nsi-orchestrator

The NSI orchestrator, based on the Workflow Orchestrator framework, maintains the lifecycle of network topologies, switching services, Service Termination Points (STP), Service Demarcation Points (SDP), and the Multi Domain Point-to-Point (MDP2P) services across a NSI infrastructure, using the NSI DDS Proxy as source of information and the NSI Aggregator Proxy as its Network Resource Manager (NRM).

Project ANA-GRAM

This software is being developed by the Advanced North-Atlantic Consortium, a cooperation between National Education and Research Networks (NRENs) and research partners to provide network connectivity for research and education across the North-Atlantic, as part of the ANA-GRAM project.

The goal of the ANA-GRAM project is to federate the ANA trans-Atlantic links through Network Service Interface (NSI)-based automation. This will enable the automated provisioning of L2 circuits spanning different domains between research parties on other sides of the Atlantic. The ANA-GRAM project is spearheaded by the ANA Platform & Requirements Working Group, under guidance of the ANA Engineering and ANA Planning Groups.

Architecture

The diagram below shows the ANA-GRAM automation stack and how the NSI Orchestrator fits into the broader architecture.

Color legend:

Color	Meaning
Purple	Existing software deployed in every participating network
Green	Existing NSI infrastructure software
Orange	Software being developed as part of ANA-GRAM
Yellow	Future software to be developed as part of ANA-GRAM

Components:

• ANA Frontend — Future management portal that will provide a comprehensive overview of all configured services on the ANA infrastructure, including real-time operational status information. It will communicate with the NSI Orchestrator as its backend.
• NSI Orchestrator (this repository) — Central orchestration layer that manages the lifecycle of topologies, switching services, STPs, SDPs, and multi-domain connections. It uses the DDS Proxy for topology visibility and the NSI Aggregator Proxy as its Network Resource Manager.
• DDS Proxy — Fetches NML topology documents from the upstream DDS, parses them, and exposes the data as a JSON REST API. The NSI Orchestrator uses this to discover and synchronize topologies, switching services, STPs, and SDPs.
• NSI Aggregator Proxy — Translates simple REST/JSON calls into NSI Connection Service v2 SOAP messages toward the NSI Aggregator, abstracting NSI protocol complexity behind a linear state machine. The NSI Orchestrator uses this as its Network Resource Manager to provision and manage multi-domain connections.
• DDS — The NSI Document Distribution Service, a distributed registry where networks publish and discover NML topology documents and NSA descriptions.
• PCE — The NSI Path Computation Element, which computes end-to-end paths across multiple network domains using topology information from the DDS.
• NSI Aggregator (Safnari) — An NSI Connection Service v2.1 Aggregator that coordinates connection requests across multiple provider domains, using the PCE for path computation.
• SuPA — The SURF ultimate Provider Agent, an NSI Provider Agent that manages circuit reservation, creation, and removal within a single network domain. Uses gRPC instead of SOAP, and is always deployed together with PolyNSI, a bidirectional SOAP-to-gRPC translation proxy.

Products and Product Blocks

classDiagram
    namespace MDP2P {
        class VirtualCircuitBlock {
            +description
            +saps
            +service_speed
            +sdp_constraints
            +state
        }
        class ServiceAttachmentPointBlock {
            +label
            +stp
        }
        class SdpConstraintBlock {
            +constraint_type
            +sdp
        }
    }
    namespace STP {
        class ServiceTerminationPointBlock {
            +stp_id
            +stp_name
            +capacity
            +label_group
            +switching_service
        }
    }
    namespace SDP {
        class ServiceDemarcationPointBlock {
            +sdp_name
            +stps
        }
    }
    namespace SwitchingService {
        class SwitchingServiceBlock {
            +switching_service_id
            +switching_service_name
            +topology
        }
    }
    namespace Topology {
        class TopologyBlock {
            +topology_id
            +topology_name
        }
    }

    VirtualCircuitBlock "1" -- "2" ServiceAttachmentPointBlock
    ServiceAttachmentPointBlock "n" -- "1" ServiceTerminationPointBlock
    ServiceTerminationPointBlock "n" -- "1" SwitchingServiceBlock
    SwitchingServiceBlock "n" -- "1" TopologyBlock
    VirtualCircuitBlock "n"  -- "n" SdpConstraintBlock
    SdpConstraintBlock "1"  -- "1" ServiceDemarcationPointBlock
    ServiceDemarcationPointBlock "1"  -- "2" ServiceTerminationPointBlock

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