Information acquisition method, information sending method, storage medium, and electronic apparatus

Abstract

Provided in the embodiments of the present disclosure are an information acquisition method, an information sending method, a storage medium, and an electronic apparatus. The method comprises: a network function (NF) performing retrieval on the basis of a service discovery response sent by a network repository function (NRF), wherein the service discovery response comprises an NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest comprises an NF configuration information resource identifier; and determining whether there is NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier in the NF, and if there is NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier in the NF, using the NF configuration information in the NF.

Description

Method for information acquisition and transmission, storage medium and electronic device

[0001] Cross-reference of related disclosures

[0002] The present disclosure is based on Chinese Patent Publication 2024113524028 with the title of “Method for information acquisition and transmission, storage medium and electronic device” filed on September 25, 2024, and claims priority to the patent publication, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. TECHNICAL FIELD

[0003] Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to the field of communication, in particular to a method for information acquisition and transmission, a storage medium and an electronic device. BACKGROUND

[0004] 5G core network (5GC) adopts a service-based architecture (SBA), a service provider registers NFProfile (NF configuration information) to a network repository function (NRF), and when an NF (as a service user) needs to call a service provided by other network functions (NFs), the NF should perform service discovery on the NRF, and the NRF will bring back the NFProfile of the qualified service provider in the discovery response.

[0005] With the expansion of 5GC services, the registered NFProfile data is getting larger and larger, resulting in larger and larger service discovery responses (the current protocol already requires support for a large packet response of up to 16M), which puts a huge pressure on the bandwidth and performance requirements of the NF / NRF, and limits the support performance of the NRF for service discovery. SUMMARY

[0006] Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a method for information acquisition and transmission, a storage medium and an electronic device to at least solve the problem of excessive service discovery response data, repeated transmission, and high pressure on NF and NRF caused by the NF directly sending the service discovery response to obtain the NF configuration information through the NRF in the related technology.

[0007] According to one embodiment of the present disclosure, a method for information acquisition is provided, comprising: a network function (NF) retrieving according to a service discovery response sent by a network repository function (NRF), wherein the service discovery response comprises a NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest comprises a NF configuration information resource identifier; determining whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, and using the NF configuration information in the NF in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF.

[0008] According to another embodiment of the present disclosure, a method for information sending is provided, comprising: a network repository function (NRF) sending a service discovery response to a network function (NF) to make the NF retrieve according to the service discovery response and determine whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF; wherein the service discovery response comprises a NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest comprises a NF configuration information resource identifier.

[0009] According to still another embodiment of the present disclosure, a computer readable storage medium is further provided, and the computer readable storage medium stores a computer program, wherein the computer program is configured to execute the steps in any of the above method embodiments when running.

[0010] According to still another embodiment of the present disclosure, an electronic device is further provided, comprising a memory and a processor, wherein the memory stores a computer program, and the processor is configured to execute the computer program to perform the steps in any of the above method embodiments.

[0011] According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, since the service discovery response sent by the NRF and received by the NF does not contain a large amount of NF configuration information, but contains a NF configuration information digest, the NF can retrieve according to the list of NF configuration information resource identifiers in the NF configuration information digest, and then determine whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF. In the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, the NF does not need to acquire the NF configuration information from the NRF, but can directly use the NF configuration information of the NF itself. Therefore, the problem that the service discovery response data is too large, repeated transmission, and the NF and the NRF are under great pressure due to the fact that the NF directly acquires the NF configuration information from the service discovery response sent by the NRF in the related art can be solved, and the effect of reducing the service discovery response data and avoiding repeated transmission is achieved. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

[0012] FIG. 1 is a system block diagram for information acquisition and sending supporting the embodiments of the present disclosure;

[0013] FIG. 2 is a flowchart of an information acquisition method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0014] FIG. 3 is a flowchart of an information acquisition method in the related art;

[0015] FIG. 4 is a flowchart of an information acquisition method according to another embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0016] FIG. 5 is a flowchart of an information acquisition method across NRF in the related art;

[0017] FIG. 6 is a flowchart of an information acquisition method across NRF according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0018] FIG. 7 is a flowchart of an information sending method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0019] FIG. 8 is a flowchart of NF side discovery compatible with an original interface according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

[0020] FIG. 9 is a flowchart of NRF side discovery compatible with an original interface according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0021] Hereinafter, embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings and in conjunction with embodiments.

