Configuration information is provided to the management plane via the northbound API to update the desired state. The management plane sits above the control plane and provides a single point of entry for configuration and status information, such as metrics and alerts.
The power of centralized managementĬonsider the figure below of Magma’s SDN-based system. All of these capabilities come when we build a centralized control plane.
#Controlplane vs dataplane software#
In the same way, if mobile and wireless networks are to be managed efficiently at scale, we need centralized management for configuration and monitoring, and central APIs to integrate with other software systems. SD-WAN needs a way to manage a network as a whole rather than provisioning individual boxes, branches, and tunnels.Network virtualization (as pioneered by Nicira) needs a central API so that networks can be provisioned and managed by other software without knowing where all the network components are located.Traffic engineering (as in Google’s B4) needs a central view of traffic demands to achieve optimal path placement.SDN was successful not only because it provides a clear point of separation between control and data planes, but also because it introduces a central point of control. One of the main objectives behind Magma is to deliver a mobile core that can be managed cost-effectively and with high scalability. Magma takes an SDN approach to building a mobile packet core, and it’s worth taking a step back to understand why. However, there are some important differences in how control planes are implemented in typical 3GPP systems versus how SDN systems implement them.
As with SDN, CUPS (Control and User Plane Separation) was intended to allow different devices to host each plane. SS7, for example, forms part of the control plane of the telephone network and is largely independent of the user plane.
Separation in the telecom networkĬontrol and user plane separation is a fundamental part of the telecom network as well. While the original architecture separated control and data conceptually, SDN enabled separation into different physical devices, with protocols (e.g., OpenFlow) allowing communication between these planes. SDN has been the most successful effort to formalize the separation of the internet’s data and control planes. Meanwhile, the control plane has continued to evolve largely independently, with numerous new routing protocols added over time. From the earliest days of the internet, the data plane was defined independent of the control plane and (aside from IPv6) has barely changed since. The idea that the data plane and control plane can and should be separated is almost as old as networking. To see why, we need to look at the relationship between control and data planes. This approach turns out to be a significant change to the way control planes have traditionally been built for telecommunications. One of the established technologies that we chose to achieve this goal was a control plane based on SDN (software-defined networking). From the beginning of the Magma project, it was clear to those of us on the Technical Advisory Committee that to easily and efficiently connect new user communities, we needed to reduce the complexity of managing and operating a mobile core network.
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