A Virtual Network PaaS for 3GPP 4G and Beyond Core Network Services

TL;DR

This paper presents a Virtual Network PaaS architecture leveraging NFV to provision 3GPP 4G and beyond core network services, demonstrated through a prototype for HSS as-a-Service.

Contribution

It introduces a novel VNPaaS architecture tailored for 4G and beyond networks, including a VNF-based HSS decomposition and a prototype implementation.

Findings

Prototype implementation demonstrates feasibility.

Early measurements indicate promising performance.

Architecture supports flexible, distributed network service provisioning.

Abstract

Cloud computing and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are emerging as key technologies to overcome the challenges facing 4G and beyond mobile systems. Over the last few years, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) has gained momentum and has become more widely adopted throughout IT enterprises. It simplifies the applications provisioning and accelerates time-to-market while lowering costs. Telco can leverage the same model to provision the 4G and beyond core network services using NFV technology. However, many challenges have to be addressed, mainly due to the specificities of network services. This paper proposes an architecture for a Virtual Network Platform-as-a-Service (VNPaaS) to provision 3GPP 4G and beyond core network services in a distributed environment. As an illustrative use case, the proposed architecture is employed to provision the 3GPP Home Subscriber Server (HSS) as-a-Service (HSSaaS). The HSSaaS is built from Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs) resulting from a novel decomposition of HSS. A prototype is implemented and early measurements are made.