On Load Balancing for a Virtual and Distributed MME in the 5G Core

• In this paper, we aim at tackling the scalability problem of the Mobility Management Entity (MME), which plays a crucial role of handling control plane traffic in the current 4G Evolved Packet Core as well as the next generation mobile core, 5G. One of the solutions to this problem is to virtualize the MME by applying Network Function Virtualization principles and then deploy it as a cluster of multiple virtual MME instances (vMMEs) with a front-end load balancer. Although several designs have been proposed, most of them assume the use of simple algorithms such as random and round-robin to balance the incoming traffic without any performance assessment. To this end, we implemented a weighted round robin algorithm which takes into account the heterogeneity of resources such as the capacity of vMMEs. We compare this algorithm with a random and a round-robin algorithm under two different system settings. Experimental results suggest that carefully selected load balancing algorithms can significantly reduce the control plane latency as compared to simple random or round-robin schemes.

Ämnesord

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Telekommunikation (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Telecommunications (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

5G

MME

Load Balancing

Scalability

Open5GCore

Computer Science

Datavetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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