CUSTOMIZABLE DATA-PROCESSING NETWORK FUNCTIONS FOR RADIO-BASED NETWORKS

BACKGROUND

5G is the fifth-generation technology standard for broadband cellular networks, which is planned eventually to take the place of the fourth-generation (4G) standard of Long-Term Evolution (LTE). 5G technology will offer greatly increased bandwidth, thereby broadening the cellular market beyond smartphones to provide last-mile connectivity to desktops, set-top boxes, laptops, Internet of Things (loT) devices, and so on. Some 5G cells may employ frequency spectrum similar to that of 4G, while other 5G cells may employ frequency spectrum in the millimeter wave band. Cells in the millimeter wave band will have a relatively small coverage area but will offer much higher throughput than 4G.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Many aspects of the present disclosure can be better understood with reference to the following drawings. The components in the drawings are not necessarily to scale, with emphasis instead being placed upon clearly illustrating the principles of the disclosure. Moreover, in the drawings, like reference numerals designate corresponding parts throughout the several views.

FIG. 1A is a drawing of an example of a communication network that is deployed and managed according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 1B is a drawing of an example of a networked environment that implements highly available network functions in radio-based networks and associated core networks according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2A illustrates an example of a networked environment including a cloud provider network and further including various provider substrate extensions of the cloud provider network, which may be used in various locations within the communication network of FIG. 1A, according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 2B depicts an example of cellularization and geographic distribution of the communication network of FIG. 1A for providing highly available user plane functions (UPFs).

FIG. 3A illustrates an example of the networked environment of FIG. 2A including geographically dispersed provider substrate extensions according to some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIGS. 3B-3E illustrate various examples of radio-based networks that provide customized processing for network functions according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 4 is a schematic block diagram of the networked environment of FIG. 2A according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating one example of functionality implemented as portions of a network function customization service executed in a computing environment in the networked environment of FIG. 4 according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating one example of functionality implemented as portions of a network function executed in a computing environment in the networked environment of FIG. 4 according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 is a schematic block diagram that provides one example illustration of a computing environment employed in the networked environment of FIG. 4 according to various embodiments of the present disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present disclosure relates to implementing customizable data-processing network functions in radio-based networks, such as 4G and 5G radio access networks, or portions of such radio-based networks, and associated core networks using cloud provider network infrastructure. A first example of a data-processing network function is the user plane function (UPF) in 5G networks. The UPF is the interconnect point between mobile infrastructure and the data network, and the UPF serves as the protocol data unit session anchor point for providing mobility within and between different radio access networks. The UPF is executed to apply policies to customer network traffic and then forward the network traffic via the user data plane as appropriate. The UPF is similar to a router in that network traffic passes through it rather than being terminated on it. The UPF also performs application detection, implements network slicing and quality-of-service requirements, and monitors traffic for billing purposes.

In some implementations, the UPF is required to scale to handle up to millions of Internet-facing internet protocol (IP) addresses, which may be contiguous subnetworks that are routed to the same destination. In some implementations, all network traffic for a specific end user device is required to go through a single UPF, and thousands of user devices may be mapped to an individual UPF. In the event that a UPF fails, all subsequent network traffic from particular user devices should be sent to a replacement UPF for the particular user devices. Also, various embodiments may be deployed at different network levels, including regions, local zones, edge locations, and cell sites.

A second example of a data-processing network function is the Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF). The AMF can receive the connection and session information from wireless devices or the radio access network (RAN) and can handle connection and mobility management tasks. For example, the AMF can manage handovers between base stations in the RAN. In some examples the AMF can be considered as the access point to the 5G core, by terminating certain RAN control plane and wireless device traffic. The AMF can also implement ciphering and integrity protection algorithms.

A third example of a data-processing network function is the Session Management Function (SMF). The SMF can handle session establishment or modification, for example by creating, updating, and removing Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sessions and managing session context within the UPF. The SMF can also implement Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and IP Address Management (IPAM). The SMF can be implemented as a cloud native network function using modern microservices methodologies.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure introduce customizable data-processing network functions, such as UPFs, AMFs, and SMFs, in a radio-based network operated by a cloud service provider for a customer such as an enterprise or another organization. Customers may wish to perform certain types of processing on traffic that traverses their radio-based network. Non-limiting examples of this processing may include encryption and decryption, traffic shaping, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, compression and decompression, logging, deep-packet inspection, and other types of processing. Rather than implementing this processing by adding network appliances (e.g., firewalls, gateways, etc.) outside of or integrated in the radio-based network, it may be advantageous to implement this processing within an existing network function of the radio-based network, such as UPFs, AMFs, and SMFs. These network functions may be defined by a standard (e.g., the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G standard, a 6G standard, etc.), but their standardized implementations may not offer the desired processing functionality.

In a first type of implementation, a data-processing network function is customizable by supporting a pluggable architecture. For example, users can upload customized plug-ins to perform desired processing, which are then executed by the data-processing network function with one or more requested parameters. In a second type of implementation, a customer may operate a processing service and the data-processing network function may transfer or export data to the customer-operated processing service. In a third type of implementation, the data-processing network function may support functionality beyond that specified by the standard, and customers may enable, disable, and/or otherwise configure this functionality by way of an application programming interface (API) or another configuration interface. In one example, multiple versions of a data-processing network function may be supported, and customers can select from among the multiple versions. In some cases, one or more versions or plug-ins may be developed by a third party and approved by the cloud service provider to be executed in the radio-based network. Customers may then select from among these approved versions or plug-ins.

Also, various embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize a software-based subnetwork load balancer to route network traffic to specific network functions, such as UPFs, and to handle failover and migration between network functions. The failover for network functions may be required to be handled in less than one second, and in under 100 milliseconds in some scenarios.

As one skilled in the art will appreciate in light of this disclosure, certain embodiments may be capable of achieving certain advantages, including some or all of the following: (1) reducing complexity and improving reliability in communication networks by consolidating functionality typically found elsewhere to data-processing network functions; (2) improving the operation of communication networks by offering a variety of data processing functions as a service within data-processing network functions; (3) reducing latency associated with certain types of data processing by performing the processing within existing network functions instead of as a separate processing entity; (4) reducing latency associated with certain types of data processing by performing the processing within existing network functions at edge locations in the radio-based network; (5) improving flexibility by offering a pluggable and/or configurable platform for network functions that allows customers to create custom processing solutions; and so forth.

Among the benefits of the present disclosure is the ability of a cellularized control plane, which controls operation of a radio-based network that operates at least partially using cloud provider infrastructure, to deploy and chain network functions together across different physical sites and to manage failover across physical sites to deliver a high availability UPF. Cellularization of the control plane refers to having multiple independently operatable copies of the control plane (referred to as “cells”), such that an individual control plane failure is prevented from impacting all deployments. According to the present disclosure, network functions organized into microservices work together to provide end-to-end connectivity (referred to in places as “network function stacks”). One set of network functions are part of a radio network, running in cell towers and performing wireless signal to IP conversion. Other network functions run in large data centers performing subscriber related business logic and routing IP traffic to the internet and back. For applications to use the new capabilities of 5G such as low latency communication and reserved bandwidth, both of these types of network functions need to work together to appropriately schedule and reserve wireless spectrum, and perform real time compute and data processing.

