Page 38 - 5G Basics - Core Network Aspects

1 Core network aspects

sustained in the future, FNs should be able to provide users with the means to access appropriate data in an
efficient manner.

At the same time, the behaviour of subscribers has been changed from stationary to mobile. Due to the
unpredictable behaviour of proliferated mobile devices, the resources of information and communication
technology (ICT) are hard to be allocated in advance to accommodate the bursty traffic generated by mobile
users called "flash crowd". Thus, FNs should also adaptively react to such environment to provide users with
the means to access data without interruption.

DAN is a new network architecture that would have the capabilities to deal with enormous amount of data
efficiently in a distributed environment and enables users to access desired data safely, easily, quickly and
accurately, regardless of data locations. This technology enables networks to be aware of user requests and
to react accordingly to support adaptive data distribution. Therefore, DAN is considered as a key approach
to realizing FNs.

7 Overview of data aware networking

DAN enables users to distribute data objects in the network and to retrieve them in an efficient and adaptive
manner. The essence of DAN lies in the name based communication that routes a data object in the network
by its name or identifier (ID).

The name based communication enables not only end hosts but also intermediate nodes between them to
be aware of user requests as well as the corresponding responses in the forms of data name or ID as well as
its attributes.
"Data-aware" in the name of DAN means that the intermediate network elements recognize the data name
or ID as well as its attributes which are provided for the network, and make a decision based on them. The
decisions include:
1) Routing of user requests and the corresponding responses.
2) Responding to user requests directly if the requested data object is available.
3) Processing of user requests and the corresponding responses. The term "processing" includes any
optimization process of the user requests and the corresponding responses before transmitting
them.

Due to this awareness feature of DAN, a network element such as router can route, respond and process
user requests and the corresponding responses to optimize the distribution of data objects. For example,
DAN can route user requests to a nearby cached data object, respond to user requests by returning the
cached data object, and process the data object based on user requests by modifying the data format, e.g.,
to fit the capability of the user terminal. By optimizing the data distribution, users can experience higher
throughput and lower latency, and network resources can be saved by reducing redundant traffic or localizing
bursty traffic caused by "flash crowd".
Moreover, the name based communication enables DAN to locate a data object regardless of its location,
which ensures the continuation of communication associated with the names of data objects without being
interrupted by its location change. For this reason, DAN can handle mobility in a more native manner than
the current IP networks where the data object is located by using the IP address of the host holding the data
object and the communication is based on the location of the data object.

Figure 1 illustrates three general use cases of DAN. In case 1 in the figure, a user request for a data object is
routed to the provider of the data object. While the requested data object is downloaded from the provider
to the requester, the data object that is being downloaded can be stored on DAN elements along the
downloading path, e.g., close to the requester. In case 2, each DAN element can respond to a user request
with the data object which is available in its cache or storage so that the user request does not need to be
routed to the provider of the original data object which may be distant from the requester. In case 3, DAN
elements can process the data object before they respond to the requester so that the format of the data
object fits the capability of the user's terminal.

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