Sprint charts journey to NFV Openstack Cloud

Sprint announced several milestones for its nationwide Network Function Virtualization OpenStack cloud deployment.

In a blog post, Günther Ottendorfer, Sprint’s Chief Operating Officer, Technology, described a multi-pronged approach to address both the operational and the technological components of NFV, including the deployment of a common infrastructure in more than 30 data centers around the network. This deployment, started two years ago, coincides with a “cap and grow” approach to commercializing NFV. While building the virtualized infrastructure, Sprint is simultaneously capping the expansion of legacy core network hardware.

Ottendorfer asserts that Sprint is committed to deploying open-source software on standards-based hardware to provide a more flexible, innovative, and cost-effective network that can support the 5G requirements for super-high data speeds, ultra-low latency, automation, and mass connectivity required for IOT, Ultra HD video, AR-VR, and Edge computing.  Sprint’s new virtual Core replaces stand-alone, bare metal platforms with a single Network Function Virtualization infrastructure (NFVI) on which all of the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) and IP Multimedia Sub-System (IMS) platforms virtually reside as Virtualized Network Functions (VNFs).

http://newsroom.sprint.com/the-sprint-nfv-journey.htm

• In May 2017, Sprint (announced the availability of C3PO (Clean CUPS Core for Packet Optimization – CUPS: Control & User Plane Separation), an open source NFV/SDN-based mobile core reference solution designed to significantly improve performance of the network core by providing a clean, streamlined, high-performance data plane for the packet core.

  C3PO uses standard high-volume server hardware and streamlines mobile core architecture by collapsing multiple components into as few network nodes as possible. In lab tests conducted on Dell EMC DSS 9000 rack scale infrastructure with compute sleds running dual socket 14 core Intel Xeon processors E5-2680 v4, Sprint achieved 1.63 Mpps (million packets per second) throughput. This C3PO configuration demonstrated high efficiency by utilizing as few as seven processor cores – with one packet processing core and six processor cores supporting other tasks such as Control Plane, statistics, load balancer, operating system and other operations, for 500,000 subscribers using a typical Sprint traffic model. A similar C3PO configuration achieved 2.2 Mpps with a similar traffic model for 50,000 subscribers.

  Sprint’s C3PO is the result of four years of collaboration between Intel Labs and Sprint on a joint research effort to develop optimal DPDK-based data plane nodes and disaggregated evolved packet core architectures, as well as a platform for further 5G core infrastructure research.

  “C3PO makes traditional mobility architectures and software designs more streamlined, efficient and scalable,” said Dr. Ron Marquardt, Vice President of Technology at Sprint. “By combining Sprint’s real-world operator knowledge with Intel’s research on optimizing software for standard high-volume servers, we’ve developed a single solution that provides seven functions previously located within separate physical elements.”