Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Release

10.0

Modified: 2018-01-28

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

Juniper Networks, Inc.
1133 Innovation Way
Sunnyvale, California 94089
USA
408-745-2000
www.juniper.net
Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Juniper, and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. and/or its affiliates in
the United States and other countries. All other trademarks may be property of their respective owners.

Juniper Networks assumes no responsibility for any inaccuracies in this document. Juniper Networks reserves the right to change, modify,
transfer, or otherwise revise this publication without notice.

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Release 10.0
Copyright © 2018 Juniper Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

The information in this document is current as of the date on the title page.

YEAR 2000 NOTICE

Juniper Networks hardware and software products are Year 2000 compliant. Junos OS has no known time-related limitations through the
year 2038. However, the NTP application is known to have some difficulty in the year 2036.

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

The Juniper Networks product that is the subject of this technical documentation consists of (or is intended for use with) Juniper Networks
software. Use of such software is subject to the terms and conditions of the End User License Agreement (“EULA”) posted at
http://www.juniper.net/support/eula/. By downloading, installing or using such software, you agree to the terms and conditions of that
EULA.

ii Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
About This Solution Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Understanding the vEPC Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Market Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Solution Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Solution Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Solution Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. iii

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

iv Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

CHAPTER 1

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution

Guide

• About This Solution Guide on page 5

• Understanding the vEPC Solution on page 5

About This Solution Guide

This guide describes the mobile solutions guide for Telco Clouds called Contrail Cloud
Release 10.0. Contrail Cloud Release 10.0 is a Telco cloud solution designed for Tier-2
and Tier-3 Telco and Cable MSOs. There are over 800 mobile operators that are trying
to cope with the growing demands of today’s mobile users. The goal of this solution is
to provide the fulfillment and support of the entire Telco Cloud solution to enable these
mobile operators. Contrail Cloud Release 10.0 addresses the manageability, operations,
reliability, performance, and cost of a Telco Cloud with a focus on specific customer
use-cases. This guide describes the solution components and their interactions specifically
around common mobile use-cases.

The primary audience for this solution guide are Tier-2 and Tier-3 mobile operators.

Understanding the vEPC Solution

• Market Overview on page 5

• Solution Overview on page 7
• Solution Implementation on page 8
• Solution Benefits on page 15

Market Overview
The unprecedented growth in the number of users, devices, websites, applications, and
the need for increased bandwidth to run mobile networks have made Telco operators
look for efficient and cost-effective solutions. As a result, they have narrowed down to
a set of well-defined use-cases around Mobility with MVNO, IoT and Small/Macro Cells.
There is also a growing demand in the SD-WAN and Enterprise connectivity services.
However, in spite of market growth, Tier 1 Telco vendors are unable to deliver solutions
on time, because of the complexities of integration, development, and operational

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 5

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

expertise. And, Tier-2 Telcos are struggling with immature integrated stacks from today’s
service integrators.

Telco Cloud for Mobility has many layers of complexity and needs an integrated solution.
One of the main applications that is used to handle mobility demands is Mobility’s Enhance
Packet Core (vEPC). Figure 1 on page 6 shows the EPC functional blocks and the
corresponding technical requirements needed to build and operate a Telco cloud solution
running a vEPC, which includes GI-LAN, Line of business (LoB) IoT platform, MVNO(s),
etc.

Figure 1: Telco Cloud Requirements for Mobile

Figure 2 on page 7 shows what a sample EPC would require along with its Telco cloud
requirements and also how the LoBs are aligned to EPC functional blocks to define a set
of the technical requirements that are needed to build and operate these functional
blocks .

6 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

 Chapter 1: Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 2: EPC Functional Blocks and Telco Cloud Requirements

Solution Overview
Telcos need an integrated stack that follows an as-a-Service (aaS) consumption model
that can support the growth of business. This is also needed to keep up with the enormous
increase in the number of users, devices, websites, applications, and the bandwidth
needed to scale a mobile network, and to make innovation and quick addition of
value-added services possible. Telcos need to manage many distributed and smaller
sized PODs in a significantly smaller number of computers across many CO/POPs as
compared to a centralized datacenter model. Telcos need the flexibility to access these
PODs located on either a container or VM platform. In addition, they need the flexibility
to move these workloads to and from a private or public cloud securely when needed.