The presently disclosed techniques provide edge location hardware (as described further below) integrated with network functions that run across the entire network, from cell sites to internet break-outs, and orchestrate the network functions across these sites to provide high availability. Specifically, within each control plane infrastructure cell, multiple redundant network function stacks can be provisioned, with the control plane cell shifting traffic to secondary stacks as needed to provide the required availability. These redundant network function stacks can be provisioned across different ones or combinations of edge locations, customer data centers, and cloud provider availability zones. This enables an entirely new set of applications that have strict quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, from factory-based IoT, to augmented reality (AR), to virtual reality (VR), to game streaming, to autonomous navigation support for connected vehicles, that previously could not run on a mobile network.

The described “elastic 5G” service provides and manages all the hardware, software, and network functions, required to build a network, and can orchestrate network functions across different physical sites as described herein. In some embodiments the network functions may be developed and managed by the cloud service provider, however the described control plane can manage network functions across a range of providers so that customers can use a single set of APIs to call and manage their choice of network functions on cloud infrastructure. The elastic 5G service beneficially automates the creation of an end-to-end 5G network, from hardware to network functions, thus reducing the time to deploy and the operational cost of operating the network. By providing APIs that expose network capabilities, the disclosed elastic 5G service enables applications to simply specify the desired QoS as constraints and then deploys and chains the network functions together to deliver an end-to-end network slice that reflects the network characteristics requested by the software application, as well as managing failover to provide the level of availability required by the software application.

The present disclosure describes embodiments relating to the creation and management of a cloud native 5G core and/or a cloud native 5G RAN, and associated control plane components. Cloud native refers to an approach to building and running applications that exploits the advantages of the cloud computing delivery model such as dynamic scalability, distributed computing, and high availability (including geographic distribution, redundancy, and failover). Cloud native refers to how these applications are created and deployed to be suitable for deployment in a public cloud. While cloud native applications can be (and often are) run in the public cloud, they also can be run in an on-premises data center. Some cloud native applications can be containerized, for example having different parts, functions, or subunits of the application packaged in their own containers, which can be dynamically orchestrated so that each part is actively scheduled and managed to optimize resource utilization. These containerized applications can be architected using a microservices architecture to increase the overall agility and maintainability of the applications. In a microservices architecture, an application is arranged as a collection of smaller subunits (“microservices”) that can be deployed and scaled independently from one another, and which can communicate with one another over a network. These microservices are typically fine-grained, in that they have specific technical and functional granularity, and often implement lightweight communications protocols. The microservices of an application can perform different functions from one another, can be independently deployable, and may use different programming languages, databases, and hardware/software environment from one another. Decomposing an application into smaller services beneficially improves modularity of the application, enables replacement of individual microservices as needed, and parallelizes development by enabling teams to develop, deploy, and maintain their microservices independently from one another. A microservice may be deployed using a virtual machine, container, or serverless function, in some examples. The disclosed core and RAN software may follow a microservices architecture such that the described radio-based networks are composed of independent subunits that can be deployed and scaled on demand.

Turning now to FIG. 1A, shown is an example of a communication network 100 that is deployed and managed according to various embodiments of the present disclosure. The communication network 100 includes a radio-based network 103, which may correspond to a cellular network such as a fourth-generation (4G) Long-Term Evolution (LTE) network, a fifth-generation (5G) network, a 4G-5G hybrid core with both 4G and 5G RANs, a sixth-generation (6G) network, or another network that provides wireless network access. The radio-based network 103 may be operated by a cloud service provider for a public telecommunications provider or for an enterprise or other organization. Various deployments of radio-based network 103 can include one or more of a core network and a RAN network, as well as a control plane for running the core and/or RAN network on cloud provider infrastructure. As described above, these components can be developed in a cloud native fashion, for example using a microservices architecture, such that centralized control and distributed processing is used to scale traffic and transactions efficiently. These components may be based on the 3GPP specifications by following an application architecture in which control plane and user plane processing is separated (CUPS Architecture).

The radio-based network 103 provides wireless network access to a plurality of wireless devices 106, which may be mobile devices or fixed location devices. In various examples, the wireless devices 106 may include smartphones, connected vehicles, IoT devices, sensors, machinery (such as in a manufacturing facility), hotspots, and other devices. The wireless devices 106 are sometimes referred to as user equipment (UE) or customer premises equipment (CPE).

The radio-based network 103 can include a RAN that provides the wireless network access to the plurality of wireless devices 106 through a plurality of cells 109. Each of the cells 109 may be equipped with one or more antennas and one or more radio units that send and receive wireless data signals to and from the wireless devices 106. The antennas may be configured for one or more frequency bands, and the radio units may also be frequency agile or frequency adjustable. The antennas may be associated with a certain gain or beamwidth in order to focus a signal in a particular direction or azimuthal range, potentially allowing reuse of frequencies in a different direction. Further, the antennas may be horizontally, vertically, or circularly polarized. In some examples, a radio unit may utilize multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) technology to send and receive signals. As such, the RAN implements a radio access technology to enable radio connection with wireless devices 106, and provides connection with the radio-based network's core network. Components of the RAN include a base station and antennas that cover a given physical area, as well as required core network items for managing connections to the RAN.

Data traffic is often routed through a fiber transport network consisting of multiple hops of layer 3 routers (e.g., at aggregation sites) to the core network. The core network is typically housed in one or more data centers. The core network typically aggregates data traffic from end devices, authenticates subscribers and devices, applies personalized policies, and manages the mobility of the devices before routing the traffic to operator services or the Internet. A 5G Core for example can be decomposed into a number of microservice elements with control and user plane separation. Rather than physical network elements, a 5G Core can comprise virtualized, software-based network functions (deployed for example as microservices) and can therefore be instantiated within Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) cloud infrastructures. The network functions of the core network can include a UPF, an AMF, and an SMF. As will be described, these network functions can be instrumented to provide customized functionality outside of the scope of the network function defined by a standard. For data traffic destined for locations outside of the communication network 100, network functions typically include a firewall through which traffic can enter or leave the communication network 100 to external networks such as the Internet or a cloud provider network. Note that in some embodiments, the communication network 100 can include facilities to permit traffic to enter or leave from sites further downstream from the core network (e.g., at an aggregation site or radio-based network 103).

The UPF provides an interconnect point between the mobile infrastructure and the Data Network (DN), i.e., encapsulation and decapsulation of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) tunneling protocol for the user plane (GTP-U). The UPF can also provide a session anchor point for providing mobility within the RAN, including sending one or more end marker packets to the RAN base stations. The UPF can also handle packet routing and forwarding, including directing flows to specific data networks based on traffic matching filters. Another feature of the UPF includes per-flow or per-application QoS handling, including transport level packet marking for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL), and rate limiting. The UPF can be implemented as a cloud native network function using modern microservices methodologies, for example being deployable within a serverless framework (which abstracts away the underlying infrastructure that code runs on via a managed service).