[0022] It should be noted that the terms "first", "second", and the like in the specification and claims of the present disclosure and the above-described drawings are used to distinguish similar objects, and do not necessarily have to describe a specific order or sequence.

[0023] In order to solve the problem that the amount of service discovery response data is too large, repeated transmission, and the pressure of NF and NRF is large due to the NF directly sending service discovery response to obtain NF configuration information, the following methods are usually used in the related art:

[0024] (1) Signaling compression, which transmits the service discovery response message body after gzip compression, thereby reducing the message body size. Depending on the specific message content, the compression ratio is indefinite, and the bandwidth consumption can be reduced by about 80% to 40%.

[0025] The problem of this method is that the bandwidth reduction is limited due to the compression ratio; the compression and decompression processing on the NF / NRF side increases the CPU consumption, which is equivalent to using CPU to exchange bandwidth.

[0026] (2) The NFProfile in the discovery response only returns the hit number segment. For number segment type service discovery, the NFProfile in the returned service discovery response only carries the hit number segment information, thereby avoiding carrying a large number of number segments, reducing the size of the service discovery response, and improving performance.

[0027] The problem of this mode is: only applicable to number segment service discovery, not applicable to other service discovery; there is a large amount of other information in NFProfile in addition to number segment information; the discovery cache requirement of the NF side is high, the same NFProfile returns different number segments in different number discovery, the NF side needs to perform number segment superposition, and the processing is relatively complex.

[0028] (3) Logical multi-network element, the mode splits a large physical network element by number segment, splits multiple logical NFs from one NF, that is, splits one large NFProfile into multiple smaller NFProfiles, so as to reduce the service discovery response size and improve performance.

[0029] The problem of this mode is: splitting one large physical network element into multiple logical network elements increases the operation and maintenance complexity; there is a large amount of other information in NFProfile in addition to number segment information.

[0030] (4) Cache cache + ETag (entity tag), the discovery response carries the discovery response ETag corresponding to the discovery request, and when the same discovery request is used to rediscover (for example, after the validity period of the discovery result expires) the ETag is carried in the if-no-match header, and the NRF matches the ETag of the new result according to the time difference between the discovery request and the discovery result, and the ETag value carried in the if-no-match is the same (meaning that the discovery results of the two times corresponding to the request do not change), then the NRF does not carry the discovery result in the response of the discovery request, thereby reducing the response.

[0031] The problem of this mode is: in the initial discovery scenario, the ETag cannot be used to reduce the transmission of NFProfile; the 5GC service discovery request parameters change greatly, there are many URIs based on the discovery request parameters, and the ETag reuse rate is low.

[0032] In summary, in order to solve the problem that the service discovery response data is too large, repeated transmission, and the pressure of the NF and the NRF is large due to that the NF directly sends the service discovery response to obtain the NF configuration information, the technical means adopted in the related technology does not achieve a good technical effect.

[0033] FIG. 1 is a system block diagram of information acquisition and transmission supporting the embodiments of the present disclosure, as shown in FIG. 1, the information acquisition and transmission system includes an NRF and an NF as a service user, the NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF, and receives a service discovery response returned by the NRF.

[0034] An information acquisition method is provided in the embodiment, and FIG. 2 is a flowchart of the information acquisition method according to the embodiments of the present disclosure, as shown in FIG. 2, the flowchart includes the following steps:

[0035] In step S202, the network function NF performs retrieval according to the service discovery response sent by the network storage function NRF, wherein the service discovery response includes NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest includes NF configuration information resource identifier.

[0036] In one embodiment, the NF configuration information resource identifier is used to download NFProfile (NF configuration information), the NF configuration information is configuration information of the NF instance, the NF configuration information resource identifier can be various uniform resource identifiers (URIs), the URI includes NFInstID (NF instance identifier) information used to identify the NF instance, and the NFInstID corresponding NFProfile content can be downloaded through the URI.

[0037] In one embodiment, the NF configuration information digest further includes an ETag (entity tag) corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier, the value of the entity tag is generated by NFProfile content related information, when the NFProfile content corresponding to the same NFInstID is changed, the corresponding ETag is also changed, the generation of the ETag value can refer to the existing RFC definition method, which can be a timestamp of the last change of the NFProfile or a hash string calculated based on the NFProfile content, and the HTTP protocol specification defines the ETag as the entity value of the requested variable.

