On the path to 5G
The telecommunications industry is undergoing an evolution in preparation for the commercialization of 5G. The fifth generation of mobile communication networks promise to deliver faster speeds, shorter delays and increased connectivity. To make good on these promises, several network operators are looking to leverage microservices in developing a 5G architecture. But what exactly are microservices and how can they help enable 5G networks?
What are microservices?
As a free-floating buzzword, the term “microservices” is used in a variety of ways. Generally speaking, the idea behind the technology is to break apart a monolithic application into a suite of loosely coupled services. Each service performs a particular business function and can communicate with other sets of services through well-defined interfaces, which are usually stateless.
Major websites like Amazon, eBay and Netflix have migrated from a monolithic architecture to a microservices architecture for a variety of reasons. Microservices are easier to update compared to monolithic architecture since they are divided into smaller components, which are compatible with each other. This also makes the architecture more flexible. Additionally, since each microservice takes on a particular business function, development teams can spend more time focused on a specific service.
Microservice-based 5G core network
Microservices are expected to play a role as a core enabling technology in 5G networking environments. With the technology, the complexity of the 5G ecosystem can be broken down into individual components, which communicate with each other through implementation-independent interfaces. Additionally, microservices are reasonably easy to distribute within a 5G network on account of their lightweight nature, and do not consume a significant amount of memory or processing power.
In addition to delivering billions of services, a microservice-based 5G core network can make it easier for carriers to update services. Each microservice can be updated as needed and in isolation. Since microservices are isolated from each other, updating one microservice does not impact the other microservices, with scaling being much more granular.
Conclusion
Microservice-based 5G core networks aren’t a far and distant reality either. In February 2018, for example, China Mobile and Huawei reportedly demonstrated the world’s first microservice-based 5G core network constructed on top of service-based architecture (SBA). According to Huawei, the demonstration unveiled, “a service-based interface that complies with HTTP2.0 protocol, and microservice lifecycle management. In addition, based on containers, it implements dynamic loading of third-party apps and service switching. It also shows operation-oriented slice instantiation and management.” Microservice-based 5G core networks are expected to continue to move from an abstract concept to concrete reality as 5G networks’ commercial deployment approaches. To learn more about microservices in general, click here.
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