a second channel for transmitting other service requests to other application instances, and the target application instance is configured to process the target service request of the target service. In this way, for a target service request of a target service whose latency requirement is lower than a target threshold, the forwarding device may forward the target service request via the independent first channel, whereby the target service request may be forwarded first without the forwarding device waiting for other service requests. Thus, the transmission latency of the target service request may be reduced, and the latency of the service provided by the MEC network for the target service may be reduced.

[0024] According to a fourth aspect, the present application provides a traffic processing method, the method being applied to a multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances being configured to process a target service whose latency requirement is lower than a target threshold, the method including: the forwarding device receiving a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element; the forwarding device preferentially forwarding a target service request among the plurality of service requests that belongs to the target service; and the target application instance processing the target service request for the target service.

[0025] In a possible embodiment, the target service is a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service.

[0026] In a possible embodiment, the method further includes the forwarding device identifying, from among the plurality of service requests, a target service request having an identifier of a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service and a low latency quality of service (QoS).

[0027] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device preferentially forwards the target service request belonging to the target service among the multiple service requests. The forwarding device determines whether the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of the multiple service requests based on the identifier of the 5G service and the low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request. service determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on an identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request service determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on a low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request; service determining that one of the requests has a higher priority than other service requests; and a forwarding device preferentially forwarding the target service request based on the priority.

[0028] In a possible implementation, the method further comprises the forwarding device obtaining bandwidth for preferentially forwarding the target service request.

[0029] In a possible implementation, the bandwidth for transferring the target service request is higher than the bandwidth for transferring the other service requests.

[0030] In a possible implementation, the method further includes the forwarding device pre-empting bandwidth for forwarding other service requests in order to forward the target service request.

[0031] In a possible implementation, the method further comprises refusing to forward the target service request when the location of the user equipment that sent the target service request is outside the service range of the forwarding device.

[0032] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding device includes a gateway and a container network, and the forwarding device preferentially forwarding a target service request belonging to the target service among the multiple service requests includes the gateway receiving the target service request and forwarding the target service request to the container network, the container network receiving the target service request and forwarding the target service request to the target application instance, and the gateway preferentially forwarding the target service request, or the container network preferentially forwarding the target service request, or both the gateway and the container network preferentially forwarding the target service request.

[0033] In a possible implementation, the application instance is an application container.

[0034] In a possible embodiment, the multi-access edge computing network further includes an information collecting network element, and the method further includes the information collecting network element establishing a protocol data unit session for the user equipment to cause the forwarding device to receive the target service request of the user equipment.

[0035] According to a fifth aspect, the present application provides another traffic processing method, the traffic processing method being applied to a multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances being configured to process a target service having a required latency lower than a target threshold, the method including: the forwarding device receiving a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element; the forwarding device forwarding a target service request among the plurality of service requests, the target service request belonging to the target service, via a first channel, the first channel being different from a second channel for sending other service requests to other application instances; and the target application instance processing the target service request of the target service.

[0036] According to a sixth aspect, the present application provides a traffic processing device for use in a forwarding device as described above, the traffic processing device comprising respective modules configured to implement a traffic processing method performed by the forwarding device according to the fourth aspect or any possible implementation of the fourth aspect.

[0037] According to a seventh aspect, the present application provides a traffic processing device for use in a forwarding device as described above, the traffic processing device including modules configured to implement a traffic processing method performed by the forwarding device according to the fifth aspect.

[0038] According to an eighth aspect, the present application provides a forwarding device, the forwarding device includes a processor and a memory. The memory is configured to store instructions. When the forwarding device operates, the processor executes the instructions stored in the memory, thereby causing the forwarding device to perform the traffic processing method according to the fourth aspect or any of the embodiments of the fourth aspect. It should be noted that the memory may be integrated with the processor or may be independent from the processor. The forwarding device may further include a bus. The processor is connected to the memory via the bus. The memory may include a readable memory and a random access memory.

[0039] According to a ninth aspect, the present application provides a forwarding device, the forwarding device includes a processor and a memory. The memory is configured to store instructions. When the forwarding device operates, the processor executes the instructions stored in the memory, thereby causing the forwarding device to perform the traffic processing method according to the fifth aspect. It should be noted that the memory may be integrated into the processor or may be independent of the processor. The forwarding device may further include a bus. The processor is connected to the memory via the bus. The memory may include a readable memory and a random access memory.

[0040] According to a tenth aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed on a forwarding device, enable the forwarding device to perform a method performed by the forwarding device according to the fourth aspect or any embodiment of the fourth aspect.

[0041] According to an eleventh aspect, the present application provides a computer-readable storage medium, the computer-readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed on a forwarding device, enable the forwarding device to perform the method performed by the forwarding device according to the fifth aspect.

[0042] According to a twelfth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product comprising instructions, which when executed on a forwarding device, enable the forwarding device to perform a method performed by the forwarding device according to the fourth aspect or any implementation of the fourth aspect.

[0043] According to a thirteenth aspect, the present application provides a computer program product comprising instructions, which, when executed on a forwarding device, enable the forwarding device to perform a method performed by the forwarding device according to the fifth aspect.

[0044] In the present application, more embodiments can be provided by further combinations based on the embodiments according to the above-mentioned aspects.

[0045] In order to more clearly describe the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present application, the following briefly describes the accompanying drawings for describing the embodiments. The accompanying drawings in the following description only show some embodiments of the present application, and it is obvious that those skilled in the art can further derive other accompanying drawings from these accompanying drawings. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0046] [Figure 1] FIG. 1 is a schematic architecture diagram of an MEC network. [Diagram 2] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a network architecture of a MEC network according to an embodiment of the present application. [Diagram 3] 1 is a schematic flowchart of a traffic processing method according to an embodiment of the present application; [Figure 4]2 is a schematic flowchart of creating a session message for a user equipment 210 according to an embodiment of the present application. [Diagram 5] 4 is a schematic flowchart of another traffic processing method according to an embodiment of the present application; [Figure 6] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a network architecture of another MEC network according to an embodiment of the present application; [Figure 7] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a traffic processing device according to an embodiment of the present application; [Figure 8] FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a forwarding device according to an embodiment of the present application; DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0047] In the specification, claims, and accompanying drawings of this application, terms such as "first" and "second" are intended to distinguish similar objects, but do not necessarily indicate a particular order or sequence. It should be understood that terms used in this manner are interchangeable in appropriate circumstances. This is merely a method of distinction used when objects having the same attributes are described in the embodiments of this application.

