TAPI pipeline

TAPI pipeline
Name	TAPI pipeline
Type	Telecommunications/application programming interface pipeline
Status	Operational concepts
Developer	International standards organizations
First issued	2010s

TAPI pipeline The TAPI pipeline is a network-oriented application programming interface pipeline designed to mediate between transport network control planes and service-layer applications. It provides standardized interfaces and message flows to enable interoperability among vendors such as Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, and institutions like Internet Engineering Task Force, European Telecommunications Standards Institute, International Telecommunication Union, and Open Networking Foundation. The pipeline concept underpins integration efforts across projects including ONOS, OpenDaylight, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and enterprise platforms like VMware and Microsoft Azure.

Overview

The pipeline abstracts transport resources and exposes capabilities through RESTful, gRPC, and YANG-modeled APIs to support orchestration systems such as OpenStack, Cloudify, Ansible, Terraform, and service managers in operators like Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, Verizon Communications, NTT, and Orange S.A.. Designed in response to requirements discussed at forums including MPLS Forum, IETF MEF Working Group, IEEE Communications Society, and programs led by GSMA, the pipeline aligns with reference architectures developed by TM Forum and 3GPP. Early adopters experimented in trials with carriers partnering with vendors during initiatives comparable to Project Loon and research consortia like GÉANT.

Design and Components

The architecture separates southbound controllers (e.g., Open vSwitch integrations, SONiC devices) from northbound service portals (e.g., Cisco ACI, Juniper Contrail) using mediation layers inspired by Software-defined networking prototypes from Google and Facebook data center designs. Key components include: resource models based on YANG, serialization via JSON, protocol bindings using gRPC, policy engines akin to those in Palo Alto Networks and Checkpoint Software Technologies, and monitoring hooks interoperable with Prometheus, Grafana, and Nagios. Security components borrow concepts from OAuth 2.0, TLS, X.509, and identity systems like Okta and LDAP deployments at research labs such as CERN.

Operation and Workflow

Typical workflows orchestrate service requests from OSS/BSS platforms at operators like Vodafone and Telefónica, translated by orchestrators including ONAP and ETSI NFV MANO into pipeline calls that program transport endpoints such as Mellanox Technologies switches, Ciena optical gear, or ADVA Optical Networking transponders. The pipeline supports lifecycle events—provisioning, scaling, healing, and decommissioning—coordinated with monitoring stacks from Splunk and ELK Stack and analytics frameworks used by IBM and SAP. Interactions reference standards from IETF, alignment notes from MEF, and compliance checks similar to those required by European Commission and national regulators.

Applications and Use Cases

Operators deploy the pipeline for wavelength provisioning in metropolitan networks served by companies like BT Group, for segment routing orchestration in backbone networks operated by Level 3 Communications and Telia Company, and to automate VPN and Ethernet Virtual Circuit services for enterprise customers of Sprint Corporation and CenturyLink. Cloud providers implement the pipeline for tenant isolation in multi-tenant fabrics at Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure, while research networks use it to manage high-performance computing interconnects at facilities such as Argonne National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Other use cases include integration with edge computing initiatives led by Intel and ARM Holdings and IoT backhaul scaling in trials by Siemens and Schneider Electric.

Performance and Scalability

Scalability strategies mirror practices from hyperscale operators like Amazon.com and Facebook, Inc. using sharding, caching layers inspired by Memcached and Redis, and horizontal scaling orchestrated via Kubernetes and Mesos. Performance testing methodologies reference benchmarks used by SPEC and traffic scenarios similar to those in RFC 2544 and RFC 6349. Latency-sensitive deployments leverage hardware acceleration from Xilinx and Intel FPGA and NIC offloads by Broadcom and Intel to achieve deterministic performance for carriers such as Telefonica and SK Telecom.

Security and Privacy Considerations

Security models in the pipeline adopt threat mitigations similar to practices at NIST and governance recommendations from ENISA, employing mutual authentication with X.509 certificates, role-based access controls paralleling RBAC frameworks in Kubernetes, encrypted transport via TLS, and audit trails integrated with SIEM systems from Splunk and IBM Security. Privacy compliance draws on frameworks established by the European Data Protection Supervisor and regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation and sector guidance from FCC in the United States for lawful intercept coordination with agencies like Europol where applicable.

Adoption and Standards Integration

Adoption is driven by vendor implementations from Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Ericsson, and open-source contributions from ONOS, OpenDaylight, and OpenStack. Standards alignment includes documentation and informational models referenced in IETF drafts, MEF Lifecycle Service Orchestration work, YANG modules maintained with contributions from IETF NETMOD, and interoperability events hosted by Interop and operator alliances such as TIP (Telecom Infra Project). Certification and conformance testing follow patterns used by ETSI Plugtests and vendor interoperability programs at trade shows like Mobile World Congress and Interop Las Vegas.

Category:Telecommunications standards