Operating a next generation media urban testbed

The adoption of 5G promises low latency and high throughput, greater adaptability of highly distributed compute and storage infrastructure, as well as configuration and management of a wide range of network services. This paradigm shift in network operations and usage results in a tighter integration of the infrastructure with the platform that allows instantiating the media services. The setup of the infrastructure in use for an urban testbed requires operators to carefully plan to acquire equipment with the expected technical characteristics, as well as to meaningfully configure, integrate with the platform on top and setup tools to monitor it. In this paper we share our experience of deploying an infrastructure on the street that supports the FLAME platform. Specifically, we introduce key points to consider when first defining the infrastructure site and equipment, when configuring, operating and monitoring it; and when experiments are to be tested.