[0048] Figure 1 shows a specific architecture of an MEC network. As shown in Figure 1, the MEC network may include a forwarding device 100 and multiple application instances 103 (Figure 1 shows an example in which two application instances are included for illustration). The application instances 103 may carry one or more application programs, and the application programs of the application instances 103 may provide corresponding services to a user equipment (UE) 210 that accesses the network. For example, in a practical application scenario, the application instance 103 may specifically be an application container.

[0049] It should be noted that FIG. 1 mainly illustrates some network elements or network modules included in the MEC network. In practical applications, the MEC network further includes other network elements or network modules, such as a MEC platform 104, a virtualization infrastructure 105, and a MEC platform management 106. The MEC platform 104 may be configured to manage multi-access edge computing devices. The virtualization infrastructure 105 may be constructed using one or more virtualization technologies, including computing virtualization, network virtualization, and storage virtualization, etc. The MEC platform management 106 is configured to run on the virtualization infrastructure 105 and manage one or more MEC platforms 104. This part of the content will not be described in detail again in this application.

[0050] When performing a service (hereinafter referred to as a target service), the user equipment 210 may request a corresponding service from an application instance 103 in the MEC network via a radio access network (RAN) network element 220 and a user plane function (UPF) network element 230. Specifically, the user equipment 210 may send a service request to request the application instance 103 to process the target service. The service request may be transmitted to the application instance 103 sequentially via the radio access network element 220, the user plane function network element 230, and the forwarding device 100. In this manner, the application program of the application instance 103 may provide a corresponding service of the target service.

[0051] When multiple user equipments 210 simultaneously request a service from the MEC network, the forwarding device 100 in the MEC network generally forwards each request to a corresponding application instance 103 based on the order of receiving the service requests. However, in practical applications, different services executed by different user equipments 210 may have different requirements on the latency of the service provided by the MEC network. For example, when the target service executed by the user equipment 210 is a service with high latency requirement (hereinafter referred to as latency sensitive service for short), such as a 5th generation mobile network (5G) service, the latency of the service provided by the MEC network is generally required to be short, for example, the latency is required to be shorter than 20 ms (milliseconds). However, for services with low latency requirement executed by other user equipments 210, even if the latency of the service provided by the MEC network is more than 1 second, the requirement of the service can still be met. In this case, a forwarding device 100 in a MEC network receives a service request A sent by a user equipment 210 for a latency-sensitive service, which is sent by another user equipment 210 for a non-latency-sensitive service, Transfer Device If service request A is received by forwarding device 100 slower than service request B, service request A may need to wait for forwarding device 100 to first complete transmission of service request B. In this manner, the latency from the time when user equipment 210 sends a service request for the latency-sensitive service to the time when the MEC network provides the service based on the application instance 103 of the latency-sensitive service may exceed the latency requirement of the latency-sensitive service because the service request waits for forwarding device 100 to first forward other service requests during the transmission process.

[0052] In addition, when a large number of user equipments 210 simultaneously request services from the MEC network, due to the limited processing capacity of the forwarding device 100 in the MEC network, blocking and queuing of service requests may occur when multiple service requests are forwarded, which is likely to cause a problem that the latency of the service provided by the MEC network for the latency-sensitive service does not meet the latency requirement of the latency-sensitive service.

[0053] Based on this, in the embodiment of the present application, in the process in which the MEC network provides services based on each service request, the user plane function After receiving the plurality of service requests from the network element 230, the forwarding device 100 may preferentially forward the target service requests belonging to the target service among the plurality of service requests to the target application instance, for example, the application instance on the left side of FIG. 1 (or the application instance on the right side of FIG. 1) among the plurality of application instances 103, the target service being a service to be processed whose latency requirement is lower than the target threshold. In this way, for the target service requests of the target service, the forwarding device 100 may preferentially forward the target service requests, so that the MEC network may preferentially provide the service of the target service (the target service may be a latency-sensitive service) to meet the latency requirement of the user equipment 210 that processes the target service. In addition, for the non-latency-sensitive service, even if the latency of the service provided by the MEC network is high, the latency is still generally within the latency range required by the non-latency-sensitive service. In this way, the MEC network may meet the latency requirement of the user equipment 210 when the user equipment 210 requests the service.

[0054] In addition, even if a large number of user equipments 210 simultaneously request services from the MEC network, the MEC network can provide services for latency-sensitive services with priority, thereby ensuring the stability of the MEC network providing latency-sensitive services as much as possible.

[0055] For ease of understanding, the following describes embodiments of the present application with reference to the accompanying drawings.

[0056] Please refer to Figures 2 and 3. Figure 2 is an example of a schematic architecture diagram of an MEC network according to an embodiment of the present application. Figure 3 is a schematic flow chart of a traffic processing method according to an embodiment of the present application. The MEC network shown in Figure 2 is applicable to an edge network based on a fifth generation mobile network (5G). Correspondingly, the services processed by the MEC network may include 5G services with high latency requirements. In addition, based on the MEC network shown in Figure 1, an information collection network element 107 is newly added to the MEC network shown in Figure 2. Furthermore, the forwarding device 100 in Figure 1 may specifically include a gateway 101 and a container network 102 in the MEC network shown in Figure 2, where a queuing module 1011 and a filtering module 1012 are newly added to the gateway 101, and a queuing module 1021 is newly added to the container network 102. In practical application, the information collecting network element 107 may be integrated with an existing network element as one network element, for example, integrated with the gateway 101 or the container network 102 for deployment, or may be deployed independently. For ease of explanation, this embodiment uses an example in which the information collecting network element 107 is independently deployed in the MEC network for explanation.

[0057] In actual deployment, the newly added information-gathering network element 107, the queuing module 1011, and the queuing module 1021 may be implemented by software, e.g., a computer program running on the network element, or may be implemented by hardware, e.g., an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or a programmable logic device (PLD). The PLD may be a complex programmable logic device (CPLD), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), or a generic array logic (GAL), or any combination thereof, to implement the functions of the aforementioned network element or module.

[0058] Based on the MEC network shown in FIG. 2, the traffic processing method shown in FIG. 3 may specifically include the following steps:

[0059] S301: When a user equipment 210 executes a target service, the user equipment 210 sends a target service request for the target service to the radio access network element 220, where the target service request is to request an application instance 103 in the MEC network to provide a service for the target service to the user equipment 210 by an application program running in the application instance.

[0060] For example, in an artificial intelligence (AI) scenario related to edge computing, the user equipment 210 may execute an identity authentication service. In this case, the user equipment 210 may send an identity authentication request (i.e., the aforementioned target service request) to the radio access network element 220. The identity authentication request may include information to be authenticated (e.g., the user's fingerprint information and face image) indicating a user identity, so that after the identity authentication request is transmitted to the MEC network, the application instance 103 in the MEC network can complete authentication for the user identity based on the identity authentication request and feed back the identity authentication result to the user equipment 210. It should be understood that the aforementioned scenario is only an example for illustration. This embodiment of the present application is further applicable to other applicable scenarios, such as any scenario related to edge computing, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), or live streaming scenarios related to cloud gaming, which is not limited in this embodiment.