Various network functions to implement the radio-based network 103 may be deployed in distributed computing devices 112, which may correspond to general-purpose computing devices configured to perform the network functions. For example, the distributed computing devices 112 may execute one or more virtual machine instances that are configured in turn to execute one or more services that perform the network functions. In one embodiment, the distributed computing devices 112 are ruggedized machines that are deployed at each cell site.

By contrast, one or more centralized computing devices 115 may perform various network functions at a central site operated by the customer. For example, the centralized computing devices 115 may be centrally located on the premises of the customer in a conditioned server room. The centralized computing devices 115 may execute one or more virtual machine instances that are configured in turn to execute one or more services that perform the network functions.

In one or more embodiments, network traffic from the radio-based network 103 is backhauled to one or more core computing devices 118 that may be located at one or more data centers situated remotely from the customer's site. The core computing devices 118 may also perform various network functions, including routing network traffic to and from the network 121, which may correspond to the Internet and/or other external public or private networks. The core computing devices 118 may perform functionality related to the management of the communication network 100 (e.g., billing, mobility management, etc.) and transport functionality to relay traffic between the communication network 100 and other networks.

Moving on to FIG. 1B, shown is an example of a networked environment 150 providing highly available user plane functions (UPFs) for radio-based networks 103 (FIG. 1A). In particular, the networked environment 150 illustrates how network traffic is routed from the network 121, such as the Internet, to individual UPFs 153a and 153b. From the UPFs 153, the network traffic can be forwarded to individual user devices on the radio-based network 103 (FIG. 1A).

To begin, the route advertiser 156 advertises routes for blocks of network addresses to the network 121. These network addresses may be, for example, IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, or other types of network addresses. In one example, the route advertiser 156 exchanges routing information using border gateway protocol (BGP) to other autonomous systems on the network 121. Alternatively, the routing information may be exchanged by API calls. Accordingly, network traffic on the network 121 that is directed to these blocks of addresses will be received at the elastic network interface 159a, e.g., by way of a network tunnel. The network prefixes to advertise and the endpoints to use may be configured in the route advertiser 156 by the tunnel control plane 162. In the event of a large scale outage that impairs a part of the networked environment 150 such as a region or zone, the route advertiser 156 may be configured to reroute the network traffic to a failover zone or region. This can be automated by health checks or triggered by an application programming interface (API) call.

The elastic network interface 159a will in turn direct the network traffic to a plurality of tunnel hosts 165a, 165b, . . . 165N. The elastic network interface 159b spreads the connections among two or more of the tunnel hosts 165 to ensure redundancy in the event that any single tunnel host 165 fails. If a tunnel host 165 fails, network traffic flows assigned to that tunnel host 165 (e.g., by flow-based hashing) are redirected by the elastic network interface 159a when health checks indicate the failure. In such situations, the endpoint devices should retry the connection and a reasonable number of flows may be reassigned onto different paths while waiting for health checks to indicate the failure. The UPFs 153a, 153b send route advertisements (e.g., using BGP advertisements or API calls) to the tunnel hosts 165 for the tunnel hosts 165 to determine to which UPF 153 each network address should be routed, and the tunnel hosts 165 should consistently send the network traffic to the same UPF 153.

The route reflectors 168a, 168b are executed to gather routing information from the UPFs 153 in order to distribute this information to tunnel hosts 165. In one embodiment, this allows individual UPFs 153 to have two peers at all times, while providing the fleet of tunnel hosts 165 the flexibility to scale arbitrarily without requiring customer configuration changes. In one embodiment, the route reflectors 168 establish BGP peering sessions with the UPFs 153 over an elastic network interface 159a in a virtual private cloud network operated by the customer. In other embodiments, other routing protocols or APIs may be used.

When using a routing protocol, the route reflectors 168 may advertise a default route to the network 121 via the elastic network interface 159a. The route reflectors 168 may be launched and managed by the tunnel control plane 162. The state for each route reflector 168 can be maintained in a data table for each tunnel control plane 162 to allow the route reflectors 168 to self-configure when they are launched. Route reflectors 168 may be notified when to update state by a messaging queue and may periodically reconcile their state in the case of a missed update via direct lookup of the configuration table. The route reflectors 168 may provide an API that allows the tunnel hosts 165 to make long polls to the route reflectors 168 to retrieve route updates as rapidly as possible. These routes may reflect which network ranges should go to which UPFs 153.

The tunnel hosts 165 may be responsible for routing inbound network packets to the appropriate UPF 153 using the routing rules retrieved from the route reflectors 168 and routing the outbound traffic back to the network 121. The tunnel hosts 165 may use two elastic network interfaces 159a and 159b. The elastic network interface 159 receives network traffic from the network 121 and sends network traffic back to the network 121 on behalf of the UPF 153. In one embodiment, the elastic network interface 159a filters to only send traffic for the network address ranges configured for the particular tunnel hosts 165.

The elastic network interface 159b may face the UPFs 153 and may be the default route for the private network that includes the UPFs 153. All traffic leaving the UPF 153 that does not have a more specific route in the private network will be directed to the elastic network interface 159b and then passed to the network 121 via the tunnel hosts 165. In the inbound direction toward the UPF 153, the elastic network interface 159b may use an overlay override feature to direct network traffic to the UPF 153 associated with the specific route. This is more powerful than simply using a layer 2 address, as the overlay address override may not be limited to a local subnet.

The life cycle of the tunnel hosts 165 may be managed by the tunnel control plane 162 to launch the appropriate number of tunnel hosts 165 and to scale up and down as desired. The configuration to run each tunnel host 165 may be obtained directly or indirectly from the route reflectors 168 along with the routing rules. The tunnel control plane 162 includes a control plane that translates API calls to configuring these various components, including tunnel hosts 165 and route reflectors 168.

Highly available UPFs 153 are further described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/118,558, entitled “HIGHLY AVAILABLE DATA-PROCESSING NETWORK FUNCTIONS FOR RADIO-BASED NETWORKS,” and filed on Dec. 10, 2020, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

FIG. 2A illustrates an example of a networked environment 200 including a cloud provider network 203 and further including various provider substrate extensions of the cloud provider network 203, which may be used in various locations within the communication network of FIG. 1A, according to some embodiments. A cloud provider network 203 (sometimes referred to simply as a “cloud”) refers to a pool of network-accessible computing resources (such as compute, storage, and networking resources, applications, and services), which may be virtualized or bare-metal. The cloud can provide convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources that can be programmatically provisioned and released in response to customer commands. These resources can be dynamically provisioned and reconfigured to adjust to variable load. Cloud computing can thus be considered as both the applications delivered as services over a publicly accessible network (e.g., the Internet, a cellular communication network) and the hardware and software in cloud provider data centers that provide those services.

The cloud provider network 203 can provide on-demand, scalable computing platforms to users through a network, for example, allowing users to have at their disposal scalable “virtual computing devices” via their use of the compute servers (which provide compute instances via the usage of one or both of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), optionally with local storage) and block store servers (which provide virtualized persistent block storage for designated compute instances). These virtual computing devices have attributes of a personal computing device including hardware (various types of processors, local memory, random access memory (RAM), hard-disk, and/or solid-state drive (SSD) storage), a choice of operating systems, networking capabilities, and pre-loaded application software. Each virtual computing device may also virtualize its console input and output (e.g., keyboard, display, and mouse). This virtualization allows users to connect to their virtual computing device using a computer application such as a browser, application programming interface (API), software development kit (SDK), or the like, in order to configure and use their virtual computing device just as they would a personal computing device. Unlike personal computing devices, which possess a fixed quantity of hardware resources available to the user, the hardware associated with the virtual computing devices can be scaled up or down depending upon the resources the user requires.

