Brocade is providing a path to deliver on a mobile network vision by simplifying the infrastructure and making it possible for operators to begin the transformation to 5G today.
“There is a desire among mobile operators to introduce virtual mobile core technology to support new services and business models at a low cost-of-production,” said Gabriel Brown, senior analyst for Heavy Reading. “However, because it involves a challenging set of applications that are inherently risky to experiment with, they are seeking to identify lead use-cases, such as MVNOs, enterprise VPN and IoT services that can deliver a fast return without adversely impacting the mass-market consumer EPC. Over time, as operators gain experience with the technology, we expect virtualisation to become the mainstream operating model. The future 5G core will be ‘cloud-native’ from inception.”
Brocade Virtual Core for Mobile solution
The Brocade Virtual Core for Mobile (VCM) is the first-of-its-kind, fully virtualised Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) suite of products that supports network slicing with independent localisation and scaling of the control and user planes—ahead of the targeted standardisation date established by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Specifically designed for virtual environments, the Brocade VCM transforms mobile networks by eliminating expensive and proprietary hardware devices, long upgrade cycles and over-provisioning. The Brocade solution can be deployed in days instead of months.
Depending on specific network and deployment requirements, the same software package can serve as a complete vEPC or a combination of mobility management entity (MME), home subscriber server (HSS), serving gateway (S-GW) and packet data network gateway (P-GW). The overall deployment model of the Brocade VCM can be used to create network slices that are optimized for IoT traffic profiles to enable a mobile packet core-as-a-service offering for hosting MVNO services or to support non-traditional, innovative services from mobile operators. The solution interoperates with all major radio and 3G/LTE core network equipment through standard interfaces and bridges 5G capabilities to older networks.
SmartSky Networks, a provider of high-speed in-flight data communications, has selected the Brocade vEPC to connect its new SmartSky 4G air-to-ground broadband network to more than 250 cell sites that will be strategically placed across the US “Brocade is the only company that offers an end-to-end virtual EPC solution built from the ground up. Other vendors take a short cut by repackaging old solutions,” said David Claassen, vice president of Network and Service Architecture at SmartSky.
“With support for separation and independent scaling of control and user planes, the Brocade vEPC solution is enabling us to provide seamless data service across the continent while eliminating redundant functionalities and internode dependencies. As a result, we expect to see dramatically lower total cost of ownership and increased performance compared to physical node-based packet cores.”
Brocade Mobile Edge Computing Capabilities
Mobile edge computing provides the infrastructure to deliver applications, network services and content from the edge of the mobile network. Based on the industry-leading Brocade vRouter, Brocade offers mobile edge virtual infrastructure capabilities that integrate routing, IPsec termination and network firewall functions with the virtualisation infrastructure in the host operating system.
This approach enables MNOs to capture new revenue by extending the cloud to the edge of the mobile network. These capabilities also allow for consistent introduction of virtual network functions in closer proximity to end users as well as a platform for hosting third-party applications, especially vertical industry applications associated with IoT. To provide a complete solution, these capabilities integrate with the Brocade SDN Controller and the Brocade Virtual Packet Broker.
Brocade will be demonstrating its solutions and technologies at Mobile World Congress, Feb. 22-25, 2016 in the Brocade booth located in Hall 2 of the Fira, 2G29.