[0038] It should be noted that the NF (i.e., network element instance) refers to various devices, software and services that implement specific functions in a computer network, and the network function is usually used to achieve network connection, data transmission, security, management and monitoring and other purposes, and common NFs include routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, etc. The NRF is an NF in the 5GC that is responsible for receiving and storing the registration information of other NFs, and accepting service discovery requests of other NFs.

[0039] In the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure, the NF configuration information resource identifier, the NF configuration information and the entity tag are stored.

[0040] It should be noted that it can be determined whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, because the NF configuration information resource identifier, the entity tag corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier are stored, and in order to use the NF configuration information in the case where it is confirmed that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, the NF configuration information needs to be stored.

[0041] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, before the network function (NF) retrieves according to the service discovery response sent by the network storage function (NRF), the NF further comprises: the NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF, wherein the service discovery request comprises a requester feature, and the requester feature is used to indicate that the NF supports receiving the NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF; and the NF receives the service discovery response sent by the NRF in response to the service discovery request. In an embodiment, in order to be compatible with the interaction between the NF / NRF that does not support the embodiment of the present disclosure, a new extension flag is carried in the parameter value of the requester feature of the service discovery request, which is used to indicate that the embodiment of the present disclosure is supported, that is, the NF supports receiving the NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF. For example, the current 3gpp 29.510 protocol has defined the meaning of 47-bit flag, and 48-bit can be expanded in the manner of Table 1 to represent the support of the embodiment of the present disclosure.

[0042] Table 1

[0043] Step S204: determining whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, and using the NF configuration information in the NF in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF.

[0044] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF, the NF sends an NF configuration information acquisition request to the NRF according to the NF configuration information resource identifier; the NF receives the NF configuration information acquisition response sent by the NRF in response to the NF configuration information acquisition request; and the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier is included in the NF configuration information acquisition response.

[0045] It should be noted that, since the request for acquiring the NF configuration information is sent to the NRF only in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF, the problem of resource waste and excessive pressure on the NE and the NRF caused by repeated transmission of the NF configuration information is avoided.

[0046] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF, comprising: the NF configuration information does not exist in the NF; or the entity label of the existing NF configuration information does not match the entity label corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier; and the entity label corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier is further included in the NF configuration information digest.

[0047] It should be noted that the information acquisition method flow in the related art is shown in FIG. 3. The NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF. It is assumed that the discovery conditions of the three service discovery requests are discovery condition 1, discovery condition 2, and discovery condition 3, respectively, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 1 on the NRF are NFProfile 1 and NFProfile 2, the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 2 are NFProfile 2 and NFProfile 3, and the NFProfile satisfying the discovery condition 3 is NFProfile 1. Each discovery response returned by the NRF carries the corresponding NFProfile. The same NFProfile in the response to different query requests in the above process is repeatedly transmitted between the NRF and the NF. The more query requests, the more times the NFProfile is repeatedly transmitted.

[0048] Compared with the information acquisition method in the related art, the information acquisition method flow in another embodiment of the present disclosure is shown in FIG. 4. Similar to the acquisition process in the related art, the NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF. It is assumed that the discovery conditions of the three service discovery requests are discovery condition 1, discovery condition 2, and discovery condition 3, respectively, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 1 on the NRF are NFProfile 1 and NFProfile 2, the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 2 are NFProfile 2 and NFProfile 3, and the NFProfile satisfying the discovery condition 3 is NFProfile 1. However, the difference between the process in the embodiment of the present disclosure and the process in FIG. 3 is that each discovery response returned by the NRF does not directly carry the corresponding NFProfile, but carries the NF configuration information digest. The NF can determine whether to directly use the local NFProfile or send an NF configuration information acquisition request to the NRF to further acquire the corresponding NFProfile according to the information in the NF configuration information digest. The NFProfile 1 and the NFProfile 2 satisfying the discovery condition 1 are acquired / downloaded from the NRF by the NF. The NFProfile 1 satisfying the discovery condition 3 does not need to be acquired / downloaded from the NRF again because it has been acquired, and can be directly used as the local NFProfile 1.