[0061] In general, the target service request may include related information of the user equipment 210, such as an identifier of the user equipment 210 and an identifier (e.g., a service name) of the target service executed by the user equipment 210. For example, the identifier of the user equipment 210 may be any one or more of information such as the name, Internet protocol (IP) address, and media access control address (MAC address) of the user equipment 210. In practical application, the target service request may further include more other contents, such as a service type and a requested service name, which is not limited in this embodiment.

[0062] S302: The radio access network element 220 forwards the target service request to the user plane function network element 230.

[0063] S303: The user plane function network element 230 forwards the target service request to the gateway 101 in the MEC network.

[0064] Generally, after receiving the target service request, the gateway 101 forwards the target service request to the container network 102 in the MEC network, so that the container network 102 prepares a corresponding application instance 103 to provide a corresponding service based on the target service request. However, in practical applications, the gateway 101 generally receives multiple service requests from multiple user equipments and forwards the service requests to the container network 102 one by one. It should be understood that, since the latencies required by the services corresponding to different service requests are generally different, if the gateway 101 forwards the multiple service requests one by one in the order in which the service requests are received, for some service requests (e.g., the target service request) corresponding to a latency-sensitive service, the process of waiting for other service requests to be forwarded may increase the latency of the service provided by the MEC network for the latency-sensitive service. As a result, the latency does not meet the requirements of the latency-sensitive service.

[0065] Therefore, in this embodiment, when receiving a plurality of service requests, the gateway 101 may identify a target service request belonging to a target service among the plurality of service requests, where the target service is a service that requires a processing latency lower than a preset threshold, and thus the gateway 101 may preferentially forward the target service request. In a practical application scenario, most 5G services have high requirements for processing latency, for example, the processing latency of the 5G service is required to not exceed 28 ms. Based on this, in some examples, the gateway 101 may determine whether there is a target service request having an identifier of a 5G service among the plurality of received service requests. If there is a target service request having an identifier of a 5G service, it indicates that the target service request is a service request that belongs to a 5G service, and the gateway 101 may preferentially forward the target service request. If there is no target service request having an identifier of a 5G service, the gateway 101 may sequentially forward the service requests in the order of receiving the service requests. Furthermore, the gateway 101 may identify a target service request having a 5G service identifier and low latency quality of service (QoS) from among the multiple service requests, and may preferentially forward the target service request.

[0066] In another example, the gateway 101 may alternatively determine the order of forwarding each service request based on the priority of each service request, where the priority of the target service request is the highest among the priorities of the multiple service requests.

[0067] For ease of understanding, the following uses an example in which the gateway 101 determines a forwarding order based on the priority of each service request for description. After receiving multiple service processing requests, the gateway 101 may specifically continue to perform the following step S304 to determine a forwarding order of the multiple service requests.

[0068] S304: The gateway 101 sends an information feedback request to an information collecting network element 107 in the MEC network, where the information feedback request is to request the information collecting network element 107 to feedback latency indication information corresponding to the processing of the target service, and the latency indication information indicates the processed latency of the target service at the user equipment 210.

[0069] In this embodiment, the gateway 101 may determine a priority of forwarding the target service request based on the latency indication information corresponding to the target service, where the latency indication information indicates the processed latency of the target service. In practical application, the gateway 101 may obtain the latency indication information corresponding to each service request through the information collecting network element 107, so as to determine the forwarding order of the multiple service requests based on the latency indication information corresponding to each service request. The method of obtaining the latency indication information corresponding to other service requests other than the target service request is similar to the specific implementation of the gateway 101 obtaining the latency indication information corresponding to the target service request, and the details will not be described again in this embodiment.

[0070] S305: The information collecting network element 107 feeds back the latency indication information to the gateway 101.

[0071] In one embodiment, gatewayThe information feedback request sent by 101 to the information collecting network element 107 may carry an identifier of the user equipment and an identifier of the target service, so that the information collecting network element 107 may determine latency indication information corresponding to the target service executed by the user equipment 210 according to the identifier of the user equipment and the identifier of the target service carried in the information feedback request. The information collecting network element 107 may collect latency indication information corresponding to each service executed by the user equipment 210 in the process of the user equipment 210 establishing a session. For the specific process of establishing a session, please refer to the detailed description below and will not be described in detail here.

[0072] S306: The gateway 101 determines the priority of the target service request based on the received latency indication information.

[0073] S307: The gateway 101 preferentially forwards the target service request among the multiple service requests to the container network 102 based on the priority of the target service request.

[0074] In a possible embodiment, the latency indication information received by the gateway 101 may be, for example, a network slice used when the user equipment 210 executes the target service and quality of service of the user equipment 210. Different types of network slices may indicate different sizes of latency. For example, when the user equipment 210 transmits a service request by a 5G slice, the type of the 5G slice may include, for example, a default slice, a common slice, and another slice. When the type of the 5G slice used to transmit the service request is specifically a default slice or a common slice, the latency corresponding to the 5G slice may be 1000 ms (milliseconds). When the type of the 5G slice is specifically another slice, the latency corresponding to the 5G slice may be any value less than 1000 ms, for example 200 ms. With respect to the quality of service, the priority of the quality of service may be described using a 5QI (5G QoS Indicator), where the 5QI is a scalar.

[0075] For example, the queuing module 1011 in the gateway 101 may calculate a priority of a service request based on a latency corresponding to a network slice and a 5QI corresponding to a quality of service using the following equation (1): priority=latency*5QI(1)

[0076] A lower value of priority indicates a higher priority for servicing the request and a lower latency for servicing the request.

[0077] For each received service request, the queuing module 1011 in the gateway 101 may calculate a priority value corresponding to the service request through the aforementioned process, sort the priority values ​​corresponding to the multiple service requests in ascending order, and use the order as an order of forwarding of the service requests by the gateway 101 (the service request with the smallest priority value is forwarded first). In this way, for a target service request corresponding to a latency-sensitive service (i.e., a target service), the corresponding priority value is relatively small. Correspondingly, the gateway 101 may preferentially transmit the service request corresponding to the latency-sensitive service, so that the latency of the service provided by the MEC network for the latency-sensitive service may be reduced because the gateway 101 preferentially transmits the service request corresponding to the service.

