Page 200 - 5G Basics - Core Network Aspects

1 Core network aspects

OAM Operation, Administration and Maintenance

QoS Quality of Service
RACF Resource and Admission Control Functions

S-NICE Software-defined NICE
SDN Software-defined Networking

SUP Service User Profile

5 Conventions

In this Recommendation:
The keywords "is required to" indicate a requirement which must be strictly followed and from which no
deviation is permitted if conformance to this document is to be claimed.

6 Requirements of software-defined NICE

6.1 Introduction to S-NICE

Software-defined NICE (S-NICE) is a specific implementation of NICE [ITU-T Y.2301] making use of software-
defined networking (SDN) concept and technologies. NICE is an evolved version of NGN. S-NICE supports the
intelligent features (five major features) of NICE and is enhanced by taking advantage of SDN concept and
technologies. Some capabilities of NICE are considered in S-NICE with different implementation approaches
and enhancements.

In S-NICE, the capabilities of NICE such as the service control capability, the policy control capability, and the
traffic scheduling capability, can be redesigned and deployed based on SDN concept and technologies.

Major features supported by SDN technologies include the decoupling of control and data planes, the logical
centralization of network intelligence and status, and the abstraction of the underlying network
infrastructure for the applications. S-NICE adopts the major features of SDN technologies to provide highly
scalable and flexible control as well as programmable and automatic interaction between network and
applications.
In S-NICE, except for the content and context analysis capability, the transport control layer capabilities are
centralized as controller capabilities (the so-called S-NICE controller capabilities), which maintain a global
view of the underlying S-NICE infrastructure. As a result, the S-NICE infrastructure appears to the S-NICE
controller capabilities as abstracted logical networks.
In S-NICE, the transport layer capabilities are regarded as infrastructure capabilities (the so-called S-NICE
infrastructure capabilities), which no longer need to understand and process various protocol standards as
in traditional NGNs or NICEs but merely accept instructions from the centralized S-NICE controller
capabilities.

S-NICE also uses SDN related protocols to identify network traffic based on pre-defined match rules that can
be statically or dynamically programmed by the S-NICE controller capabilities. Since SDN technologies allow
the control elements of a network to be programmed, S-NICE provides extremely small granular control of
the network to enable the network response to real-time changes for applications and users.
Appendix I provides a summary of both NICE and S-NICE capabilities and shows their differences.

6.2 Requirements of service control
In NICE, the service control capability is required to receive and transfer the application requests concerning
policy control and traffic scheduling to the transport layer or to receive and transfer transport related
information to the service layer. In addition, the service control capability is also required to provide resource
control, registration, authentication, and authorization capabilities at the service level.

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