Noisy Neighbor Influence in the Data Plane of Beyond 5G Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates how shared hardware in beyond 5G networks causes noisy neighbor effects that degrade data plane performance, even for prioritized slices, impacting latency and SLA adherence.

Contribution

It introduces a kernel-level instrumentation method for the User Plane Function to measure noisy neighbor impacts on data plane processing in B5G networks.

Findings

Noisy neighbors significantly affect latency metrics.

Prioritized slices are not immune to performance degradation.

Kernel-level instrumentation effectively assesses data plane contention.

Abstract

Virtualization and containerization enhance the modularity and scalability of mobile network architectures, facilitating customized user services and improving management and orchestration across the network. In the context of the 5th Generation Mobile Network (5G), these advancements contribute to reduced Operational Expenditures (OPEX) and enable sliced-based networking for novel applications and services. However, as beyond fifth-generation (B5G) networks aim to address the remaining challenges regarding network slice isolation, the shared underlying hardware can lead to data plane contention among slices, resulting in the Noisy Neighbor (NN) effect, which may compromise network slicing and Service-Level Agreements (SLAs). We propose a kernel-level instrumentation of the User Plane Function (UPF) to assess the impact of noisy slices on data plane processing. Our findings reveal that even prioritized slices are susceptible to degradation induced by NN, with observable effects on latency metrics pertinent to user experience.