SDN/NFV Solutions Enable Digital Transformation

Mobile operators around the world have launched industry-oriented private 5G networks, which can be flexibly customised for enterprises of different sizes across most sectors, supporting their digital transformation initiatives. A survey by Omdia found 5G private network deployment is driven mainly by enterprises looking to streamline their operations and rising demand for security, data management and privacy protection. The research company argued 5G private networks can be an important opportunity for operators and their partners to break into new segments by enabling enterprises to implement production automation. With traditional telecoms service revenue declining in China, industrial services powered by 5G networks have become the main growth driver for operators. By end-September 2022, more than 10,000 virtual private 5G networks were deployed, with installations in some 200 mines, 1,700 smart factories and 250 grid projects. Three years after the launch of 5G service for consumers in China, the private network market continues to have huge potential. Rising uptake GSA estimated 889 organisations worldwide deployed private LTE and 5G networks in 70 countries and territories, with 140 networks turned on in the first half of 2022. Manufacturing is the industry deploying the most private networks, followed by education, power utilities and mining. Juniper Research forecast annual spending on global private network hardware and services to reach $12 billion by 2023, up from an estimated $5.5 billion in 2021. To take advantage of that growth, ZTE launched its Fit-it-All private 5G core to meet the diversified requirements of industry, enabling operators to provide private 5G network as a service and build a new 5G digital infrastructure with ultra-low costs, physical isolation, security and reliability. The private-network-as-a-service business model delivers one-stop order-to-service, covering consulting, planning, integration and delivery, which Chen Xinyu, president of Cloud and Core Network Products at ZTE, said helps lower the supply and demand barriers of private 5G services. The service supports 4G, NB-IoT and 5G converged access, and provides special campus functions such as private network voice, messaging, high-precision positioning, deterministic network features and standard industrial applications. The introduction of full automation simplifies operation and maintenance (O&M) with a self-service portal for enterprises. Rising network requirements Private networks are not unique to 5G, with dedicated enterprise networks existing in the LTE era. The emergence of the industrial internet, intelligent manufacturing and demand from a wide range of vertical industries, however, has significantly boosted the stress put on mobile networks. The next-generation networks now feature a range of new capabilities: full cloudification, micro services, NFV, multi-access edge computing (MEC) and slicing. The 5G core control plane also is separated from the user plane, allowing user plane functions (UPFs) to be deployed in a lightweight and distributed manner, and even the 5G core can be deployed in the campus, Chen explained. Together with MECs, he noted the core network offloads and isolates data at various layers, such as for an enterprise or campus, supporting the local application ecosystem. Chen stressed private network construction needs to be closely combined with the service requirements of the client, taking into account the characteristics of each industry, and include equipment costs, network maintenance, security and reliability. He outlined three ways a 5G private network can be built: ·         Virtual private network. Operators develop a shared public network to provide services for an industry through network slices. ·         Hybrid private network jointly constructed by operators and enterprises. Operators lease dedicated base stations and UPF/multi-access edge platform offloaded to enterprises. The core network control plane is deployed in the operator’s network, ensuring not only network service quality, but also the security requirements for application data. ·         Independent private network. To meet the requirements of its own service development or industry rules and regulations, some large enterprises take the lead in building private industry networks. End-to-end 5G networks are independently built by enterprises or by operators. The shift In the early stage of 5G private network applications, it is recommended operators deploy a fully convergent common core for unified access of 4G, 5G NSA and 5G SA, and use a virtual private network to multiplex public network resources and provide private network services through network slices. As 5G private networks becomes more mainstream, operators, vendors, cloud service providers and system integrators will make innovations in network deployment and service modes. Based on the deployment experience of private networks, ZTE can provide dozens of templates that map specific service requirements of the industry to private network design solutions, giving operators the tools to provide the appropriate type of private network. The process starts with the operator working with an enterprise to determine the exact requirements, covering applications, devices, suppliers as well as any licences. The operator then deploys an integrated 5G private network, with O&M support. An innovative service model gives clients a network hosting option, with fees charged for supporting network devices. This mode allows enterprises to avoid the high cost and technical difficulties of deploying a standard 5G private network. Such a model is well suited for live broadcasts or sports events, with customers signing up for 5G services and the service provider paying fees based on duration, bandwidth and latency. Bright outlook ABI Research predicts spending on global private 5G network will exceed that of public 5G networks by 2036. The growth will be driven by new applications applied across all industries running on 5G networks. Chen explained ZTE aims to play an increasingly important role in enabling digital transformation of industries in China and across the world, adding its Fit-it-All private 5G core will continue to evolve. “Technological innovations will be combined with commercial implementations to promote the rapid transition from the test stage to the application at scale.” He added ZTE will work with more industry partners over the next one to three years to combine product innovations with business model innovations to develop and launch more scenario-based private network products and services.