[0078] After receiving the multiple service requests, the gateway 101 may temporarily determine the order in which the multiple service requests are received by the gateway 101 as the forwarding order of the service requests, and then the gateway 101 may determine the priority of each service request based on the latency indication information of the service requests, and requeue the multiple service requests based on the priority. The requeued order is the forwarding order of the multiple service requests. Of course, in another example, after receiving the multiple service requests, the gateway 101 directly determines the order in which to forward the multiple service requests based on the priority of each service request, which is not limited in this embodiment.

[0079] Of course, the above process is only used as an example for explanation. In other possible implementations, the latency indication information acquired by the gateway 101 may alternatively be a service type, and different service types correspond to different latency requirements. For example, the latency of a game service may be lower than the latency of a video playback service, so that the gateway 101 may preferentially forward service requests with high latency requirements based on the service type corresponding to each service request. The correspondence between the service type and the latency may be preset. In this embodiment, the specific implementation of how the gateway 101 determines the forwarding order of each service request based on the latency indication information is not limited.

[0080] In a further possible embodiment, when forwarding the service request, the gateway 101 may further refer to the location of the user equipment 210 to determine whether to forward the service request sent by the user equipment 210. In a particular embodiment, at the same time as requesting the latency indication information from the information collecting network element 107, the gateway 101 may further request the location of the user equipment 210 from the information collecting network element 107, so that the filtering module 1012 in the gateway 101 may further determine whether the location of the user equipment 210 is within a preset location range, where the preset location range may be, for example, a location range served by the gateway 101. When the location of the user equipment 210 is within the preset location range, the gateway 101 may forward the service request based on a priority, and when the location of the user equipment 210 is not within the preset location range, the filtering module 1012 may filter the service request, so that the gateway 101 may refuse to forward the service request. In response, the user equipment 210 may change the request target and resend the service request. In this way, excessively high latency of the services provided by the MEC network can be avoided as much as possible because the service request sent by the user equipment 210 undergoes a long network transmission process.

[0081] In some examples, the location of the user equipment 210 may be at least one of the following examples: network location information such as cell, cell list, TA (tracking area), TA list, MR (measurement report) location information, or LCS (location services) location information; geographic location information expressed in other ways such as latitude and longitude or administrative area; or identification information of a base station accessed by the user equipment 210. In practical applications, the location of a base station is relatively fixed, so when the user equipment 210 accesses a base station, a location corresponding to the base station (or an identifier of the base station) may be used as the location (geographic location or network location) of the user equipment 210.

[0082] In practical applications, when forwarding a service request (including a target service request), the gateway 101 may further allocate bandwidth to the service request. It is used as an example that the target service request is forwarded. The gateway 101 may obtain the type of network slice used by the user equipment 210 when the user equipment 210 executes the target service, and determine the bandwidth for forwarding the target service request based on the type of network slice. For example, when executing the target service, the user equipment 210 transmits the target service request through a 5G network slice, and when the type of the 5G network slice is a default slice or a common slice, the gateway 101 may allocate 10% of the total bandwidth to the target service request by default, and when the type of the 5G network slice is another slice, the gateway 101 may allocate the bandwidth to the target service request based on a preset bandwidth allocation policy. Optionally, when the total bandwidth of the gateway 101 is not fully allocated, a different service request may preempt the remaining bandwidth. That is, the gateway 101 may continue to allocate bandwidth from the remaining bandwidth to different service requests, thereby increasing the bandwidth allocated by the gateway 101 to one or more service requests. Alternatively, the gateway 101 may preempt bandwidth for forwarding other service requests and use the preempted bandwidth to forward the target service request, or the gateway 101 may increase the bandwidth for forwarding the target service request by preempting bandwidth for forwarding other services, or when allocating bandwidth, the gateway 101 allocates a wider bandwidth to the target service request than the bandwidth allocated to any other service requests. In this manner, the gateway 101 may reduce the transmission latency of the target service request based on the wider bandwidth.

[0083] S308: The container network 102 sends an information feedback request to the information collecting network element 107, where the information feedback request is to request the information collecting network element 107 to feedback latency indication information corresponding to the target service processed by the user equipment 210.

[0084] S309: The information collecting network element 107 feeds back the latency indication information to the container network 102.

[0085] S310: The container network 102 determines, by calculation, a priority of the target service request based on the received latency indication information.

[0086] S311: The container network 102 preferentially forwards a target service request among the multiple received service requests to the application instance 103 based on the priority of the target service request.

[0087] In practical application, the container network 102 may receive service requests forwarded by one or more gateways. Thus, in this embodiment, after receiving the multiple service requests, the container network 102 may also sort the multiple received service requests and sequentially forward the service requests to the corresponding application instances 103 based on the order.

[0088] Similar to the gateway 101, the container network 102 can determine a forwarding order of the service requests through the queuing module 1021, so that the container network 102 sequentially forwards the service requests to the corresponding application instances 103 according to the forwarding order. For a specific implementation process of the container network 102 determining the forwarding order of the service requests, please refer to the related description of the gateway 101 determining the forwarding order of the service requests, and the details will not be described again here.

[0089] It should be noted that in this embodiment, an example in which both the gateway 101 and the container network 102 preferentially forward the target service request based on the priority of the target service request is used for explanation. In other possible embodiments, only the gateway 101 may forward the service request based on the priority of the service request. In this case, the container network 102 may forward the service requests sequentially based on the order of receiving the service requests (or in other ways). Alternatively, only the container network 102 may forward each service request received by the container network 102 based on the priority of each service request. In this case, when forwarding the service processing to the container network 102, the gateway 101 may forward each service request received by the gateway 101 sequentially based on the order of receiving each service request (or in other ways). Alternatively, when both the gateway 101 and the container network 102 forward the service request based on the priority of the service request, the gateway 101 may further provide priority information corresponding to the service request to the container network 102 at the same time as forwarding the service request to the container network 102. For example, priority information may be carried in a specific field of the service request, in this manner, the container network 102 may no longer need to obtain latency indication information from an information gathering network element to determine the latency of the service request.

[0090] It should be noted that in the MEC network shown in FIG. 2, an example in which the forwarding device 100 includes a gateway 101 and a container network 102 is used for description. In other possible embodiments, the forwarding device 100 may include only the gateway 101, the forwarding device 100 may include only the container network 102, or the forwarding device 100 is specifically other possible devices. The specific implementation of the forwarding device 100 is not limited in this embodiment. Correspondingly, for the specific process of the forwarding device 100 in other embodiments forwarding the target service request, please refer to the above process description. Details will not be described again in this embodiment.

