Validation and Extension of Kubernetes-based Network Functions (KNFs) in OSM for Cloud Native (CN) applications in 5G and beyond

Abstract

Adopting Cloud Native (CN) into 5G telecommunications systems has been identified as agood candidate for reducing the cost, improving system agility and role out of 5G services.This is well reflected on the recent 3GPP standardization activities. Taking the cue from 3GPP,European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has published NFV referenced ar-chitecture to adapt for the CN and enhancement to NFV framework to include Zero-Touch,Containers, Load Balancers and more as part of the reference architecture. The aim of this workis to validate container technology in ETSI-hosted MANO platform, Open Source Mano (OSM)in a CN environment. In order to validate the performance while assessing the limits, advan-tages and drawbacks, KNFs behaviour is benchmarked using a OSM-standalone K8s? testbedcompared with an OSM-OpenStack, where VNFs are deployed. The results obtained in thiswork can help to further encourage users and operators the use of KNFs and get the most out ofcontainerization in NFV.