Page 1449 - 5G Basics - Core Network Aspects

Signalling aspects 3

The BNG devices acts as the distributed unit to provide a variety of services and functions.

(1) It provides broadband access services to users under the control of the controller.
(2) It reports its own status/events/user session information to the controller.
(3) It provides the backup service for other members of the BNG pool belonging to the same backup
group under the control of the controller.
When the user accesses the broadband service through a member of the BNG pool and the corresponding
port of the member is failed, the user's services can be transferred to another member of the BNG pool
without awareness of the user. The members of the BNG pool can realize the resource sharing and load
balancing.

With the BNG pool, it may have the following functions/benefits:
(1) Simplifying the OAM. In the current network, user data (IP address, VLAN etc.) are planned in the
unit of one BNG, which increases the complexity of the OAM. Whereas, with the BNG pool, user
data can be planned and allocated in the unit of one BNG pool, which will greatly reduce the
complexity of the OAM.
(2) Achieving higher reliability and availability. It is possible for the members of the BNG pool to provide
backup services among members of the BNG pool.

(3) Achieving higher scalability. A BNG pool has the ability to provide the flexible resource extension to
meet the increasing demands compared with the traditional single-rack mode. As well as, it can
improve the efficiency of physical resources due to the support of much more broadband users to
access network.
(4) Achieving the load balancing. The access requests of users can be distributed among members of
the BNG pool with the granularity of user group. The granularity of user group is flexible, and can be
based on the physical interface, the logical sub-interface, the VLAN, the MAC address, etc.

(5) Saving the power consumption. When the network load is very low (e.g. in mid-night), on-line user's
services can be centralized and migrated to one or a few members of the BNG pool. Other members
of the BNG pool can be set in the sleeping mode. This can greatly save the power consumption.

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