[0091] In addition, the gateway 101 and the container network 102 shown in FIG. 3 obtaining the latency indication information (and the location information of the user equipment 210) from the information collecting network element 107 is only used as an example of one implementation. For example, in other possible embodiments, the user plane function network element 230 may provide the latency indication information to the gateway 101 and / or the container network 102. In this embodiment, in practical applications, the specific implementation of the specific network element from which the gateway 101 and the container network 102 obtain the latency indication information is not limited.

[0092] The method embodiment shown in FIG. 3 is mainly used to describe a specific implementation process in which the MEC network meets the latency requirement of the user equipment 210 when the user equipment 210 requests a service. In practical application, before requesting a service from the MEC network, a session further needs to be established in advance for the user equipment 210, so that the user equipment 210 can send a service request to the MEC network based on the session. With reference to FIG. 4, the following describes in detail a specific implementation process of establishing a session for the user equipment 210. As shown in FIG. 4, the specific process of establishing a session is applicable to the network architecture shown in FIG. 2. This process may specifically include:

[0093] S401: The information gathering network element 107 subscribes to a session message from the user plane function network element 230.

[0094] An adapter module 231 may be configured in the user plane function network element 230. As shown in FIG. 2, the user plane function network element 230 may communicate and interact with the information collection network element 107 through the adapter module 231. In addition, the user equipment 210 and the application instance 103 may be located in different network spaces. Thus, when the user equipment 210 subsequently requests a service from the application instance 103, the adapter module 231 may further translate the source IP / MAC address of the service request, for example, translating the source IP / MAC address of the user equipment 210 included in the service request into a source IP / MAC address applicable to the network space where the application instance 103 is located.

[0095] For example, in this embodiment, the session established for the user plane function network element 230 may be, for example, a protocol data unit (PDU) session or other applicable session.

[0096] S402: The user equipment 210 sends a session establishment request to the 5G management and control plane network element 240 via the radio access network element 220, the session establishment request being for requesting the 5G management and control plane network element 240 to establish a session for the user equipment 210.

[0097] In practical applications, the user equipment 210 may first complete state activation, for example, activate the state from a sleep state to an active state, and then apply for a session to the 5G management and control plane network element 240 after completing the state activation.

[0098] In some embodiments, the session establishment request sent by the user equipment 210 to the 5G management and control plane network element 240 may carry an identifier of the user equipment 210 to inform the 5G management and control plane network element 240 of the object of the session to be established. In addition, the session establishment request may further include a network slice type and quality of service (e.g., quality of service rules and packet filtering lists) information to be used when the user equipment 210 executes one or more services. In addition, the session establishment request may further include network slice rule information, such as a user equipment route selection policy (UE route selection policy, URSP). Correspondingly, the 5G management and control plane network element 240 may store one or more types of information carried in the session establishment request.

[0099] S403: The 5G management and control plane network element 240 distributes the traffic rules to the user plane function network element 230.

[0100] In some examples, the traffic rules delivered by the 5G management and control plane network element 240 may be, for example, traffic distribution rules used to determine which traffic (e.g., service requests) are forwarded to the MEC network and which traffic is forwarded to the data center. Of course, in practical applications, the traffic rules delivered by the 5G management and control plane network element 240 may alternatively be other rules, etc. This is not limited in this embodiment.

[0101] S404: The user plane function network element 230 sends a notification message to the information collection network element 107 based on a session message previously subscribed by the information collection network element 107 to notify the information collection network element 107 that a session has been successfully established for the user equipment 210.

[0102] For example, the session message may include an identifier of the user equipment 210.

[0103] S405: The information collection network element 107 collects network slice type and service quality information from the 5G management and control plane network element 240 to be used when the user equipment 210 executes one or more services, in order to subsequently provide information to the gateway 101 and / or the container network 102.

[0104] For example, the information collecting network element 107 may send an information acquisition request regarding the user equipment 210 to the 5G management and control plane network element 240, so that the 5G management and control plane network element 240 feeds back the network slice type and service quality information of the user equipment 210 to the information collecting network element 107 based on the information acquisition request.

[0105] In addition, because the user equipment 210 and the application instance 103 may be located in different network spaces, the information collecting network element 107 may further obtain the source IP / MAC address of the user equipment 210 and the source IP / MAC address converted by the user plane function network element 230. Based on this, this embodiment may further include the following step S406.

[0106] S406: The information collecting network element 107 obtains the source IP / MAC address of the user equipment 210 and the translated source IP / MAC address for the user equipment 210 from the user plane function network element 230.

[0107] The user plane function network element 230 may specifically translate the source IP / MAC address via a pre-configured adapter module 231 .

[0108] S407: The information collecting network element 107 obtains the location of the user equipment 210 from the wireless access network element 220.

[0109] In this way, when the user equipment 210 requests a service from the MEC network, the information collecting network element 107 may provide location information of the user equipment 210 to the gateway 101 in the MEC network, so that the gateway 101 may determine whether to filter the service request from the user equipment 210 based on the location information. For example, when the location of the user equipment 210 is outside the service range served by the gateway 101, the gateway 101 may refuse to forward the service request to the container network 102.

[0110] S408: The information collection network element 107 feeds back a result indicating successful session establishment to the 5G management and control plane network element 240.

[0111] S409: The 5G management and control plane network element 240 returns a successfully established session message to the user equipment 210.

[0112] In this way, the user equipment 210 can successfully establish a session, so that in a subsequent process of executing the target service, the user equipment 210 can send a corresponding service request based on the session to the MEC network.

[0113] It should be noted that the above process of establishing a session for the user equipment 210 is only an example for illustration. In practical applications, some steps may be adaptively added / deleted, or the order of performing steps may be adjusted. For example, in other possible session establishment processes, only steps S401 to S404 and steps S408 to S409 may be performed, or when all of the above steps S401 to S409 are performed, the order of performing steps S405 to S407 may be adjusted.

[0114] In the method embodiment shown in FIG. 3, the gateway 101 and / or the container network 102 obtain latency indication information from the information collecting network element 107 to determine the priority of forwarding each service request. In another possible embodiment, the gateway 101 and / or the container network 102 may alternatively obtain the latency indication information directly from the service request. FIG. 5 is a schematic flow chart of another traffic processing method. The traffic processing method shown in FIG. 5 is applicable to the network architecture shown in FIG. 6, where the MEC network in FIG. 6 includes the gateway 101, the container network 102, and the application instance 103 (MEC platform 104, virtualization infrastructure 105, and MEC platform management 106), etc. Both the gateway 101 and the container network 102 forward the service request based on the priority of the service request. The traffic processing method shown in FIG. 5 may specifically include the following steps.

