A Hybrid Sdn Solution For Mobile Networks

The adoption of Software Defined Networking (SDN) has encountered resistance mainly due to its disruptive nature for current deployed networks. In order to allow a smoother transition of SDN into production networks and take advantage of SDN?s characteristics, a mix of SDN with traditional networks, or Hybrid SDN Networks, can be deployed, paving the path to fully SDN-capable networks. The introduction of SDN allows for new and more efficient network optimization methods. This paper presents a Hybrid SDN Mobile Core Network for 4G and Non-Standalone 5G, which integrates support for Wi-Fi access, traffic offloading capabilities from 3GPP to non-3GPP Access and dynamic non-3GPP network slice instantiation, while still being flexible enough to be used in Standalone 5G. Results showed that the virtualization of the Mobile Core Network and the introduction of SDN in its architecture (making it a hybrid SDN solution) presented no significant impact in latency, attachment time and throughput in the mobile network when compared with a traditional deployment, coupling it with all the flexibility that SDN provides. Furthermore, benefits of traffic offloading for both the end user and the network operator are also shown.