Demonstrating the optimal placement of virtualized cellular network functions in case of large crowd events

This demonstration shows how Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) [1] can be used by a network provider to dynamically provide required mobile core network functions in case of a large ”Mega” event like a soccer game or a music festival. Economical reasons may not justify the installation or continuous maintenance of expensive dedicated hardware which is necessary to cope with the high load generated by visitors of such an event only in some parts of the network and only for a short time. The Evolved Packet Core (EPC) in nowadays’ mobile LTE networks consists of several, specialized components: first pure control-plane elements like Mobility Management Entities (MME) which can be installed on virtualized IT hardware in the cloud already today and second gateways which are a mixture of controland user-plane. This demonstration focuses on the Serving Gateway (SGW) which switches GTP (GPRS Tunneling Protocol) tunnels in a LTE network. In such an LTE network with ≈ 10 mio. subscribers about 10 SGW devices are in use. On the way to a successful deployment of NFV-based EPC components, several challenges have to be met. This includes the deployment, interconnection and configuration of LTE components in the cloud. As such, entities that instantiate and orchestrate the virtualized functions are required. The presented demonstration shows a scenario of NFVbased dynamic capacity addition to a LTE mobile network, indicated in Figure 1. By incorporating the new demands added by the increased access capacity, virtualized SGW instances are launched at the optimal locations in the network, by re-programming SDN enabled network elements (NE+). Figure 1(a) shows the normal configuration of the LTE network including the statically located SGW devices as well as