On evaluating different trends for virtualized and SDN-ready mobile network

Abstract

-Software Defined Networking (SDN) is one of the key enablers for evolving mobile network architecture towards 5G. SDN involves the separation of control and data plane functions, which leads in the context of 5G, to consider the separation of the control and data plane functions of the different gateways of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), namely Serving and Packet data Gateways (S and P-GW). Indeed, the envisioned solutions propose to separate the S/P-GW into two entities: the S/P-GW-C, which integrates the control plane functions; and the S/P-GW-U that handles the User Equipment (UE) data plane traffic. There are two major approaches to create and update user plane forwarding rules for such a partition: (i) considering an SDN controller for the S/P-GW-C (SDNEPC) or (ii) using a direct specific interface to control the S/P-GW-U (enhancedEPC). In this paper, we evaluate, using a testbed, those two visions against the classical virtual EPC (vEPC), where all the elements of the EPC are virtualized. Besides evaluating the capacity of the vEPC to manage and scale to UE requests, we compare the performances of the solutions in terms of the time needed to create the user data plane. The obtained results allow drawing very interesting remarks, which may help to dimension the vEPC's components as well as to improve the S/P-GW-U management procedure.

Optimization of Network Services Embedding Costs over Public and Private Clouds

“…For the sake of the example we decide to focus on the deployment of one specific VNF representing the Mobility Management Entity (MME). We extract the callIn and callOut activities from the dataset (which corresponds to actions that would trigger the MME) and convert this activity into a number of MMEs that must be provisioned to handle it, based on the work presented in [16]: one MME of 2 CPU and 2 GB of RAM to handle 40 requests. As a result we obtain the required number of MMEs by time slot of 10 minutes for November 2013 (represented in Figure 2), December 2013 and the 1 st of January 2014.…”

Improving Traffic Forecasting for 5G Core Network Scalability: A Machine Learning Approach

“…To illustrate the need of an efficient scalability mechanism for the AMF, we conducted a set of experimentations using OpenAirInterface (OAI) solution 3 . OAI is a set of open source software tools that allows rapid prototyping of 5G mobile network; including the Radio Access Network and the Core Network functions.…”

“…VNF dimensioning is one of the main challenges of running core network elements in a virtualized environment, in terms of resources, which highly impacts performances [3]. Indeed, the virtualized core network elements should perform similarly to their hardware version; supporting the same Quality of Service (QoS): supported number of users, provided data rate, etc.…”

An Efficient and Lightweight Load Forecasting for Proactive Scaling in 5G Mobile Networks

“…Even if the technique we are proposing can be applied to different components of the NGC, our proposal, for the moment, targets especially the Access and Mobility function (AMF) as it is the single point of access of the core network. In fact, the control traffic in 5G is expected to increase significantly as the number of connected devices is increasing [2].…”

“…In the new 5G architecture, the Access and Mobility Function (AMF), the new generation component of the Mobility Management Entity (MME), is likely to be congested since it is the single point of access for the control plane in the core network. Indeed, as shown in [2], the overhead causes an increase in latency for the Network Access Stratum (NAS) procedures, up to some requests' rejects when certain load thresholds are exceeded.…”