research-article

SoftCell: scalable and flexible cellular core network architecture

Authors:

Laurent Vanbever,

Jennifer RexfordAuthors Info & Claims

CoNEXT '13: Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies

Pages 163 - 174

https://doi.org/10.1145/2535372.2535377

Published: 09 December 2013 Publication History

Abstract

Cellular core networks suffer from inflexible and expensive equipment, as well as from complex control-plane protocols. To address these challenges, we present SoftCell, a scalable architecture that supports fine-grained policies for mobile devices in cellular core networks, using commodity switches and servers. SoftCell enables operators to realize high-level service policies that direct traffic through sequences of middleboxes based on subscriber attributes and applications. To minimize the size of the forwarding tables, SoftCell aggregates traffic along multiple dimensions---the service policy, the base station, and the mobile device---at different switches in the network. Since most traffic originates from mobile devices, SoftCell performs fine-grained packet classification at the access switches, next to the base stations, where software switches can easily handle the state and bandwidth requirements. SoftCell guarantees that packets belonging to the same connection traverse the same sequence of middleboxes in both directions, even in the presence of mobility. We demonstrate that SoftCell improves the scalability and flexibility of cellular core networks by analyzing real LTE workloads, performing micro-benchmarks on our prototype controller as well as large-scale simulations.

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Cited By

Feng YChen SXi WWang SZhao JGong W(2024)Heartbeating with LTE Networks for Ambient BackscatterIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2023.3290298(1-12)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2023.3290298
Shao JLiang J(2023)Joint Optimization of Memory Sharing and Communication Distance for Virtual Machine Instantiation in Cloudlet NetworksElectronics10.3390/electronics1220420512:20(4205)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12204205
Sathvik Reddy Thogaru Harshitha Parupalli Avanthika Makkena (2023)SoftCell: Scalable and Flexible Cellular Core Network ArchitectureInternational Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology10.32628/CSEIT2390637(255-260)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.32628/CSEIT2390637
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

SoftCell: scalable and flexible cellular core network architecture
1. Networks
  1. Network services
    1. Network management
  2. Network types
    1. Packet-switching networks

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CoNEXT '13: Proceedings of the ninth ACM conference on Emerging networking experiments and technologies

December 2013

454 pages

ISBN:9781450321013

DOI:10.1145/2535372

General Chairs:
Kevin Almeroth
UC Santa Barbara, USA
,
Laurent Mathy
Université de Liège, Belgium
,
Program Chairs:
Konstantina Papagiannaki
Telefonica Research, Spain
,
Vishal Misra
Columbia University

Copyright © 2013 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 09 December 2013

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CoNEXT '13: Conference on emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies

December 9 - 12, 2013

California, Santa Barbara, USA

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CoNEXT '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 44 of 226 submissions, 19%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 198 of 789 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

Feng YChen SXi WWang SZhao JGong W(2024)Heartbeating with LTE Networks for Ambient BackscatterIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2023.3290298(1-12)Online publication date: 2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2023.3290298
Shao JLiang J(2023)Joint Optimization of Memory Sharing and Communication Distance for Virtual Machine Instantiation in Cloudlet NetworksElectronics10.3390/electronics1220420512:20(4205)Online publication date: 10-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics12204205
Sathvik Reddy Thogaru Harshitha Parupalli Avanthika Makkena (2023)SoftCell: Scalable and Flexible Cellular Core Network ArchitectureInternational Journal of Scientific Research in Computer Science, Engineering and Information Technology10.32628/CSEIT2390637(255-260)Online publication date: 2-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.32628/CSEIT2390637
Hasan SPadmanabhan ADavie BRexford JKozat UGatewood HSanadhya SYurchenko NAl-Khasib TBatalla OBremner MLee AMakeev EMoeller SRodriguez AShelar PSubraveti KKandi SXoconostle AKumar Ramakrishnan PTian X(2023)Building Flexible, Low-Cost Wireless Access Networks with MagmaGetMobile: Mobile Computing and Communications10.1145/3631588.363159927:3(40-47)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3631588.3631599
Papa AKutsevol PMehmeti FKellerer W(2023)Delphi: Computing the Maximum Achievable Throughput in SD-RAN EnvironmentsIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2023.327688020:4(4846-4860)Online publication date: Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNSM.2023.3276880
Ahmad MAli STariq MJafri SAbbas AZaidi SAwan MUzmi ZQazi Z(2023)Neutrino: A Fast and Consistent Edge-Based Cellular Control PlaneIEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking10.1109/TNET.2022.320249631:2(754-769)Online publication date: Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/TNET.2022.3202496
Jing SWang H(2023)Design and Implementation of a 5G Network Architecture Based on Software Defined Network2023 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Electronic Technology, Communication and Information (ICETCI)10.1109/ICETCI57876.2023.10176812(1444-1449)Online publication date: 26-May-2023
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Jinapriya SChandrashekhar B(2023)Adoption of Network Function Virtualization Technology in EducationExpert Clouds and Applications10.1007/978-981-99-1745-7_2(19-31)Online publication date: 2-Jul-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1745-7_2
Singh KJha IRoy A(2023)Wireless SDN: A Perspective for Handover ManagementSmart Trends in Computing and Communications10.1007/978-981-99-0838-7_1(1-10)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0838-7_1
Chang WChen YWang P(2022)Hotspot Mitigation for Mobile Edge ComputingIEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing10.1109/TSUSC.2018.28784387:2(313-323)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2022
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