Abstract
Network slicing is a primary Fifth-Generation (5G)mobile networking technology to create virtualised and soft-warised logical networks for various vertical businesses withdiverging Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Meanwhile,there is a clear gap in providing network slicing capabilitiesin 5G multi-tenant networks to enable guaranteed QoS in termsof well-defined network metrics for the multiple tenants sharingthe same physical infrastructure. This paper designs and imple-ments novel software data path architecture that enables suchnetwork slicing with assured QoS in 5G multi-tenant networks.Highly flexible and customisable definition of network slicingis also allowed to be aligned with different existing definitionson demand and at run time. The proposed architecture hasbeen prototyped based on the popular Open Virtual Switch(OVS), and empirically validated to demonstrate the deploymentand management of network slices with the above capabilities.Intensive scalability results are provided where more than 8,192network slices are achieved simultaneously with warranted QoSthrough performance isolation in terms of bandwidth and delayin a real softwarised 5G multi-tenant infrastructure at speeds ofup to 10 Gbps
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2212-2225 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management |
| Volume | 17 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| Early online date | 8 Oct 2020 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 9 Dec 2020 |
Keywords
- 5G
- network slicing
- network management
- network control
