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This paper takes an exploratory look on control plane signaling in a mobile cellular core network. In contrast to most contributions in this field, our focus does not lie on the wireless or user-oriented parts of the network, but on signaling in the core network. In an investigation of core network data we take a look at statistics related to GTP t...
Citations
... The minimum period length can even depend on the underlying communication technology. GPRS for example can not support arbitrarily short messaging periods for a large number of devices without modification due to the imposed signaling interactions and limited available radio resources [24]. In a typical scenario the shortest period is estimated to be 5 min [25]. ...
As the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to gain traction in telecommunication networks, a very large number of devices are expected to be connected and used in the near future. In order to appropriately plan and dimension the network, as well as the back-end cloud systems and the resulting signaling load, traffic models are employed. These models are designed to accurately capture and predict the properties of IoT traffic in a concise manner. To achieve this, Poisson process approximations, based on the Palm–Khintchine theorem, have often been used in the past. Due to the scale (and the difference in scales in various IoT networks) of the modeled systems, the fidelity of this approximation is crucial, as, in practice, it is very challenging to accurately measure or simulate large-scale IoT deployments. The main goal of this paper is to understand the level of accuracy of the Poisson approximation model. To this end, we first survey both common IoT network properties and network scales as well as traffic types. Second, we explain and discuss the Palm–Khintiche theorem, how it is applied to the problem, and which inaccuracies can occur when using it. Based on this, we derive guidelines as to when a Poisson process can be assumed for aggregated periodic IoT traffic. Finally, we evaluate our approach in the context of an IoT cloud scaler use case.
... An incomplete list of relevant specifications for the involved nodes, protocols, and signaling procedures can be found in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications at [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] . Previous publications, e.g., [1,15,16] , have already looked at some of the problematic aspects of the strong dependence on signaling, namely the load and overload of core components induced by specific, seemingly benign, application actions and transmission patterns. The authors of [17,18] verify a similar interaction known as a "signaling storm" on the radio interface, which strongly influences the radio network's load but also equally the user device's energy consumption and experienced subjective quality. ...
The rise in popularity of TCP-based video streaming in recent years is unbroken. These streaming services not just operate on wired access lines but more and more specifically target users of mobile networks as well. Yet it still remains difficult to evaluate the performance of such streaming approaches in mobile networks. This is especially critical as mobile networks exhibit much more potential for undesirable interactions between the network protocol layers and control plane properties on one side and the protocols and strategies of the application layer on the other side, ultimately resulting in scenarios with bad QoE for video streaming.
... Signaling load is one of the most problematic aspects in existing mobile core networks [1,2]. On one hand, the number of mobile devices supported by the network (which is the final responsible for their reachability as they move) is ever increasing. ...
... & Signaling and data plane simplification: as described in [2] (and additional references on it) the conventional tunneling protocols as GTP impose a severe load and burden to existing core control nodes as well as data plane. As an incremental step regarding the signaling offloading described above, new ways of handling the mobility of the terminals can be studied for simplifying the tracking of the users. ...
A common characteristic for all of the uses in 5G wireless networks is the ubiquity and the almost permanent connection to the mobile network to get access to external applications. This really imposes a challenge in the signaling procedures provided to get track of the user and to guarantee session continuity. The mobility management mechanisms will play a central role in the 5G networks because of the always-on connectivity demand. This article presents a software defined approach to mobility management procedures addressing the present challenges and proposing some future directions for a more efficient service provision and a better usage of the network resources. The feasibility of such a Software-Defined Mobility Management architecture is assessed in a specific test-bed.
... e.g. [1]) on video streaming user traffic has also not yet been closely investigated. ...
... Those two can have a large influence on any user plane transmission, not just the characteristics of the radio transmission as would be immediately obvious. Work previously conducted in [1], [5] and [6] reveals such an influence of signaling and tunneling on the network's load. Therefore, to better evaluate reliable streaming, first a survey on existing mobile network simulation frameworks was conducted. ...
... This leaves Chapter 3 free to exclusively discuss the actual control plane modeling and evaluations conducted in an existing mobile network. Both chapters also use material previously published in [Met+12], [Met+14], and [MSH14] and extend on it. ...
... This work is a continuation of our previous evaluations conducted in [5], [6]. Besides these, there is to our knowledge no other directly preceding literature to this paper's novel models. ...
Multiple outages in major mobile networks have been reported in the recent past. In fixed and datacenter networks such capacity problems are solved by scaling out, i.e. purchasing additional hardware. In mobile networks this is not as easily possible as network components are usually sold as sealed middleboxes. With the advances in server performance and SDN it has been suggested to virtualize these boxes. This also opens up opportunities to dimension according to current load and save energy by switching off parts of the infrastructure. Such suggestions immediately raise questions on the cost of virtualization. To answer this, we introduce models for both a traditional as well as a virtualized GGSN. In addition, we provide distributions for the load experienced at the GGSN based on network measurements. With this at hand, we study the influence of different dimensioning parameters on important performance metrics, with special consideration for the impact of provisioning new instances for the virtual GGSN.
In this paper we present a platform installed inside a French mobile operator's network. This platform is able to capture around 20Gb/s per network probe in the operator's Points Of Presence (POPs), capable of extracting useful information at wire speed, and storing it for offline analysis. We detail how efficient network probes can be built using off-the-shelf hardware and software. We describe preliminary experiments which demonstrate that our system can easily extract and process the signaling traffic generated by the connections of a large number of mobile devices (on the order of 50 million signaling messages per hour). This platform is designed to exploit the user traffic as well as the signaling flows and thus to produce performance indicators of Quality of Service (QoS), detecting suspicious traffic or even studying mobility. Moreover, since mobile operators are gradually switching their networks toward full IP, the data mobile network will become the place where everything transits, voice and data.
