Virtual-Mobile-Core Placement for Metro Network

TL;DR

This paper investigates optimal placement strategies for virtual mobile core functions in metro networks, demonstrating significant resource savings while considering interactions in data and control planes with latency constraints.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed mathematical model for vEPC placement that accounts for data/control plane interactions and latency, a novel approach in this context.

Findings

Optimal vEPC placement reduces network resource consumption.

Not all vEPC functions require distribution for efficiency.

The model considers both data and control plane interactions with latency constraints.

Abstract

Traditional highly-centralized mobile core networks (e.g., Evolved Packet Core (EPC)) need to be constantly upgraded both in their network functions and backhaul links, to meet increasing traffic demands. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is being investigated as a potential cost-effective solution for this upgrade. A virtual mobile core (here, virtual EPC, vEPC) provides deployment flexibility and scalability while reducing costs, network-resource consumption and application delay. Moreover, a distributed deployment of vEPC is essential for emerging paradigms like Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). In this work, we show that significant reduction in networkresource consumption can be achieved as a result of optimal placement of vEPC functions in metro area. Further, we show that not all vEPC functions need to be distributed. In our study, for the first time, we account for vEPC interactions in both data and control planes (Non-Access Stratum (NAS) signaling procedure Service Chains (SCs) with application latency requirements) using a detailed mathematical model.