[0115] S501: When a user equipment 210 executes a target service, the user equipment 210 sends a target service request for the target service to the radio access network element 220, where the target service request is to request the application instance 103 in the MEC network to provide the service for the target service to the user equipment 210 by an application program running on the application instance 103.

[0116] S502: The radio access network element 220 forwards the target service request to the user plane function network element 230.

[0117] S503: The user plane function network element 230 modifies the packet header of the target service request and adds parameters such as latency indication information and location information of the user equipment 210 to the packet header.

[0118] For example, the latency indication information may be, for example, a network slice (e.g., 5G slice) and quality of service information. In another possible embodiment, the latency indication information may be, for example, a service type, and different service types may indicate different sizes of latency.

[0119] S504: The user plane function network element 230 forwards the modified target service request to the gateway 101 in the MEC network.

[0120] S505: The gateway 101 analyzes the location of the user equipment 210 from the packet header of the received target service request, and determines whether to filter the target service request from the user equipment 210.

[0121] In this embodiment, when the gateway 101 determines that the location of the user equipment 210 is not within the service range of the gateway 101, the gateway 101 may decide to filter the target service request of the user equipment 210, or when the gateway 101 determines that the location of the user equipment 210 is within the service range of the gateway 101, the gateway 101 may decide to skip filtering the target service request and complete the subsequent forwarding process.

[0122] S506: When it is determined to skip filtering the target service request of the user equipment 210, the gateway 101 parses latency indication information corresponding to the target service performed by the user equipment 210 from the packet header of the target service request, and determines a priority of the target service request based on the latency indication information.

[0123] S507: The gateway 101 forwards the target service request among the multiple service requests received by the gateway 101 to the container network 102 based on the priority of the service request.

[0124] In this embodiment, for each received service request, the gateway 101 may calculate a priority corresponding to each service request, determine a forwarding order for each service request based on the priority of each service request, and forward the service requests based on the order. When the priority corresponding to the target service request is the highest among the priorities corresponding to the multiple service requests, the gateway 101 preferentially forwards the target service request to the container network 102.

[0125] S508: The container network 102 analyzes the latency indication information corresponding to the target service from the packet header of the target service request, and determines the priority of the target service request based on the latency indication information.

[0126] S509: The container network 102 forwards the target service request among the multiple service requests received by the container network 102 to a corresponding application instance 103 based on the priority of the target service request.

[0127] Similar to the gateway 101, the container network 102 may also calculate a priority corresponding to each service request based on the latency indication information carried in the packet header of each service request, determine a forwarding order for each service request based on the priority of each service request, and forward each service request to a corresponding application instance 103 based on the order. When the priority corresponding to the target service request is the highest among the priorities corresponding to the multiple service requests, the container network 102 preferentially forwards the target service request to the application instance 103.

[0128] S510: Based on the target service request, the application instance 103 provides a corresponding service through an application program carried in the application instance 103.

[0129] Before sending the target service request, a session may be established for the user equipment 210. For a specific implementation, refer to the related description of the embodiment shown in Fig. 4, or use an existing implementation of establishing a session to establish a session for the user equipment 210, and details will not be described again in this embodiment.

[0130] It should be noted that in the embodiment shown in FIG. 3 and FIG. 5, when forwarding the multiple service requests (including the target service request), the forwarding device 100 (including the gateway 101 and the container network 102) may sequentially forward each service request via the same channel (specifically, the path between the forwarding device 100 and the application container 103). However, in other possible embodiments, there may be multiple channels between the forwarding device 100 and the application container 103, including, for example, a first channel and a second channel. In this way, in the process in which the forwarding device 100 forwards the multiple service requests, if the forwarding device 100 determines that the target service request among the multiple service requests satisfies the target service condition, for example, the target service request has the highest priority, the forwarding device 100 may apply to the first channel that matches the target service condition to send the target service request to the application instance 103, and the forwarding device 100 may forward each service request via the first channel that matches the target service condition to the application instance 103. 100 may forward other service requests of the plurality of service requests via a second channel. In this manner, the forwarding device 100 may forward different service requests via different channels, which may reduce the transmission latency of each service request and reduce the latency of the service provided by the MEC network for the service corresponding to each service request.

[0131] The MEC network and the traffic processing method provided in the embodiment of the present application are described in detail above with reference to Figures 1 to 6. The following describes the traffic processing device provided in an embodiment of the present application from the perspective of functional units with reference to the accompanying drawings.

[0132] FIG. 7 shows a schematic diagram of the structure of a traffic processing device, and the traffic processing device 700 can be used in the forwarding device 100 in the MEC network shown in FIG. 2 or FIG. 6. The traffic processing device 700 includes: A communication module 701 configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element; A forwarding module 702 configured to preferentially forward a target service request belonging to a target service among a plurality of service requests so that the target application instance processes the target service request of the target service, the target service requiring a processing latency lower than a target threshold; Includes.

[0133] In a possible embodiment, the target service is a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service.

[0134] In a possible embodiment, the traffic processing device 700 comprises: an identification module 703 configured to identify a target service request having an identifier of a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service and a low latency quality of service (QoS) from among a plurality of service requests for a forwarding device; Further includes:

[0135] In a possible embodiment, the forwarding module 702 may, in particular, determine whether the priority of the target service request is based on the identifier of the 5G service and the low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request. servicedetermining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on an identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request service determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests, or determining that the priority of the target service request is higher than the priority of other service requests among the requests based on a low latency quality of service QoS carried in the target service request; service The target service request is configured to determine that one of the requests has a higher priority than the other service requests and to preferentially forward the target service request based on the priority.

[0136] In a possible embodiment, the traffic processing device 700 comprises: a bandwidth acquisition module 704 configured to acquire bandwidth for preferentially forwarding the target service request; Further includes:

[0137] In a possible implementation, the bandwidth for transferring the target service request is higher than the bandwidth for transferring the other service requests.

[0138] In a possible embodiment, the traffic processing device 700 comprises: a bandwidth acquisition module 704 configured to preempt bandwidth for transferring other service requests in order to transfer the target service request; Further includes:

[0139] In a possible embodiment, the traffic processing device 700 comprises: a forwarding refusal module 705 configured to refuse to forward the target service request when the location of the user equipment that sent the target service request is outside the service range of the forwarding device; Further includes:

[0140] In a possible implementation, the application instance is an application container.

[0141] The traffic processing device 700 according to this embodiment of the present application may appropriately perform the methods described in the embodiments of the present application. In addition, the above-mentioned and other operations and / or functions of the modules of the traffic processing device 700 are for implementing the corresponding procedures of the methods performed by the forwarding devices of Figures 3 and 5, respectively. For the sake of brevity, the details will not be described again here.

