Vodafone and Huawei Complete the Second Phase of Cloud-based BNG Validation
[Shenzhen, China, September 3, 2018] Vodafone and Huawei recently completed the second phase test of the cloud-based Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) solution in a fixed broadband scenario. This proof of concept was deployed in Vodafone Portugal's premises according to Vodafone Group guidelines, demonstrating the capability of Huawei's cloud-based BNG solution to evolve existing networks and lay a solid foundation for cloud-based BNG projects. The BNG solution used the Control & User Plane Separation (CUPS) architecture, which offers improved capabilities for scaling, resilience and efficient IP address use.
The phase I testing was performed in December 2017 and focused on 52 functional tests of the solution, while the phase II testing, completed in May 2018, focused on the Vodafone Portugal service architecture including internet access and VPN services. Both phase I and II have been completed successfully.
The scope of this proof of concept included access, authentication and accounting for home broadband users in various scenarios. It also included performance, reliability and security testing of cloud-based BNG systems. Vodafone and Huawei verified functionality of the cloud-based BNG solution using virtual network functions (VNFs) as the control plane and also using physical network functions (PNFs) as the user plane. The cloud-based BNG solution decouples the control and user planes of traditional BNG architectures. The control plane integrates the user management functions of multiple BNGs and shifts their resources to the cloud. In addition to automated service provisioning and network O&M, the solution deployment in the cloud also enables global resource sharing, elastic capacity scaling, flexible architecture adjustment and network capability exposure.
João Nascimento, CTO at Vodafone Portugal, said: "Cloud-based BNG is an effective way to improve network resource utilization and shorten time to market for new services. During this round of testing, we were able to verify the feasibility of evolving existing network devices to the cloud."
Jeffrey Gao, President of Huawei's Router & Carrier Ethernet Product line, stated: "Cloud-based BNG is an innovative implementation of Huawei's Intent-Driven Network in the context of network service cloudification. The Intent-Driven Network decouples traditional networks into an elastic, reliable bearer layer and an agile service layer. This creates a simple architecture enabling the rapid and flexible adjustment of resources. This solution helps operators improve the efficiency of their network operations, reduce O&M costs and smoothly evolve network services to the cloud."
Huawei and many leading operators have engaged in close cooperation to innovate cloud-based BNG solution, which has achieved staged achievements. In the future, Huawei will rely on its strong innovation strength and continuous R&D investment to help operators enable metro network cloudification transformation.
The fifth Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF 2018) will be held from September 10th to September 11th, 2018, in Geneva, Switzerland. UBBF this year has chosen ‘Intent-Driven Network: Maximize Your Business Value’ as the theme. By focusing on four hot topics ‘Premium Home Broadband, Reshaping User Experience’, ‘Cloud-and-Network Synergy, Enabling New Growth with B2B’, ‘Constructing 5G- and Cloud-based Simplified Networks’, and ‘Toward Optical Networking 2.0’, this event presents an opportunity to share business innovations and practices of Intent-Driven Network. For more information, please visit: www.huawei.com/en/press-events/events/ubbf-2018.