[0049] In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, a network function NF performs retrieval according to a list of NF configuration information resource identifiers in a NF configuration information digest in a service discovery response sent by a network storage function NRF, comprising: the network function NF performs retrieval according to a list of NF configuration information resource identifiers in a NF configuration information digest in a service discovery response sent by a home domain network storage function H-NRF through a visited domain network storage function V-NRF.

[0050] It should be noted that the flow of the information acquisition method across the NRF in the related art is shown in FIG. 5. NF1 and NF2 discover service providers to the visiting domain NRF (V-NRF), the V-NRF forwards the service discovery request to the home domain NRF (H-NRF), the H-VRF returns the discovery response to the V-NRF, and the V-NRF forwards the response to the NF1 and NF2 (the V-NRF and the H-NRF can be directly connected or can pass through multiple levels of agents). Assuming that the discovery conditions of the secondary service discovery request are discovery condition 1 and discovery condition 2 respectively, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 1 on the NRF are NFProfile1 and NFProfile2, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 2 are NFProfile2 and NFProfile3. Each discovery response returned by the NRF carries the corresponding NFProfile. The same NFProfile in the response of the different query requests in the above process is repeatedly transmitted between the NRFs. The more NFs and the more query requests, the more times the NFProfile is repeatedly transmitted.

[0051] Compared with the information acquisition method across the NRF in the related art, the flow of the information acquisition method across the NRF in the embodiments of the present disclosure is shown in FIG. 6. After receiving the service discovery request of the NF, the V-NRF forwards the service discovery request to the H-NRF. After receiving the service discovery response from the H-NRF, the V-NRF forwards the service discovery response to the NF. When receiving the download NFProfile request from the NF, the V-NRF searches the local cache to find whether the corresponding NFProfile and the ETag in the download request match the ETag. If yes, the V-NRF sends the cached NFProfile to the NF. Otherwise, the V-NRF forwards the download request to the H-NRF. After receiving the downloaded NFProfile from the H-NRF, the V-NRF locally caches the downloaded NFProfile, the resource identifier and the ETag, and then sends the downloaded NFProfile to the NF.

[0052] It should be noted that, assuming that the NF1 and the NF2 discover service providers from the V-NRF, the discovery conditions of the secondary service discovery request are discovery condition 1 and discovery condition 2 respectively, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 1 on the H-NRF are NFProfile1 and NFProfile2, and the NFProfiles satisfying the discovery condition 2 are NFProfile2 and NFProfile3. The summary information (NFID, URI for obtaining / downloading the NFProfile, ETag of the NFProfile) of the corresponding NFProfile is carried in each discovery response returned by the NRF, and the specific NFProfile content is downloaded through the URI and the ETag in the summary information. The V-NRF caches the downloaded NFProfile, and directly uses the cached NFProfile to send the NF if the corresponding NFProfile exists in the local cache, and downloads the corresponding NFProfile from the H-NRF if the corresponding NFProfile is not cached locally.

[0053] According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, the same NFProfile is avoided from being repeatedly transmitted between the V-NRF and the H-NRF, and no matter how many discovery requests there are, the amount of NFProfile data that needs to be transmitted between the V-NRF and the H-NRF is at most the total amount of NFProfile data registered on the H-NRF; since the discovery response carries the summary information of the NFProfile list, the amount of data of the response message is extremely small, thereby greatly reducing the data transmission bandwidth required by the service discovery process between the V-NRF and the H-NRF.

[0054] In the present embodiment, an information acquisition method is provided, and FIG. 7 is a flowchart of an information sending method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. As shown in FIG. 7, the flowchart includes the following steps:

[0055] In step S702, the network storage function NRF sends a service discovery response to the network function NF, so that the NF searches according to the service discovery response and determines whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF; wherein the service discovery response includes the NF configuration information summary, and the NF configuration information summary includes the NF configuration information resource identifier.

[0056] In the exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure, the NRF acquires an NF configuration information acquisition request sent by the NF according to the NF configuration information resource identifier, wherein the NF does not have the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier; the NRF sends an NF configuration information acquisition response to the NF in response to the NF configuration information acquisition request; wherein the NF configuration information acquisition response includes the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier.