[0142] In the above embodiment, the forwarding device 100 (including the gateway 101 and / or the container network 102) involved in the traffic handling process may be implemented by an independent hardware device. In other possible implementations, the forwarding device may alternatively be software configured on the forwarding device. In addition, the forwarding device may implement the functions of the forwarding device 100 by running software on the forwarding device. The following describes the forwarding device 100 involved in the traffic handling process in detail.

[0143] 8 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a forwarding device. The forwarding device 100 shown in FIG. 8 may be specifically configured to implement the functions of the forwarding device 100 in the embodiments shown in FIG. 2 to FIG. 6.

[0144] The forwarding device 100 includes a bus 801, a processor 802, a communication interface 803, and a memory 804. The processor 802, the memory 804, and the communication interface 803 communicate with each other via the bus 801. The bus 801 may be a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus or an extended industry standard architecture (EISA) bus, etc. The bus may include an address bus, a data bus, a control bus, etc. For ease of representation, only one thick line is used to represent a bus in FIG. 8, but this does not mean that there is only one bus or only one type of bus. The communication interface 803 is configured to communicate with the outside, for example, to receive a target service request sent by a user plane function network element.

[0145] The processor 802 may be a central processing unit (CPU). The memory 804 may include a volatile memory, such as a random access memory (RAM). The memory 804 may further include a non-volatile memory, such as a read-only memory (ROM), a flash memory, a HDD, or an SSD.

[0146] The memory 804 stores executable code, and the processor 802 executes the executable code to perform methods performed by the forwarding device 100 .

[0147] Specifically, when the embodiments shown in Figures 2 to 6 are implemented and the forwarding device 100 described in the embodiments shown in Figures 2 to 6 is implemented by software, the software or program code required to perform the functions of the forwarding device 100 of Figures 2 to 6 is stored in the memory 804. The interaction of the forwarding device 100 with other devices is performed via the communication interface 803. For example, the forwarding device 100 receives a target service request sent by the user plane function network element 230 via the communication interface 803. The processor is configured to execute the instructions in the memory 804 to implement the methods performed by the forwarding device 100.

[0148] In addition, an embodiment of the present application further provides a computer-readable storage medium, which stores instructions, and when the instructions are executed on the forwarding device, the forwarding device is capable of performing the method of the foregoing embodiment.

[0149] An embodiment of the present application further provides a computer program product, which when executed by a plurality of computers, causes the plurality of computers to Traffic Processing The computer program product may be a software installation package. Traffic Processing When any of the methods needs to be used, the computer program product can be downloaded and executed on a computer.

[0150] In addition, it should be noted that the described device embodiments are only examples. The units described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and the parts presented as units may or may not be physical units, i.e., may be located in one location or distributed among multiple network units. Some or all of the modules may be selected based on the actual requirements to achieve the purpose of the solution of the embodiment. In addition, in the accompanying drawings of the device embodiments provided by the present application, the connection relationship between the modules indicates that the modules have communication connections with each other, which may be specifically implemented as one or more communication buses or signal cables.

[0151] Based on the description of the above embodiments, those skilled in the art can clearly understand that the present application can be implemented by software in addition to the necessary general-purpose hardware, or by dedicated hardware including dedicated integrated circuits, dedicated CPUs, dedicated memories, or dedicated components. In general, any function that can be executed by a computer program can be easily implemented using corresponding hardware. Furthermore, the specific hardware structure used to execute the same function may be in various forms, for example, in the form of an analog circuit, a digital circuit, or a dedicated circuit. However, for the present application, the implementation of the software program is the better implementation in most cases. Based on such understanding, the technical solution of the present application may be essentially or the part that contributes to the prior art may be implemented in the form of a software product. The computer software product is stored in a readable storage medium such as a computer floppy disk, a USB flash drive, a removable hard disk, a ROM, a RAM, a magnetic disk, or an optical disk, and includes some instructions for instructing a transfer device (which may be a personal computer, a training device, or a network device) to perform the method described in the embodiments of the present application.

[0152] All or part of the above-described embodiments may be implemented by software, hardware, firmware, or any combination thereof. When software is used to implement the embodiments, all or part of the embodiments may be implemented in the form of a computer program product.

[0153] A computer program product includes one or more computer instructions. When the computer program instructions are loaded and executed on a computer, the procedure or function according to the embodiment of the present application is generated in whole or in part. The computer may be a general-purpose computer, a special-purpose computer, a computer network, or other programmable device. The computer instructions may be stored in a computer-readable storage medium or transmitted from one computer-readable storage medium to another. For example, the computer instructions may be transmitted from one website, computer, training device, or data center to another website, computer, training device, or data center in a wired (e.g., coaxial cable, optical fiber, or digital subscriber line (DSL)) or wireless (e.g., infrared, radio, or microwave) manner. The computer-readable storage medium may be any available medium accessible by a computer, or a data storage device, such as a training device or data center, incorporating one or more available media. The usable medium may be a magnetic medium (eg, a floppy disk, a hard disk, or a magnetic tape), an optical medium (eg, a DVD), or a semiconductor medium (eg, a solid state disk (SSD)). [Explanation of symbols]

[0154] 100 Transfer Devices 101 Gateway 102 Container Network 103 Application Instances 104 MEC Platform 105 Virtualization Infrastructure 106 MEC Platform Management 107 Information Gathering Network Elements 210 User Equipment 220 Radio Access Network Elements 230 User Plane Function Network Element 231 Adapter Module 240 5G Management and Control Plane Network Elements 700 Traffic Processing Device 701 Communication Module 702 Transfer Module 703 Identification Module 704 Bandwidth Acquisition Module 705 Rejection of forwarding module 801 Bus 802 Processor 803 Communication Interface 804 Memory 1011 Queuing Module 1012 Filtering Module 1021 Queuing Module

Claims

1. A multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances configured to process a target service having a required latency below a target threshold; The forwarding device is configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element, and to preferentially forward a target service request belonging to the target service among the plurality of service requests; The forwarding device is configured to determine, based on an identifier of a 5G service carried in the target service request, that a priority of the target service request is higher than priorities of other service requests among the plurality of service requests; the target application instance is configured to process the target service request for the target service. Multi-access edge computing network.

2. The multi-access edge computing network of claim 1 , wherein the target service is a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service.

3. The forwarding device is configured to identify the target service request having an identifier of the fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service and a low latency quality of service (QoS) from among the plurality of service requests.

3. The multi-access edge computing network of claim 2.

4. The forwarding device is configured to determine, based on the identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request and the low latency quality of service QoS, that a priority of the target service request is higher than a priority of other service requests among the plurality of service requests; the forwarding device is configured to preferentially forward the target service requests based on the priority.