Operators across the world have invested to fully virtualise their core networks using the cloud to support true 5G services and turned to consumer off-the-shelf (COTS) servers to keep equipment costs down. The resulting decoupling of commercial servers, cloud platforms and applications, however, increases the complexity of system integration. “It also is undeniable an open system requires some compromises in the overall performance of the system and higher requirements for software and hardware configuration,” said Wang Quan, VP of ZTE Corporation. The CPUs of COTS servers are not designed for parallel computing and network forwarding, creating a gap between traditional telco-grade hardware and resulting in low resource efficiency, Wang argued. This means operators face total cost of ownership pressures, such as high investment in equipment and high power consumption, as well as issues in how to improve service experience. When commercial network interface cards (NICs) are used in 5G networks, especially for data forwarding, the forwarding efficiency and quality are not ideal. The industry currently generally adopts the Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology for passthrough, but it is still difficult to stably achieve the deterministic network requirements required by 5G standards, he noted. With the application of 5G technology and mobile edge across all industries, demand for network openness and media processing capabilities has increased significantly. It becomes necessary to introduce heterogeneous infrastructure to increase computing power and reduce the overall amount of equipment used. System security and robustness also need to be comprehensively enhanced. In an environment with multiple network planes, multiple vendors and complex interfaces, the number of vulnerability points increases, and the diagnosis scheme becomes more complicated, he stated. Boosting efficiency To improve resource efficiency and the service experience, ZTE recommends using professional modules to runs professional systems. For example, allow dedicated network chips to handle data forwarding and graphic processing units (GPUs) to do image processing. “Deeply coordinate the flexibility of software and the efficiency of dedicated hardware, and precisely schedule heterogeneous computing power according to service characteristics to maximise the value per bit,” Wang said. He suggests adopting a class of devices with dedicated hardware accelerators or programmable processors, called function accelerator cards (FACs) to speed up functions, such as networking, security and storage. Different types of FACs are introduced into the system for different requirements, such as smart NICs for data forwarding acceleration, data processing units (DPUs) and GPUs. FACs have broad applicability in hyper-scale communication networks, enterprise data centres and edge locations, enabling more cost-effective data centre environments while improving performance. By offloading high overhead functions running in the host to the FAC, it provides stronger dedicated processing capabilities than the CPU, meeting the more stringent requirements of 5G services on latency, throughput and network determinism. After adopting FACs, more CPU resources are available for service processing to improve the performance of a single server. From the perspective of the data centre or the entire network, given the same network load, using FACs the overall demand for server resources is reduced, and the cost of software and hardware is lowered. Turbo-charged ZTE introduced its Turbo Core making use of FACs along with COTS servers to offload high overhead resources, freeing up CPU cores of the server to host more workloads. “It helps to build an efficient 5G core network to provide an enhanced service experience, giving telecoms operators an opportunity to create new value,” Wang noted. He compared its Turbo Core product to a car’s turbo engine: an FAC is a turbo-charger for a network. Part of the workload originally processed in the CPU is transferred to the FAC, such as a smart NIC for processing user plane packet forwarding, and a time-promised communication (TPC) card for high-precision time synchronisation and deterministic forwarding. “This allows professional modules do what they are good at. The turbo-charged core network has higher resource efficiency and lower power consumption, providing users with an enhanced service experience, helping operators expand their service boundaries and boost profits,” Wang explained. ZTE has continued to evolve its Turbo Core with four key upgrades: Turbo Forwarding is implemented by inserting a smart NIC into the server of the 5G user plane functions (UPF) to efficiently forward user plane packets. Compared with the common NIC-based UPFs, the forwarding performance is improved to 200 per cent and the watts per bit is reduced by 41 per cent. Turbo Cloudification is powered by the NEO Cloud Card used in COTS servers to realise virtual-layer overhead offloading and achieve rapid cloudification of networks. Hypervisor is offloaded from CPU to the Cloud Card, freeing up nearly 20 per cent of CPU cores per server. When the application running on the host is attacked, the cloud management platform residing in the cloud card and physically isolated from the host application will not be attacked, making the entire system more secure. ZTE launched the industry’s first TPC card, with nanosecond-level time synchronsation and jitter, helping to provide deterministic network for industry use cases, such as differential protection of power grid and industrial control. The company also introduced visual accelerator card using a GPU to accelerate media processing, allowing operators to improve the consumer service experience. ZTE’s Turbo Core combines software flexibility with hardware efficiency to maximum computing power for 5G network and edge computing, enabling operators to build efficient core networks and achieve the maximum value per bit, Wang concluded.