[0057] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, before the network storage function NRF sends the service discovery response to the network function NF, the NRF further comprises: receiving the service discovery request sent by the NF, wherein the service discovery request comprises a requester feature, and the requester feature is used to indicate that the NF supports receiving the NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF; and the NRF sends the service discovery response to the NF in response to the service discovery condition.

[0058] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, the NRF receives the service discovery request sent by the NF, comprising: the NRF receives the service discovery request sent by the NF, and confirms whether itself supports sending the NF configuration information digest to the NF according to the requester feature in the service discovery request; and in the case that the NRF confirms that itself supports sending the NF configuration information digest to the NF, a service discovery response comprising the NF configuration information digest is generated.

[0059] In the example embodiment of the present disclosure, the network storage function NRF sends the service discovery response to the network function NF, comprising: the home domain network storage function H-NRF sends the service discovery response to the network function NF through the visited domain network storage function V-NRF.

[0060] In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 6, after receiving the service discovery request from the V-NRF, the H-NRF matches in the locally registered NFProfile, and sends the NFProfile digest information meeting the discovery condition to the V-NRF in the response information; when receiving the NFProfile download request from the V-NRF, the H-NRF sends the NFProfile matching the request to the V-NRF.

[0061] From the above description of the embodiments, those skilled in the art can clearly understand that the method according to the above embodiments can be realized by means of software and the necessary general hardware platform, of course, it can also be realized by hardware, but in many cases, the former is a better embodiment. Based on such understanding, the technical solutions of the present disclosure can be embodied in the form of a software product, which is stored in a storage medium (such as ROM / RAM, magnetic disk, optical disk), and includes a plurality of instructions for making a terminal device (which can be a mobile phone, computer, server, or network device, etc.) execute the method described in various embodiments of the present disclosure.

[0062] In order to facilitate the understanding of the technical solutions provided by the present disclosure, the following will be described in detail in conjunction with the embodiments of specific scenarios.

[0063] Scenario Embodiment One

[0064] In this embodiment, the NF obtaining the NF configuration information comprises the following flow:

[0065] Step S801, the NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF according to the service requirement, and the request carries specific discovery conditions.

[0066] Step S802, the NF receives a service discovery response from the NRF.

[0067] Step S803, the NF determines whether the NFInstID corresponding to the NFProfile in the list of NFProfile summary information in the service discovery response has been cached locally by searching.

[0068] If the NFProfile ETag and the corresponding ETag in the summary information match, the locally cached NFProfile is used; if the NFProfile is not cached (corresponding to the scenario of not discovering the NFProfile before) or the ETag of the locally cached NFProfile and the ETag in the summary information do not match (corresponding to the scenario of the content of the NFProfile changing), the resource identifier corresponding to the NFProfile in the summary information (or the resource identifier and ETag information corresponding to the NFProfile in the summary information) is used to download the NFProfile from the NRF.

[0069] The NFProfile summary information includes: NFInstID, NFProfile resource identifier, and ETag corresponding to the NFProfile resource identifier.

[0070] The NFProfile resource identifier can be used to download the NFProfile, and in actual implementation, can be various URIs or other forms. The download URI and the NFInstID are combined, the URI contains the NFInstID information, and the URI can be used to download the content of the NFProfile corresponding to the NFInstID.

[0071] The NFProfile resource identifier corresponds to the ETag, the ETag value is generated based on the information related to the content of the NFProfile, when the content of the NFProfile corresponding to the same NFInstID changes, the corresponding ETag also changes, and the generation of the ETag value can refer to the existing rfc definition method, which can be a timestamp of the last change of the NFProfile or a hash string calculated based on the content of the NFProfile.

[0072] In the NFProfile summary information, NFInstID and NFProfile URI are mandatory, and NFInstID and NFProfile can be combined into one (such as resource identification containing NFInstID) in implementation and synthesis; the ETag corresponding to the entity of NFProfile URI is optional, and its main function is to solve the problem of downloading a new NFProfile from the NRF when the NFProfile is changed, and the NRF returns the corresponding NFProfile in the response.

[0073] In step S804, after receiving the downloaded NFProfile, the NF locally caches the NFProfile, records NFInstID, NFProfile, and the corresponding ETag.

[0074] In step S805, after obtaining all NFProfiles in the service discovery response corresponding to the summary information list, the NF uses the NFProfile to construct the final service discovery response and perform subsequent business processing.

