Understanding M-CORD: Re-architecting Mobile Infrastructure for 5G Services
The diagram below (Figure 3) showcases how an M-CORD infrastructure can transform the delivery of services at the mobile edge of the network.
In a traditional mobile architecture, services are processed at the centralized core. This leads to overload on the backhaul, transport and core EPC, inefficient use of network resources, deteriorated Quality of Experience for the end users, and over-provisioning to handle peak traffic periods. By contrast, in an M-CORD infrastructure, services are processed at the mobile edge. This enables network efficiency and the ability to provide new revenue-generating services that are customized to end users.
Figure 3: Mobile Edge Services
(click image to expand)
The M-CORD Ecosystem
The M-CORD project has a strong collaboration and contributions from ON.Lab, service provider partners and collaborators to build an end-to-end mobile platform for 5G.
AT&T, SK Telecom and Verizon are the leading service providers behind M-CORD and have established key guidelines for the architecture. These efforts have included analyzing the real-life business and technical challenges associated with current mobile infrastructures and developing target use cases for a new M-CORD infrastructure.
ON.Lab technical has facilitated the definition of a complete M-CORD software stack, the hardware infrastructure, and the development/integration lifecycles for ONOS and XOS-based cloud orchestration with respective M-CORD mobile elements.
ONOS is at the heart of M-CORD as the open source fabric and service orchestration element. It is the open source SDN networking operating system for service provider networks architected for high performance, scale and availability. The ONOS ecosystem comprises ON.Lab and organizations that are funding and contributing to the ONOS initiative. Open Networking Lab (ON.Lab) is a non-profit organization founded by SDN inventors and leaders from Stanford University and UC Berkeley to foster an open source community for developing tools and platforms to realize the full potential of SDN.
As part of the Open Networking Summit (ONS) 2016 M-CORD demonstration, the collaborating vendors included Radisys, Cavium, NetCracker, AirHop Communications and Cobham Wireless. Radisys is supporting interoperability and integration testing of multi-vendor elements in the LTE networks as well as enhancements to PGW software to support control and data plane separation, integration of PGWs with ONOS, and adaptation of PGW service composition for the XOS environment. Radisys has contributed its mobile expertise and FlowEngine SDN platform as a key data/forwarding plane component into the M-CORD blueprint. FlowEngine software enables the disaggregation of the LTE EPC data plane components from the rest of the network, allowing for independent scaling and reduced CapEx and OpEx. Radisys also leverages DCEngine, a carrier-grade rack solution modeled on the Open Compute Project (OCP), to enable end-to-end system integration lifecycle for M-CORD – to be ready for field deployment.
