Abstract
Cellular network control procedures (e.g., mobility, idle-Active transition to conserve energy) directly influence data plane behavior, impacting user-experienced delay. Recognizing this control-data plane interdependence, L25GC re-Architects the 5G Core (5GC) network, and its processing, to reduce latency of control plane operations and their impact on the data plane. Exploiting shared memory, L25GC eliminates message serialization and HTTP processing overheads, while being 3GPP-standards compliant. We improve data plane processing by factoring the functions to avoid control-data plane interference, and using scalable, flow-level packet classifiers for forwarding-rule lookups. Utilizing buffers at the 5GC, L25GC implements paging, and an intelligent handover scheme avoiding 3GPP's hairpin routing, and data loss caused by limited buffering at 5G base stations, reduces delay and unnecessary message processing. L25GC's integrated failure resiliency transparently recovers from failures of 5GC software network functions and hardware much faster than 3GPP's reattach recovery procedure. L25GC is built based on free5GC, an open-source kernel-based 5GC implementation. L25GC reduces event completion time by ∼50% for several control plane events and improves data packet latency (due to improved control plane communication) by ∼2×, during paging and handover events, compared to free5GC. L25GC's design is general, although current implementation supports a limited number of user sessions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference |
| Pages | 143-157 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450394208 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 22 2022 |
| Event | 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022 - Amsterdam, Netherlands Duration: Aug 22 2022 → Aug 26 2022 |
Publication series
| Name | SIGCOMM 2022 - Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2022 Conference |
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Conference
| Conference | 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication, SIGCOMM 2022 |
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| Country/Territory | Netherlands |
| City | Amsterdam |
| Period | 8/22/22 → 8/26/22 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2022 Owner/Author.
Funding
We thank the US NSF for their generous support through grant CRI-1823270. This research was also sponsored in part by the OUSD(R&E)/RT&L and was accomplished under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-20-2-0267. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the ARL and OUSD(R&E)/RT&L or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright notation herein. This work was also supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan under grant numbers MOST 111-2218-E-A49-023, 110-2224-E-A49-002, and 108-2221-E-009-042-MY3. We thank our shepherd, Prof. Barath Raghavan, and the reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Science Foundation Arctic Social Science Program | CRI-1823270, W911NF-20-2-0267 |
| Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan | MOST 111-2218-E-A49-023, 110-2224-E-A49-002, 108-2221-E-009-042-MY3 |
Keywords
- 5G cellular networks
- cellular core
- low latency 5G core
- NFV
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Software
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Hardware and Architecture