[0075] Suppose that the discovery conditions of the three service discovery requests are discovery condition 1, discovery condition 2, and discovery condition 3, and the NFProfiles satisfying discovery condition 1 on the NRF are NFProfile1 and NFProfile2, the NFProfiles satisfying discovery condition 2 are NFProfile2 and NFProfile3, and the NFProfile satisfying discovery condition 3 is NFProfile1. In each service discovery response returned by the NRF, the summary information (NFID, URI for obtaining / downloading the NFProfile, and ETag of the NFProfile) corresponding to the NFProfile is included, and the specific NFProfile content is downloaded through the URI and Tag in the summary information.

[0076] In this way, repeated transmission of the same NFProfile between the NF and the NRF is avoided, so that the amount of NFProfile data to be transmitted does not exceed the total amount of NFProfile data in the entire network, regardless of the number of discovery requests. The NFProfile summary information is carried in the service discovery response, and the response message becomes extremely small, thereby greatly reducing the data transmission bandwidth required for the service discovery process between the NF and the NRF.

[0077] It should be noted that the NFProfile download method can be HTTP / HTTPs, FTP / FTPs, or other download methods, and the URI format and download method of the NFProfile in the service discovery result.

[0078] Through the embodiment, after the NF sends a service discovery request to the NRF, the received service discovery response does not directly carry the NFProfile, but the NFProfile is obtained from the NF after it is determined that the NFProfile corresponding to the service discovery request is not stored locally. If the required NFProfile is already stored locally, it can be directly used, thereby avoiding the NF repeatedly receiving the same NFProfile and increasing the data bearing pressure of the NF.

[0079] Scenario embodiment two

[0080] In the embodiment, the NRF provides the NF configuration information including the following flow:

[0081] In step S901, when the NRF receives the service discovery request, the NFProfile stored locally is matched according to the service discovery condition carried in the discovery request to determine the list of NFProfiles meeting the service discovery condition.

[0082] In step S902, the NRF carries the list of NFProfile abstract information meeting the service discovery condition in the service discovery response, and the abstract information includes the NFID corresponding to the NFProfile, the URI for obtaining / downloading the NFProfile (and the corresponding ETag of the NFProfile).

[0083] In step S903, when the NRF receives the download NFProfile request, the NFProfile corresponding to the NFProfile resource identifier carried in the download request is sent to the NF.

[0084] It should be noted that scenario embodiment one is the process of the NF side obtaining the NF configuration information, and scenario embodiment two is the process of the NRF side providing the NF configuration information to the NF when the NF side obtains the NF configuration information. Since the NF does not send the NFProfile to the NF after receiving the service discovery request each time, but sends the corresponding NFProfile to the NF after receiving the download NFProfile request sent by the NF, the pressure on network transmission of the service discovery process is reduced.

[0085] Scenario embodiment three

[0086] The scenario embodiment one and the scenario embodiment two are applicable to the NF and the NRF that explicitly support the embodiment of the present disclosure, that is, the NF receives no large amount of NF configuration information in the service discovery response sent by the NRF, in order to consider the compatibility and the interaction between the NF / NRF that does not support the embodiment, the original service discovery requester-features parameter can be used, the requester-features parameter is carried in the service discovery condition, the new extended flag bit is carried in the parameter value to indicate whether the embodiment of the present disclosure is supported, and the NFProfile digest information list is extended in the service discovery response to indicate whether the NFProfile digest information list is carried in the response.

[0087] As shown in FIG. 8, the compatibility of the original discovery interface is considered, and the method implemented on the NF side includes the following steps.

[0088] The NF carries the requester features in the service discovery request, and the new extended flag is carried in the parameter value of the requester features to indicate that the embodiment of the present disclosure is supported. For example, the 48-bit representation of the embodiment of the present disclosure is extended in the following manner (the meaning of the 47-bit flag has been defined in the current 3GPP 29.510 protocol).

[0089] The NF receives the service discovery response directly carrying the NFProfile (corresponding to the NRF that does not support the embodiment of the present disclosure), and then uses the service discovery response to continue the subsequent service processing.

[0090] The NF receives the service discovery response indicating that the NFProfile digest information list is carried (corresponding to the NRF that supports the embodiment of the present disclosure), and the subsequent processing is the same as described above.