As indicated above, users can connect to virtualized computing devices and other cloud provider network 203 resources and services, and configure and manage telecommunications networks such as 5G networks, using various interfaces 206 (e.g., APIs) via intermediate network(s) 212. An API refers to an interface and/or communication protocol between a client device 215 and a server, such that if the client makes a request in a predefined format, the client should receive a response in a specific format or cause a defined action to be initiated. In the cloud provider network context, APIs provide a gateway for customers to access cloud infrastructure by allowing customers to obtain data from or cause actions within the cloud provider network 203, enabling the development of applications that interact with resources and services hosted in the cloud provider network 203. APIs can also enable different services of the cloud provider network 203 to exchange data with one another. Users can choose to deploy their virtual computing systems to provide network-based services for their own use and/or for use by their customers or clients.

The cloud provider network 203 can include a physical network (e.g., sheet metal boxes, cables, rack hardware) referred to as the substrate. The substrate can be considered as a network fabric containing the physical hardware that runs the services of the provider network. The substrate may be isolated from the rest of the cloud provider network 203, for example it may not be possible to route from a substrate network address to an address in a production network that runs services of the cloud provider, or to a customer network that hosts customer resources.

The cloud provider network 203 can also include an overlay network of virtualized computing resources that run on the substrate. In at least some embodiments, hypervisors or other devices or processes on the network substrate may use encapsulation protocol technology to encapsulate and route network packets (e.g., client IP packets) over the network substrate between client resource instances on different hosts within the provider network. The encapsulation protocol technology may be used on the network substrate to route encapsulated packets (also referred to as network substrate packets) between endpoints on the network substrate via overlay network paths or routes. The encapsulation protocol technology may be viewed as providing a virtual network topology overlaid on the network substrate. As such, network packets can be routed along a substrate network according to constructs in the overlay network (e.g., virtual networks that may be referred to as virtual private clouds (VPCs), port/protocol firewall configurations that may be referred to as security groups). A mapping service (not shown) can coordinate the routing of these network packets. The mapping service can be a regional distributed look up service that maps the combination of overlay internet protocol (IP) and network identifier to substrate IP so that the distributed substrate computing devices can look up where to send packets.

To illustrate, each physical host device (e.g., a compute server, a block store server, an object store server, a control server) can have an IP address in the substrate network. Hardware virtualization technology can enable multiple operating systems to run concurrently on a host computer, for example as virtual machines (VMs) on a compute server. A hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor (VMM), on a host allocates the host's hardware resources amongst various VMs on the host and monitors the execution of VMs. Each VM may be provided with one or more IP addresses in an overlay network, and the VMM on a host may be aware of the IP addresses of the VMs on the host. The VMMs (and/or other devices or processes on the network substrate) may use encapsulation protocol technology to encapsulate and route network packets (e.g., client IP packets) over the network substrate between virtualized resources on different hosts within the cloud provider network 203. The encapsulation protocol technology may be used on the network substrate to route encapsulated packets between endpoints on the network substrate via overlay network paths or routes. The encapsulation protocol technology may be viewed as providing a virtual network topology overlaid on the network substrate. The encapsulation protocol technology may include the mapping service that maintains a mapping directory that maps IP overlay addresses (e.g., IP addresses visible to customers) to substrate IP addresses (IP addresses not visible to customers), which can be accessed by various processes on the cloud provider network 203 for routing packets between endpoints.

As illustrated, the traffic and operations of the cloud provider network substrate may broadly be subdivided into two categories in various embodiments: control plane traffic carried over a logical control plane 218 and data plane operations carried over a logical data plane 221. While the data plane 221 represents the movement of user data through the distributed computing system, the control plane 218 represents the movement of control signals through the distributed computing system. The control plane 218 generally includes one or more control plane components or services distributed across and implemented by one or more control servers. Control plane traffic generally includes administrative operations, such as establishing isolated virtual networks for various customers, monitoring resource usage and health, identifying a particular host or server at which a requested compute instance is to be launched, provisioning additional hardware as needed, and so on. The data plane 221 includes customer resources that are implemented on the cloud provider network (e.g., computing instances, containers, block storage volumes, databases, file storage). Data plane traffic generally includes non-administrative operations such as transferring data to and from the customer resources.

The control plane components are typically implemented on a separate set of servers from the data plane servers, and control plane traffic and data plane traffic may be sent over separate/distinct networks. In some embodiments, control plane traffic and data plane traffic can be supported by different protocols. In some embodiments, messages (e.g., packets) sent over the cloud provider network 203 include a flag to indicate whether the traffic is control plane traffic or data plane traffic. In some embodiments, the payload of traffic may be inspected to determine its type (e.g., whether control or data plane). Other techniques for distinguishing traffic types are possible.

As illustrated, the data plane 221 can include one or more compute servers, which may be bare metal (e.g., single tenant) or may be virtualized by a hypervisor to run multiple VMs (sometimes referred to as “instances”) or microVMs for one or more customers. These compute servers can support a virtualized computing service (or “hardware virtualization service”) of the cloud provider network 203. The virtualized computing service may be part of the control plane 218, allowing customers to issue commands via an interface 206 (e.g., an API) to launch and manage compute instances (e.g., VMs, containers) for their applications. The virtualized computing service may offer virtual compute instances with varying computational and/or memory resources. In one embodiment, each of the virtual compute instances may correspond to one of several instance types. An instance type may be characterized by its hardware type, computational resources (e.g., number, type, and configuration of CPUs or CPU cores), memory resources (e.g., capacity, type, and configuration of local memory), storage resources (e.g., capacity, type, and configuration of locally accessible storage), network resources (e.g., characteristics of its network interface and/or network capabilities), and/or other suitable descriptive characteristics. Using instance type selection functionality, an instance type may be selected for a customer, e.g., based (at least in part) on input from the customer. For example, a customer may choose an instance type from a predefined set of instance types. As another example, a customer may specify the desired resources of an instance type and/or requirements of a workload that the instance will run, and the instance type selection functionality may select an instance type based on such a specification.