4. The multi-access edge computing network of claim 3.

5. the forwarding device is configured to obtain bandwidth for preferentially forwarding the target service request; A multi-access edge computing network according to any one of claims 1 to 4.

6. the bandwidth for forwarding the target service request is higher than the bandwidth for forwarding other service requests; 6. The multi-access edge computing network of claim 5.

7. the forwarding device is configured to pre-empt the bandwidth for forwarding other service requests in order to forward the target service request; A multi-access edge computing network according to claim 5 or 6.

8. the forwarding device is configured to refuse to forward the target service request when a location of a user equipment that has sent the target service request is outside a service range of the forwarding device; A multi-access edge computing network according to any one of claims 1 to 7.

9. The forwarding device includes: a gateway configured to receive the target service request and forward the target service request to a container network; the container network configured to receive the target service request and forward the target service request to the target application instance; Including, The gateway preferentially forwards the target service request, the container network preferentially forwards the target service request, or both the gateway and the container network preferentially forward the target service request. A multi-access edge computing network according to any one of claims 1 to 8.

10. the user plane function network element is configured to receive the target service request from a radio access network element; A multi-access edge computing network according to any one of claims 1 to 9.

11. the user plane function network element is configured to receive the target service request from the user equipment; The multi-access edge computing network of claim 8.

12. The multi-access edge computing network of claim 1 , wherein the application instance is an application container.

13. The multi-access edge computing network includes: an information gathering network element configured to establish a protocol data unit session for the user equipment so that the forwarding device receives the target service request of the user equipment; The multi-access edge computing network of claim 8, further comprising:

14. A network, comprising a multi-access edge computing network according to any one of claims 1 to 13.

15. The network includes: a user plane function network element configured to transmit the target service request to the forwarding device.

15. The network of claim 14, comprising:

16. The network includes: a radio access network element configured to transmit the target service request to the user plane function network element.

16. The network of claim 15, comprising:

17. The network includes: a user equipment configured to transmit the target service request to a radio access network element, so that the user plane function network element obtains the target service request via the radio access network element; 17. The network of claim 16, comprising:

18. A multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances configured to process a target service having a required latency below a target threshold; the forwarding device is configured to receive a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element, and forward a target service request of the plurality of service requests, the target service request belonging to the target service, via a first channel, the first channel being different from a second channel for sending other service requests to other application instances; The forwarding device is configured to determine, based on an identifier of a 5G service carried in the target service request, that a priority of the target service request is higher than priorities of other service requests among the plurality of service requests; the target application instance is configured to process the target service request for the target service. Multi-access edge computing network.

19. 1. A traffic processing method, the method being applied to a multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance among the plurality of application instances being configured to process a target service having a required latency below a target threshold, the method comprising: receiving, by the forwarding device, a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element; transferring, by the forwarding device, a target service request belonging to the target service among the plurality of service requests with priority; determining, based on an identifier of a 5G service carried in the target service request, that a priority of the target service request is higher than a priority of other service requests among the plurality of service requests; processing, by the target application instance, the target service request for the target service; A method for processing traffic, comprising:

20. The method of claim 19 , wherein the target service is a fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service.

21. The method comprises: Identifying, by the forwarding device, the target service request from among the plurality of service requests, the target service request having an identifier of the fifth generation mobile communication technology (5G) service and a low latency quality of service (QoS).

21. The method of claim 20, further comprising:

22. The step of determining, based on the identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request, that a priority of the target service request is higher than priorities of other service requests among the plurality of service requests, comprising: determining, by the forwarding device, based on the identifier of the 5G service carried in the target service request and the low latency quality of service QoS, that a priority of the target service request is higher than a priority of other service requests of the plurality of service requests; Including, The step of preferentially forwarding a target service request belonging to the target service among the plurality of service requests by the forwarding device includes: preferentially forwarding, by the forwarding device, the target service request based on the priority.

22. The method of claim 21 , comprising:

23. The method comprises: obtaining, by said forwarding device, a bandwidth for preferentially forwarding said target service request; 23. The method of any one of claims 19 to 22, further comprising:

24. The method of claim 23 , wherein the bandwidth for forwarding the target service request is higher than a bandwidth for forwarding other service requests.

25. The method comprises: pre-empting, by the forwarding device, the bandwidth for forwarding other service requests in order to forward the target service request.

25. The method of claim 23 or 24, further comprising:

26. The method comprises: refusing to forward the target service request when the location of the user equipment that sent the target service request is outside the service range of the forwarding device.

26. The method of any one of claims 20 to 25, further comprising:

27. The forwarding device includes a gateway and a container network, and the step of preferentially forwarding a target service request belonging to the target service among the plurality of service requests by the forwarding device includes: receiving, by the gateway, the target service request and forwarding the target service request to the container network; receiving, by the container network, the target service request and forwarding the target service request to the target application instance; Including, The gateway preferentially forwards the target service request, the container network preferentially forwards the target service request, or both the gateway and the container network preferentially forward the target service request.

27. The method according to any one of claims 20 to 26.

28. 28. The method of claim 20, wherein the application instance is an application container.

29. The multi-access edge computing network further includes an information gathering network element, and the method further comprises: establishing, by the information collecting network element, a protocol data unit session for the user equipment, so that the forwarding device receives the target service request of the user equipment; 27. The method of claim 26, further comprising:

30. 1. A traffic processing method, the traffic processing method being applied to a multi-access edge computing network, the multi-access edge computing network including a forwarding device and a plurality of application instances, a target application instance of the plurality of application instances being configured to process a target service having a required latency lower than a target threshold, the method comprising: receiving, by the forwarding device, a plurality of service requests from a user plane function network element; forwarding, by the forwarding device, a target service request of the plurality of service requests that belongs to the target service through a first channel, the first channel being different from a second channel for sending other service requests to other application instances; determining, based on an identifier of a 5G service carried in the target service request, that a priority of the target service request is higher than a priority of other service requests among the plurality of service requests; processing, by the target application instance, the target service request for the target service; A method for processing traffic, comprising:

31. 31. A computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored therein that, when executed on a plurality of computing devices, enable the plurality of computing devices to perform a method according to any one of claims 19 to 29 or to perform a method according to claim 30.

32. A forwarding device, the forwarding device including a processor and a memory; the memory is configured to store computer instructions; The processor is configured to perform the operational steps of the method according to any one of claims 19 to 29 or the operational steps of the method according to claim 30 based on the computer instructions. Transfer device.

33. A computer program comprising instructions, which when executed on a forwarding device, enables the forwarding device to perform the operational steps of the method according to any one of claims 19 to 29 or to perform the operational steps of the method according to claim 30.

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