[0091] In FIG. 8, the NF that supports the embodiment of the present disclosure indicates its capability characteristics in the discovery request. For the NRF (such as NRF1 in FIG. 8) that supports the embodiment of the present disclosure, the NFProfile digest information is carried in the response according to the requirement of the embodiment of the present disclosure, so that the bandwidth consumption is reduced and the performance is improved. For the NRF (such as NRF2 in FIG. 8) that does not support the embodiment of the present disclosure, the unknown characteristic indication is ignored, and the NFProfile is carried in the response according to the original manner. Through the above manner, the NF can interwork with the NRF that supports or does not support the embodiment of the present disclosure, the compatibility target is achieved, and the problem that the NF that supports the embodiment of the present disclosure cannot receive the NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF because the capability of the NF is not indicated to the NRF, that is, the service discovery response returned by the NRF to the NF directly carries the NFProfile, causing great pressure on the NF.

[0092] Scenario embodiment four

[0093] As shown in FIG. 9, the compatibility of the original discovery interface is considered, and the method implemented on the service provider NRF side includes the following steps.

[0094] When the NRF receives the service discovery request, the NRF matches the service discovery condition carried in the discovery request with the NFProfile registered locally, and if the discovery request indicates that the NF supports the embodiments of the present disclosure through the requester feature, the NRF carries a list of abstract information of the matched NFProfile in the discovery response; otherwise, the NRF carries the matched NFProfile in the discovery response in the original manner.

[0095] Other processing procedures are the same as those in the third scenario embodiment described above.

[0096] In FIG. 9, the NF supporting the embodiments of the present disclosure indicates its capability characteristics in the service discovery request, and the NRF carries the NFProfile abstract information in the service discovery response after receiving the service discovery request; when the NRF receives the discovery request without the indication of supporting the embodiments of the present disclosure (i.e., the NF does not support the embodiments of the present disclosure), the NRF carries the matched NFProfile in the service discovery response. In the above manner, the NRF can interwork with the NFs that support or do not support the embodiments of the present disclosure, achieve the compatibility target, and avoid the problem that the NRF supporting the embodiments of the present disclosure directly carries the NFProfile in the service discovery response due to the uncertainty of whether the NF can receive the service discovery response carrying the list of NF abstracts, thereby causing a large data transmission pressure.

[0097] It is assumed that a certain NF needs to discover 1000 times from the NRF per second, each discovery result has two service provider NFs, and the average size of the NFProfile is 100K. According to the existing method, the transmission bandwidth requirement between the NF and the NRF is 1000*2*100K = 200MBYTE / s. Even if signaling compression is used, according to a compression ratio of 50%, 100MBYTE / s is also required.

[0098] According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, the NFProfile does not need to be downloaded repeatedly after the initial download, and the NFID list (i.e., the corresponding FLAG of the NF) is carried in the service discovery response. The discovery response is calculated according to 512 bytes, and the bandwidth requirement is 1000*512 = 512KBYTE / s. The bandwidth consumption required for service discovery is reduced to 1 / 400 of the original, and the larger the single NFProfile is, the more obvious the improvement effect is.

[0099] The embodiments of the present disclosure also provide a computer readable storage medium, which stores a computer program. The computer program is configured to execute the steps in any of the method embodiments described above when running.

[0100] In an example embodiment, the computer readable storage medium described above can include, but is not limited to, a U disk, a Read-Only Memory (ROM), a Random Access Memory (RAM), a mobile hard disk, a magnetic disk or an optical disk, and various media that can store computer programs.

[0101] According to still another embodiment of the present disclosure, a computer program product is also provided, including a computer program, wherein the computer program is executed by a processor to implement the steps in any of the method embodiments described above.

[0102] Embodiments of the present disclosure also provide an electronic device including a memory and a processor, the memory storing a computer program, and the processor being configured to run the computer program to perform the steps in any of the method embodiments described above.

[0103] In an example embodiment, the electronic device described above can further include a transmission device connected to the processor and an input / output device connected to the processor.

[0104] The specific examples in the present embodiment can refer to the examples described in the above embodiments and example implementations, and the present embodiment will not be described here again.