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 7

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 3: Contrail’s Telco Cloud POD

Solution Implementation
Figure 4 on page 8 shows how the vRPC solution components interact with one another.

Figure 4: Solution Components and Interaction

Contrail Cloud Release 10.0 consists of three main components.

8 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

 Chapter 1: Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

• The platform, which includes Contrail Networking 4.0, RHOSP10 and OSPD. The
platform also includes the orchestration system, which is a combination of Contrail
Server Manager, Ansible and Contrail-Puppet. Contrail Server Manager communicates
with the relevant Ansible and Contrail-Puppet scripts to install and upgrade the system.

• The vEPC VNF, which includes Affirmed EMS, Mobile Content Core (MCC) and Mobile
Management Entity (MME).

• The vSRX VNF, which includes two or more vSRX instances in scale-out (depending
on sizing requirements).

A new orchestration UI manages, monitors, and configures the tenant workloads. This
Orchestration UI leverages a combination of OpenStack HEAT, AppFormix and Mobility
EMS.

Figure 5 on page 9 shows the components of the Contrail Cloud 10.0 solution.

Figure 5: Contrail Cloud 10.0 Components

The Affirmed vEPC VNF includes Affirmed EMS, Mobile Content Core (MCC), and Mobile
Management Entity (MME). Affirmed vEPC provides a flexible, highly-scalable,
carrier-class VNF software. It combines sessions and mobility management, policy and
charging control, Wi-Fi interoperability, DPI, orchestration, automation, and value-added
services like video and web optimization. Figure 6 on page 10 is a graphical representation
of the Contrail Cloud Release 10.0 integrated solution.

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 9

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 6: Contrail Cloud Release 10.0, Affirmed VNF and Juniper's vSRX

The Affirmed VNF architecture comprises multiple independently scalable network

elements.

Figure 7: Affirmed's VNF Architecture

The Affirmed VNF has a very flexible, scale-out architecture to size your Telco Cloud.
Contrail Cloud Release 10.0 supports three deployment types based on the following
call models:

Call Model Small Medium Large

10 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

 Chapter 1: Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Total number of subscribers 100000 1M 5M

Total throughput (Gbps) 2 20 100

Total number of servers needed 4 - -

Total number of VMs 27 - -

Total number of vCPUs 88 - -

Total memory (GB) 288 - -

Total storage (GB) 750 - -

To deliver a Telco cloud solution, performance is key. Contrail has a proven track record
of delivering high performance in each release. It has consistently improved on
performance starting with kernel vRouter with TCP Optimized Forwarding (TSO) in
Contrail 1.0 to the most recent release of Contrail 4.0 with vRouter forwarding installed
in the SmartNIC hardware.

Figure 8: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: Performance

A vEPC consists of a control plane, data plane, and load balancer VMs at the front-end.
These VMs handle the 3GPP packet processing portions of the VNF. This is where mobility
traffic ingresses and egresses from the RAN side and Internet side. The Operations,
Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) VMs provide the system configuration and
validation as well as the VNF management of alerts, etc. The Mobile Gateway and
Management VMs scale-out to handle the subscriber capacity and context. Each vEPC
building block is designed to support either a 1+1 redundancy or a scale-out to provide
resiliency from any single point of failure as illustrated in Figure 9 on page 12.

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 11

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 9: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: vEPC Connectivity

If you take a more detailed look, a critical component of both multi-tenancy and scale-out
connectivity, BGPaaS enables a vEPC to deposit a set of routes it wants to advertise to
either the RAN or Internet to perform an EPC service. It also may want to receive routes
from the Contrail Controllers to make application decisions and load balancing.