The data plane 221 can also include one or more block store servers, which can include persistent storage for storing volumes of customer data, as well as software for managing these volumes. These block store servers can support a managed block storage service of the cloud provider network. The managed block storage service may be part of the control plane 218, allowing customers to issue commands via the interface 206 (e.g., an API) to create and manage volumes for their applications running on compute instances. The block store servers include one or more servers on which data is stored as blocks. A block is a sequence of bytes or bits, usually containing some whole number of records, having a maximum length of the block size. Blocked data is normally stored in a data buffer and read or written a whole block at a time. In general, a volume can correspond to a logical collection of data, such as a set of data maintained on behalf of a user. User volumes, which can be treated as an individual hard drive ranging for example from 1 GB to 1 terabyte (TB) or more in size, are made of one or more blocks stored on the block store servers. Although treated as an individual hard drive, it will be appreciated that a volume may be stored as one or more virtualized devices implemented on one or more underlying physical host devices. Volumes may be partitioned a small number of times (e.g., up to 16) with each partition hosted by a different host. The data of the volume may be replicated between multiple devices within the cloud provider network, in order to provide multiple replicas of the volume (where such replicas may collectively represent the volume on the computing system). Replicas of a volume in a distributed computing system can beneficially provide for automatic failover and recovery, for example by allowing the user to access either a primary replica of a volume or a secondary replica of the volume that is synchronized to the primary replica at a block level, such that a failure of either the primary or secondary replica does not inhibit access to the information of the volume. The role of the primary replica can be to facilitate reads and writes (sometimes referred to as “input output operations,” or simply “I/O operations”) at the volume, and to propagate any writes to the secondary (preferably synchronously in the I/O path, although asynchronous replication can also be used). The secondary replica can be updated synchronously with the primary replica and provide for seamless transition during failover operations, whereby the secondary replica assumes the role of the primary replica, and either the former primary is designated as the secondary or a new replacement secondary replica is provisioned. Although certain examples herein discuss a primary replica and a secondary replica, it will be appreciated that a logical volume can include multiple secondary replicas. A compute instance can virtualize its I/O to a volume by way of a client. The client represents instructions that enable a compute instance to connect to, and perform I/O operations at, a remote data volume (e.g., a data volume stored on a physically separate computing device accessed over a network). The client may be implemented on an offload card of a server that includes the processing units (e.g., CPUs or GPUs) of the compute instance.

The data plane 221 can also include one or more object store servers, which represent another type of storage within the cloud provider network 203. The object storage servers include one or more servers on which data is stored as objects within resources referred to as buckets and can be used to support a managed object storage service of the cloud provider network 203. Each object typically includes the data being stored, a variable amount of metadata that enables various capabilities for the object storage servers with respect to analyzing a stored object, and a globally unique identifier or key that can be used to retrieve the object. Each bucket is associated with a given user account. Customers can store as many objects as desired within their buckets, can write, read, and delete objects in their buckets, and can control access to their buckets and the objects contained therein. Further, in embodiments having a number of different object storage servers distributed across different ones of the regions described above, users can choose the region (or regions) where a bucket is stored, for example to optimize for latency. Customers may use buckets to store objects of a variety of types, including machine images that can be used to launch VMs, and snapshots that represent a point-in-time view of the data of a volume.

A provider substrate extension 224 (“PSE”) provides resources and services of the cloud provider network 203 within a separate network, such as a telecommunications network, thereby extending functionality of the cloud provider network 203 to new locations (e.g., for reasons related to latency in communications with customer devices, legal compliance, security, etc.). In some implementations, a PSE 224 can be configured to provide capacity for cloud-based workloads to run within the telecommunications network. In some implementations, a PSE 224 can be configured to provide the core and/or RAN functions of the telecommunications network, and may be configured with additional hardware (e.g., radio access hardware). Some implementations may be configured to allow for both, for example by allowing capacity unused by core and/or RAN functions to be used for running cloud-based workloads.

As indicated, such provider substrate extensions 224 can include cloud provider network-managed provider substrate extensions 227 (e.g., formed by servers located in a cloud provider-managed facility separate from those associated with the cloud provider network 203), communications service provider substrate extensions 230 (e.g., formed by servers associated with communications service provider facilities), customer-managed provider substrate extensions 233 (e.g., formed by servers located on-premise in a customer or partner facility), among other possible types of substrate extensions.

As illustrated in the example provider substrate extension 224, a provider substrate extension 224 can similarly include a logical separation between a control plane 236 and a data plane 239, respectively extending the control plane 218 and data plane 221 of the cloud provider network 203. The provider substrate extension 224 may be pre-configured, e.g., by the cloud provider network operator, with an appropriate combination of hardware with software and/or firmware elements to support various types of computing-related resources, and to do so in a manner that mirrors the experience of using the cloud provider network 203. For example, one or more provider substrate extension location servers can be provisioned by the cloud provider for deployment within a provider substrate extension 224. As described above, the cloud provider network 203 may offer a set of predefined instance types, each having varying types and quantities of underlying hardware resources. Each instance type may also be offered in various sizes. In order to enable customers to continue using the same instance types and sizes in a provider substrate extension 224 as they do in the region, the servers can be heterogeneous servers. A heterogeneous server can concurrently support multiple instance sizes of the same type and may be also reconfigured to host whatever instance types are supported by its underlying hardware resources. The reconfiguration of the heterogeneous server can occur on-the-fly using the available capacity of the servers, that is, while other VMs are still running and consuming other capacity of the provider substrate extension location servers. This can improve utilization of computing resources within the edge location by allowing for better packing of running instances on servers, and also provides a seamless experience regarding instance usage across the cloud provider network 203 and the cloud provider network-managed provider substrate extension 227.

The provider substrate extension servers can host one or more compute instances. Compute instances can be VMs, or containers that package up code and all its dependencies so an application can run quickly and reliably across computing environments (e.g., including VMs and microVMs). In addition, the servers may host one or more data volumes, if desired by the customer. In the region of a cloud provider network 203, such volumes may be hosted on dedicated block store servers. However, due to the possibility of having a significantly smaller capacity at a provider substrate extension 224 than in the region, an optimal utilization experience may not be provided if the provider substrate extension 224 includes such dedicated block store servers. Accordingly, a block storage service may be virtualized in the provider substrate extension 224, such that one of the VMs runs the block store software and stores the data of a volume. Similar to the operation of a block storage service in the region of a cloud provider network 203, the volumes within a provider substrate extension 224 may be replicated for durability and availability. The volumes may be provisioned within their own isolated virtual network within the provider substrate extension 224. The compute instances and any volumes collectively make up a data plane 239 extension of the provider network data plane 221 within the provider substrate extension 224.

The servers within a provider substrate extension 224 may, in some implementations, host certain local control plane components, for example, components that enable the provider substrate extension 224 to continue functioning if there is a break in the connection back to the cloud provider network 203. Examples of these components include a migration manager that can move compute instances between provider substrate extension servers if needed to maintain availability, and a key value data store that indicates where volume replicas are located. However, generally the control plane 236 functionality for a provider substrate extension 224 will remain in the cloud provider network 203 in order to allow customers to use as much resource capacity of the provider substrate extension 224 as possible.

The migration manager may have a centralized coordination component that runs in the region, as well as local controllers that run on the PSE servers (and servers in the cloud provider's data centers). The centralized coordination component can identify target edge locations and/or target hosts when a migration is triggered, while the local controllers can coordinate the transfer of data between the source and target hosts. The described movement of the resources between hosts in different locations may take one of several forms of migration. Migration refers to moving virtual machine instances (and/or other resources) between hosts in a cloud computing network, or between hosts outside of the cloud computing network and hosts within the cloud. There are different types of migration including live migration and reboot migration. During a reboot migration, the customer experiences an outage and an effective power cycle of their virtual machine instance. For example, a control plane service can coordinate a reboot migration workflow that involves tearing down the current domain on the original host and subsequently creating a new domain for the virtual machine instance on the new host. The instance is rebooted by being shut down on the original host and booted up again on the new host.