[0105] Obviously, those skilled in the art should understand that the modules or steps of the present disclosure described above can be realized by general computing devices, which can be concentrated on a single computing device or distributed on a network composed of multiple computing devices, and they can be realized by program codes executable by computing devices, so that they can be stored in storage devices and executed by computing devices, and in some cases, the steps shown or described can be executed in different order, or they can be manufactured into individual integrated circuit modules, or multiple modules or steps among them can be manufactured into a single integrated circuit module. Thus, the present disclosure is not limited to any specific combination of hardware and software.

[0106] The above only describes preferred embodiments of the present disclosure and is not intended to limit the present disclosure. For those skilled in the art, the present disclosure can have various modifications and changes. Any modification, equivalent replacement, improvement, etc. within the principles of the present disclosure shall be included in the protection scope of the present disclosure.

Claims

1. A method for information acquisition, comprising: retrieving, by a network function (NF), according to a service discovery response sent by a network repository function (NRF), wherein the service discovery response comprises an NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest comprises an NF configuration information resource identifier; determining whether the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF, and using the NF configuration information in the NF in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, The method further comprises: in the case that the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF, sending, by the NF, an NF configuration information acquisition request to the NRF according to the NF configuration information resource identifier; receiving, by the NF, an NF configuration information acquisition response sent by the NRF in response to the NF configuration information acquisition request; wherein the NF configuration information acquisition response comprises the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein, Before the retrieving, by the network function (NF), according to the service discovery response sent by the network repository function (NRF), the method further comprises: sending, by the NF, a service discovery request to the NRF, wherein the service discovery request comprises a requester feature, and the requester feature is used to indicate that the NF supports receiving the NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF; receiving, by the NF, the service discovery response sent by the NRF in response to the service discovery request.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein, The retrieving, by the network function (NF), according to the NF configuration information resource identifier list in the NF configuration information digest in the service discovery response sent by the network repository function (NRF), comprises: retrieving, by a network function (NF), according to an NF configuration information resource identifier list in an NF configuration information digest in a service discovery response sent by a home domain network repository function (H-NRF) through a visited domain network repository function (V-NRF).

5. The method of claim 2, wherein, The NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF, comprising: the NF configuration information does not exist in the NF; or, an entity tag of the NF configuration information does not match an entity tag corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier; wherein the NF configuration information digest further comprises the entity tag corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein, The method further comprises: saving the NF configuration information resource identifier, the NF configuration information and the entity tag. 7.A method for information sending, comprising: sending, by a network repository function (NRF), a service discovery response to a network function (NF), so that the NF retrieves according to the service discovery response and determines whether NF configuration information corresponding to an NF configuration information resource identifier exists in the NF; wherein the service discovery response comprises an NF configuration information digest, and the NF configuration information digest comprises an NF configuration information resource identifier.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein, The method further comprises: The NRF obtains an NF configuration information obtaining request sent by the NF according to the NF configuration information resource identifier, wherein the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier does not exist in the NF; The NRF sends an NF configuration information obtaining response to the NF in response to the NF configuration information obtaining request; The NF configuration information obtaining response comprises the NF configuration information corresponding to the NF configuration information resource identifier.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein, Before the network repository function (NRF) sends a service discovery response to a network function (NF), the method further comprises: The NRF receives a service discovery request sent by the NF, wherein the service discovery request comprises a requester feature, and the requester feature is used to indicate that the NF supports receiving an NF configuration information digest sent by the NRF; The NRF sends a service discovery response to the NF in response to a service discovery condition.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein, The NRF receives a service discovery request sent by the NF, comprising: The NRF receives the service discovery request sent by the NF, and confirms whether the NRF supports sending the NF configuration information digest to the NF according to the requester feature in the service discovery request; In a case where the NRF confirms that the NRF supports sending the NF configuration information digest to the NF, the service discovery response comprising the NF configuration information digest is generated.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein, The network repository function (NRF) sends a service discovery response to a network function (NF), comprising: The home domain network repository function (H-NRF) sends a service discovery response to a network function (NF) through a visited domain network repository function (V-NRF).

12. A computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a computer program, wherein, The computer program is executed by a processor to implement the steps of the method in any one of claims 1 to 6 or 7 to 11. 13.An electronic device comprising a memory, a processor, and a computer program stored on the memory and executable on the processor, wherein the processor implements the steps of the method in any one of claims 1 to 6 or 7 to 11 when executing the computer program.

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