On Auto-scaling and Load Balancing for User-plane Gateways in a Softwarized 5G Network

• In the fifth generation (SG) mobile networks, the number of user-plane gateways has increased, and, in contrast to previous generations they can be deployed in a decentralized way and auto-scaled independently from their control-plane functions. Moreover, the performance of the user-plane gateways can be boosted with the adoption of advanced acceleration techniques such as Vector Packet Processing (VPP). However, the increased number of user-plane gateways has also made load balancing a necessity, something we find has so far received little attention. Moreover, the introduction of VPP poses a challenge to the design of the auto-scaling of user- plane gateways. In this paper, we address these two challenges by proposing a novel performance indicator for making better auto-scaling decisions, and by proposing three new dynamic load- balancing algorithms for the user plane of a VPP-based, softwarized SG network. The novel performance indicator is estimated based on the VPP vector rate and is used as a threshold for the auto-scaling process. The dynamic load-balancing algorithms take into account the number of bearers allocated for each user-plane gateway and their VPP vector rate. We validate and evaluate our proposed solution in a SG testbed. Our experiment results show that the scaling helps to reduce the packet latency for the user-plane traffic, and that our proposed load-balancing algorithms can give a better distribution of traffic load as compared to traditional static algorithms.

Ämnesord

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

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

Nyckelord

SG Core

Load Balancing

User Plane

Vector Packet Processing

VPP

Container

Auto-Scaling

Computer Science

Datavetenskap

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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