Live migration refers to the process of moving a running virtual machine or application between different physical machines without significantly disrupting the availability of the virtual machine (e.g., the down time of the virtual machine is not noticeable by the end user). When the control plane executes a live migration workflow it can create a new “inactive” domain associated with the instance, while the original domain for the instance continues to run as the “active” domain. Memory (including any in-memory state of running applications), storage, and network connectivity of the virtual machine are transferred from the original host with the active domain to the destination host with the inactive domain. The virtual machine may be briefly paused to prevent state changes while transferring memory contents to the destination host. The control plane can transition the inactive domain to become the active domain and demote the original active domain to become the inactive domain (sometimes referred to as a “flip”), after which the inactive domain can be discarded.

Techniques for various types of migration involve managing the critical phase—the time when the virtual machine instance is unavailable to the customer—which should be kept as short as possible. In the presently disclosed migration techniques this can be especially challenging, as resources are being moved between hosts in geographically separate locations which may be connected over one or more intermediate networks. For live migration, the disclosed techniques can dynamically determine an amount of memory state data to pre-copy (e.g., while the instance is still running on the source host) and to post-copy (e.g., after the instance begins running on the destination host), based for example on latency between the locations, network bandwidth/usage patterns, and/or on which memory pages are used most frequently by the instance. Further, a particular time at which the memory state data is transferred can be dynamically determined based on conditions of the network between the locations. This analysis may be performed by a migration management component in the region, or by a migration management component running locally in the source edge location. If the instance has access to virtualized storage, both the source domain and target domain can be simultaneously attached to the storage to enable uninterrupted access to its data during the migration and in the case that rollback to the source domain is required.

Server software running at a provider substrate extension 224 may be designed by the cloud provider to run on the cloud provider substrate network, and this software may be enabled to run unmodified in a provider substrate extension 224 by using local network manager(s) 242 to create a private replica of the substrate network within the edge location (a “shadow substrate”). The local network manager(s) 242 can run on provider substrate extension 224 servers and bridge the shadow substrate with the provider substrate extension 224 network, for example, by acting as a virtual private network (VPN) endpoint or endpoints between the provider substrate extension 224 and the proxies 245, 248 in the cloud provider network 203 and by implementing the mapping service (for traffic encapsulation and decapsulation) to relate data plane traffic (from the data plane proxies 248) and control plane traffic (from the control plane proxies 245) to the appropriate server(s). By implementing a local version of the provider network's substrate-overlay mapping service, the local network manager(s) 242 allow resources in the provider substrate extension 224 to seamlessly communicate with resources in the cloud provider network 203. In some implementations, a single local network manager 242 can perform these actions for all servers hosting compute instances in a provider substrate extension 224. In other implementations, each of the server hosting compute instances may have a dedicated local network manager 242. In multi-rack edge locations, inter-rack communications can go through the local network managers 242, with local network managers maintaining open tunnels to one another.

Provider substrate extension locations can utilize secure networking tunnels through the provider substrate extension 224 network to the cloud provider network 203, for example, to maintain security of customer data when traversing the provider substrate extension 224 network and any other intermediate network (which may include the public internet). Within the cloud provider network 203, these tunnels are composed of virtual infrastructure components including isolated virtual networks (e.g., in the overlay network), control plane proxies 245, data plane proxies 248, and substrate network interfaces. Such proxies 245, 248 may be implemented as containers running on compute instances. In some embodiments, each server in a provider substrate extension 224 location that hosts compute instances can utilize at least two tunnels: one for control plane traffic (e.g., Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) traffic) and one for encapsulated data plane traffic. A connectivity manager (not shown) within the cloud provider network 203 manages the cloud provider network-side lifecycle of these tunnels and their components, for example, by provisioning them automatically when needed and maintaining them in a healthy operating state. In some embodiments, a direct connection between a provider substrate extension 224 location and the cloud provider network 203 can be used for control and data plane communications. As compared to a VPN through other networks, the direct connection can provide constant bandwidth and more consistent network performance because of its relatively fixed and stable network path.

A control plane (CP) proxy 245 can be provisioned in the cloud provider network 203 to represent particular host(s) in an edge location. CP proxies 245 are intermediaries between the control plane 218 in the cloud provider network 203 and control plane targets in the control plane 236 of provider substrate extension 224. That is, CP proxies 245 provide infrastructure for tunneling management API traffic destined for provider substrate extension servers out of the region substrate and to the provider substrate extension 224. For example, a virtualized computing service of the cloud provider network 203 can issue a command to a VMM of a server of a provider substrate extension 224 to launch a compute instance. A CP proxy 245 maintains a tunnel (e.g., a VPN) to a local network manager 242 of the provider substrate extension. The software implemented within the CP proxies 245 ensures that only well-formed API traffic leaves from and returns to the substrate. CP proxies 245 provide a mechanism to expose remote servers on the cloud provider substrate while still protecting substrate security materials (e.g., encryption keys, security tokens) from leaving the cloud provider network 203. The one-way control plane traffic tunnel imposed by the CP proxies 245 also prevents any (potentially compromised) devices from making calls back to the substrate. CP proxies 245 may be instantiated one-for-one with servers at a provider substrate extension 224 or may be able to manage control plane traffic for multiple servers in the same provider substrate extension 224.

A data plane (DP) proxy 248 can also be provisioned in the cloud provider network 203 to represent particular server(s) in a provider substrate extension 224. The DP proxy 248 acts as a shadow or anchor of the server(s) and can be used by services within the cloud provider network 203 to monitor the health of the host (including its availability, used/free compute and capacity, used/free storage and capacity, and network bandwidth usage/availability). The DP proxy 248 also allows isolated virtual networks to span provider substrate extensions 224 and the cloud provider network 203 by acting as a proxy for server(s) in the cloud provider network 203. Each DP proxy 248 can be implemented as a packet-forwarding compute instance or container. As illustrated, each DP proxy 248 can maintain a VPN tunnel with a local network manager 242 that manages traffic to the server(s) that the DP proxy 248 represents. This tunnel can be used to send data plane traffic between the provider substrate extension server(s) and the cloud provider network 203. Data plane traffic flowing between a provider substrate extension 224 and the cloud provider network 203 can be passed through DP proxies 248 associated with that provider substrate extension 224. For data plane traffic flowing from a provider substrate extension 224 to the cloud provider network 203, DP proxies 248 can receive encapsulated data plane traffic, validate it for correctness, and allow it to enter into the cloud provider network 203. DP proxies 248 can forward encapsulated traffic from the cloud provider network 203 directly to a provider substrate extension 224.

Local network manager(s) 242 can provide secure network connectivity with the proxies 245, 248 established in the cloud provider network 203. After connectivity has been established between the local network manager(s) 242 and the proxies 245, 248, customers may issue commands via the interface 206 to instantiate compute instances (and/or perform other operations using compute instances) using provider substrate extension resources in a manner analogous to the way in which such commands would be issued with respect to compute instances hosted within the cloud provider network 203. From the perspective of the customer, the customer can now seamlessly use local resources within a provider substrate extension (as well as resources located in the cloud provider network 203, if desired). The compute instances set up on a server at a provider substrate extension 224 may communicate both with electronic devices located in the same network, as well as with other resources that are set up in the cloud provider network 203, as desired. A local gateway 251 can be implemented to provide network connectivity between a provider substrate extension 224 and a network associated with the extension (e.g., a communications service provider network in the example of a provider substrate extension 230).

