Ericsson and SK Telecom are teaming up to develop network slicing for the 5G core, a project which would ensconce an element of software-defined networking (SDN) inside next-generation mobile networks.
“5G” doesn’t fully exist yet. Ericsson has been active in defining potential standards for 5G networks and is collaborating with carriers including Softbank in Japan and Turkcell in Turkey. Ericsson is already working with SK Telecom as well; the two are planning to collaborate on a 5G test bed later this year.
The 5G project announced today, which the companies expect will produce results by year’s end, involves running networking-as-a-service on Ericsson’s virtual evolved packet core.
One big motivator for that is the Internet of Things (IoT), which is going to push carriers to up their games when it comes to security. Transient connections — think anything connected to a moving car, for instance — will need performance guarantees as well. Temporary network slices could help both cases.
The 5G slicing project is intended to run on the Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System (HDS) 8000, a large-scale compute-and-storage rack that was launched at Mobile World Congress in March. At the time, Ericsson played up the HDS 8000’s potential as a network functions virtualization (NFV) vehicle, noting that it would be steered toward supporting the Open Platform for NFV (OPNFV) framework.
The companies also plan to use Ericsson’s Regional Cloud Lab, a distributed operation with four sites in Asia which collectively have been working on technologies including SDN and NFV.