The need for a scale-out data plane is solved using Contrail’s Equal Cost Multi-Path
(ECMP). ECMP ensures you hash across available endpoints to balance the traffic load
and is helpful not only in the efficient use of VM resources but also in mitigating the risk
when a failure occurs. Contrail’s ECMP provides “intelligent hashing” across multiple
paths such that if a next-hop in the list of paths goes offline, flow hashing is not
re-calculated. For example, consider four computes that are next hops for a destination.
If one of the four computes goes offline, flows are not recalculated for traffic going to
the remaining three computes. Only the flows going to the compute that is offline are
recalculated and sprayed across the remaining three computes. This “flow stickiness”
for the non-impacted traffic is critical for flow aware applications. This is a key feature
when dealing with stateful VNFs.

The ability of the EPC to include multiple APN/MVNOs is key to how the Telco cloud can
create new revenue streams. To do this, there needs to be measures taken to secure it
and provide the needed services between the EPC and the Internet. With the proliferation
of devices connected, mobile customers must be able to access the internet safely. This
also requires the ability to leverage a scalable method of advertising connectivity. As you
can see below there are two service instances, the firewall and PAT/NAT services. These
services are “service chained” between the EPC and the Gateway. By leveraging Contrail’s
Service Chaining, Network Policy and Route Reorigination/Route Policy, you can secure
your EPC and its APN/MVNO customers from the internet.

12 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

 Chapter 1: Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 10: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: vEPC Firewall/PAT Service
Chaining

Another use-case in EPC is RAN/FemtoCell connectivity when the radio towers aren’t
located in the countries where Telco is headquartered in and requires backhaul to the
vEPC. This allows connectivity from the customer site to the APN/MVNO to allow the
MVNO to extend its service to regions throughout the world. This Secure Tunneling service
can be scaled-out to handle the growing number of RAN/FemtoCells as needed using
ECMP.

Figure 11: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: vEPC IPSEC Service

A mobile service requires access to content all the time. This content needs to be
optimized for mobile and also requires DPI, Firewall and PAT/NAT services. Using Contrail
service-chaining, as illustrated in Figure 12 on page 14, services can be inserted into
infrastructure to protect it as well as elastically scale using ECMP, to what is required to
support each service.

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 13

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 12: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: vEPC Content & Media Service
Chaining

By being able to dynamically insert SPI/DPI as well as HTTP Proxy/Video caching, the
MVNO optimizes the Web content experience for its users.

Figure 13: How Contrail Solves & Delivers: vEPC Parental

Control/ADC/Web Protection/Optimization Service Chaining

The final component to Contrail’s Mobile Solution is the operationalization of the Telco
cloud. This requires the right Operation’s tools for Telco cloud operators to answer the
questions most Telco cloud operators have today. For example, figuring out the VNF to
compute mapping. This is solved by using AppFormix which has a logical representation
of their VNFs using tagging. Another example of a problem a Telco cloud operator might
face is about the number of resources the VNF consumes. This is solved by using
AppFormix and by combining tagging and the infrastructure KPIs that AppFormix is
monitoring. Finally, Telco cloud operators might also need to map 3GPP KPIs into
AppFormix and Contrail infrastructure metrics. This is solved with AppFormix by pulling
key 3GPP KPIs from the EPC’s OAM VMs and correlate them to infrastructure events like
flows/second spikes or interface speed spikes from the vEPC gathered by Contrail
Analytics.

14 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.

 Chapter 1: Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

Figure 14: How Contrail Solves Mobile Operator Problems & Delivers:
Analytics, Operations, and Monitoring

Solution Benefits
By using Contrail with mobility vEPC in a fully integrated stack, you can solve the number
of users, devices, websites, applications and bandwidth needed to run a mobile network
and because it’s an integrated stack it is efficient and cost-effective. The complexities
of managing many distributed and smaller sized PODs in a significantly smaller number
of computes across many CO/POPs makes this problem exponentially more challenging.
In addition to this, Contrail gives Telco operators a platform to innovate and quickly
introduce new value added services that previously took too long to introduce because
of lack of integration, development and operational expertise. These problems have been
resolved in Contrail Cloud Release 10.0.

Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc. 15

Virtualized Evolved Packet Core Solution Guide

16 Copyright © 2018, Juniper Networks, Inc.