There may be circumstances that necessitate the transfer of data between the object storage service and a provider substrate extension (PSE) 224. For example, the object storage service may store machine images used to launch VMs, as well as snapshots representing point-in-time backups of volumes. The object gateway can be provided on a PSE server or a specialized storage device, and provide customers with configurable, per-bucket caching of object storage bucket contents in their PSE 224 to minimize the impact of PSE-region latency on the customer's workloads. The object gateway can also temporarily store snapshot data from snapshots of volumes in the PSE 224 and then sync with the object servers in the region when possible. The object gateway can also store machine images that the customer designates for use within the PSE 224 or on the customer's premises. In some implementations, the data within the PSE 224 may be encrypted with a unique key, and the cloud provider can limit keys from being shared from the region to the PSE 224 for security reasons. Accordingly, data exchanged between the object store servers and the object gateway may utilize encryption, decryption, and/or re-encryption in order to preserve security boundaries with respect to encryption keys or other sensitive data. The transformation intermediary can perform these operations, and a PSE bucket can be created (on the object store servers) to store snapshot data and machine image data using the PSE encryption key.

In the manner described above, a PSE 224 forms an edge location, in that it provides the resources and services of the cloud provider network 203 outside of a traditional cloud provider data center and closer to customer devices. An edge location, as referred to herein, can be structured in several ways. In some implementations, an edge location can be an extension of the cloud provider network substrate including a limited quantity of capacity provided outside of an availability zone (e.g., in a small data center or other facility of the cloud provider that is located close to a customer workload and that may be distant from any availability zones). Such edge locations may be referred to as “far zones” (due to being far from other availability zones) or “near zones” (due to being near to customer workloads). A near zone may be connected in various ways to a publicly accessible network such as the Internet, for example directly, via another network, or via a private connection to a region. Although typically a near zone would have more limited capacity than a region, in some cases a near zone may have substantial capacity, for example thousands of racks or more.

In some implementations, an edge location may be an extension of the cloud provider network substrate formed by one or more servers located on-premise in a customer or partner facility, wherein such server(s) communicate over a network (e.g., a publicly-accessible network such as the Internet) with a nearby availability zone or region of the cloud provider network. This type of substrate extension located outside of cloud provider network data centers can be referred to as an “outpost” of the cloud provider network. Some outposts may be integrated into communications networks, for example as a multi-access edge computing (MEC) site having physical infrastructure spread across telecommunication data centers, telecommunication aggregation sites, and/or telecommunication base stations within the telecommunication network. In the on-premise example, the limited capacity of the outpost may be available for use only by the customer who owns the premises (and any other accounts allowed by the customer). In the telecommunications example, the limited capacity of the outpost may be shared amongst a number of applications (e.g., games, virtual reality applications, healthcare applications) that send data to users of the telecommunications network.

An edge location can include data plane capacity controlled at least partly by a control plane of a nearby availability zone of the provider network. As such, an availability zone group can include a “parent” availability zone and any “child” edge locations homed to (e.g., controlled at least partly by the control plane of) the parent availability zone. Certain limited control plane functionality (e.g., features that require low latency communication with customer resources, and/or features that enable the edge location to continue functioning when disconnected from the parent availability zone) may also be present in some edge locations. Thus, in the above examples, an edge location refers to an extension of at least data plane capacity that is positioned at the edge of the cloud provider network, close to customer devices and/or workloads.

In the example of FIG. 1A, the distributed computing devices 112 (FIG. 1A), the centralized computing devices 115 (FIG. 1A), and the core computing devices 118 (FIG. 1A) may be implemented as provider substrate extensions 224 of the cloud provider network 203. The installation or siting of provider substrate extensions 224 within a communication network 100 can vary subject to the particular network topology or architecture of the communication network 100. Provider substrate extensions 224 can generally be connected anywhere the communication network 100 can break out packet-based traffic (e.g., IP based traffic). Additionally, communications between a given provider substrate extension 224 and the cloud provider network 203 typically securely transit at least a portion of the communication network 100 (e.g., via a secure tunnel, virtual private network, a direct connection, etc.).

In 5G wireless network development efforts, edge locations may be considered a possible implementation of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC). Such edge locations can be connected to various points within a 5G network that provide a breakout for data traffic as part of the User Plane Function (UPF). Older wireless networks can incorporate edge locations as well. In 3G wireless networks, for example, edge locations can be connected to the packet-switched network portion of a communication network 100, such as to a Serving General Packet Radio Services Support Node (SGSN) or to a Gateway General Packet Radio Services Support Node (GGSN). In 4G wireless networks, edge locations can be connected to a Serving Gateway (SGW) or Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW) as part of the core network or evolved packet core (EPC). In some embodiments, traffic between a provider substrate extension 224 and the cloud provider network 203 can be broken out of the communication network 100 without routing through the core network.

In some embodiments, provider substrate extensions 224 can be connected to more than one communication network associated with respective customers. For example, when two communication networks of respective customers share or route traffic through a common point, a provider substrate extension 224 can be connected to both networks. For example, each customer can assign some portion of its network address space to the provider substrate extension, and the provider substrate extension 224 can include a router or gateway that can distinguish traffic exchanged with each of the communication networks 100. For example, traffic destined for the provider substrate extension 224 from one network might have a different destination IP address, source IP address, and/or virtual local area network (VLAN) tag than traffic received from another network. Traffic originating from the provider substrate extension to a destination on one of the networks can be similarly encapsulated to have the appropriate VLAN tag, source IP address (e.g., from the pool allocated to the provider substrate extension from the destination network address space) and destination IP address.

FIG. 2B depicts an example 253 of cellularization and geographic distribution of the communication network 100 (FIG. 1A) for providing customizable data-processing network functions. In FIG. 2B, a user device 254 communicates with a request router 255 to route a request to one of a plurality of control plane cells 257a and 257b. Each control plane cell 257 may include a network service API gateway 260, a network slice configuration 262, a function for network service monitoring 264, site planning data 266 (including layout, device type, device quantities, etc. that describe a customer's site requirements), a network service/function catalog 268, a network function orchestrator 270, and/or other components. The larger control plane can be divided into cells in order to reduce the likelihood that large scale errors will affect a wide range of customers, for example by having one or more cells per customer, per network, or per region that operate independently.

The network service/function catalog 268 is also referred to as the NF Repository Function (NRF). In a Service Based Architecture (SBA) 5G network, the control plane functionality and common data repositories can be delivered by way of a set of interconnected network functions built using a microservices architecture. The NRF can maintain a record of available NF instances and their supported services, allowing other NF instances to subscribe and be notified of registrations from NF instances of a given type. The NRF thus can support service discovery by receipt of discovery requests from NF instances, and details which NF instances support specific services. The network function orchestrator 270 can perform NF lifecycle management including instantiation, scale-out/in, performance measurements, event correlation, and termination. The network function orchestrator 270 can also onboard new NFs, manage migration to new or updated versions of existing NFs, identify NF sets that are suitable for a particular network slice or larger network, and orchestrate NFs across different computing devices and sites that make up the radio-based network 103.

The control plane cell 257 may be in communication with one or more cell sites 272, one or more customer local data centers 274, one or more local zones 276, and one or more regional zones 278. The cell sites 272 include computing hardware 280 that executes one or more distributed unit (DU) network functions 282. The customer local data centers 274 include computing hardware 283 that execute one or more DU or central unit (CU) network functions 284, a network controller, a UPF 286, one or more edge applications 287 corresponding to customer workloads, and/or other components.

The local zones 276, which may be in a data center operated by a cloud service provider, may execute one or more core network functions 288, such as an AMF, an SMF, a network exposure function (NEF) that securely exposes the services and capabilities of other network functions, a unified data management (UDM) function that manages subscriber data for authorization, registration, and mobility management. The local zones 276 may also execute a UPF 286, a service for metric processing 289, and one or more edge applications 287.

The regional zones 278, which may be in a data center operated by a cloud service provider, may execute one or more core network functions 288; a UPF 286; an operations support system (OSS) 290 that supports network management systems, service delivery, service fulfillment, service assurance, and customer care; an internet protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) 291; a business support system (BSS) 292 that supports product management, customer management, revenue management, and/or order management; one or more portal applications 293, and/or other components.

In this example, the communication network 100 employs a cellular architecture to reduce the blast radius of individual components. At the top level, the control plane is in multiple control plane cells 257 to prevent an individual control plane failure from impacting all deployments.

Within each control plane cell 257, multiple redundant stacks can be provided with the control plane shifting traffic to secondary stacks as needed. For example, a cell site 272 may be configured to utilize a nearby local zone 276 as its default core network. In the event that the local zone 276 experiences an outage, the control plane can redirect the cell site 272 to use the backup stack in the regional zone 278. Traffic that would normally be routed from the internet to the local zone 276 can be shifted to endpoints for the regional zones 278. Each control plane cell 257 can implement a “stateless” architecture that shares a common session database across multiple sites (such as across availability zones or edge sites).

FIG. 3A illustrates an exemplary cloud provider network 203 including geographically dispersed provider substrate extensions 224 (FIG. 2A) (or “edge locations 303”) according to some embodiments. As illustrated, a cloud provider network 203 can be formed as a number of regions 306, where a region 306 is a separate geographical area in which the cloud provider has one or more data centers 309. Each region 306 can include two or more availability zones (AZs) connected to one another via a private high-speed network such as, for example, a fiber communication connection. An availability zone refers to an isolated failure domain including one or more data center facilities with separate power, separate networking, and separate cooling relative to other availability zones. A cloud provider may strive to position availability zones within a region 306 far enough away from one another such that a natural disaster, widespread power outage, or other unexpected event does not take more than one availability zone offline at the same time. Customers can connect to resources within availability zones of the cloud provider network 203 via a publicly accessible network (e.g., the Internet, a cellular communication network, a communication service provider network). Transit Centers (TC) are the primary backbone locations linking customers to the cloud provider network 203 and may be co-located at other network provider facilities (e.g., Internet service providers, telecommunications providers). Each region 306 can operate two or more TCs for redundancy. Regions 306 are connected to a global network which includes private networking infrastructure (e.g., fiber connections controlled by the cloud service provider) connecting each region 306 to at least one other region. The cloud provider network 203 may deliver content from points of presence (PoPs) outside of, but networked with, these regions 306 by way of edge locations 303 and regional edge cache servers. This compartmentalization and geographic distribution of computing hardware enables the cloud provider network 203 to provide low-latency resource access to customers on a global scale with a high degree of fault tolerance and stability.

In comparison to the number of regional data centers or availability zones, the number of edge locations 303 can be much higher. Such widespread deployment of edge locations 303 can provide low-latency connectivity to the cloud for a much larger group of end user devices (in comparison to those that happen to be very close to a regional data center 309). In some embodiments, each edge location 303 can be peered to some portion of the cloud provider network 203 (e.g., a parent availability zone or regional data center). Such peering allows the various components operating in the cloud provider network 203 to manage the compute resources of the edge location 303. In some cases, multiple edge locations 303 may be sited or installed in the same facility (e.g., separate racks of computer systems) and managed by different zones or data centers 309 to provide additional redundancy. Note that although edge locations 303 are typically depicted herein as within a communication service provider network or a radio-based network 103 (FIG. 1A), in some cases, such as when a cloud provider network facility is relatively close to a communications service provider facility, the edge location 303 can remain within the physical premises of the cloud provider network 203 while being connected to the communications service provider network via a fiber or other network link.

An edge location 303 can be structured in several ways. In some implementations, an edge location 303 can be an extension of the cloud provider network substrate including a limited quantity of capacity provided outside of an availability zone (e.g., in a small data center or other facility of the cloud provider that is located close to a customer workload and that may be distant from any availability zones). Such edge locations 303 may be referred to as local zones (due to being more local or proximate to a group of users than traditional availability zones). A local zone may be connected in various ways to a publicly accessible network such as the Internet, for example directly, via another network, or via a private connection to a region 306. Although typically a local zone would have more limited capacity than a region 306, in some cases a local zone may have substantial capacity, for example thousands of racks or more. Some local zones may use similar infrastructure as typical cloud provider data centers, instead of the edge location 303 infrastructure described herein.

As indicated herein, a cloud provider network 203 can be formed as a number of regions 306, where each region 306 represents a geographical area in which the cloud provider clusters data centers 309. Each region 306 can further include multiple (e.g., two or more) availability zones (AZs) connected to one another via a private high-speed network, for example, a fiber communication connection. An AZ may provide an isolated failure domain including one or more data center facilities with separate power, separate networking, and separate cooling from those in another AZ. Preferably, AZs within a region 306 are positioned far enough away from one another, such that a same natural disaster (or other failure-inducing event) should not affect or take more than one AZ offline at the same time. Customers can connect to an AZ of the cloud provider network via a publicly accessible network (e.g., the Internet, a cellular communication network).

The parenting of a given edge location 303 to an AZ or region 306 of the cloud provider network 203 can be based on a number of factors. One such parenting factor is data sovereignty. For example, to keep data originating from a communication network in one country within that country, the edge locations 303 deployed within that communication network can be parented to AZs or regions 306 within that country. Another factor is availability of services. For example, some edge locations 303 may have different hardware configurations, with the presence or absence of components such as local non-volatile storage for customer data (e.g., solid state drives), graphics accelerators, etc. Some AZs or regions 306 might lack the services to exploit those additional resources, thus, an edge location could be parented to an AZ or region 306 that supports the use of those resources. Another factor is the latency between the AZ or region 306 and the edge location 303. While the deployment of edge locations 303 within a communication network has latency benefits, those benefits might be negated by parenting an edge location 303 to a distant AZ or region 306 that introduces significant latency for the edge location 303 to region traffic. Accordingly, edge locations 303 are often parented to nearby (in terms of network latency) AZs or regions 306.

Additionally, the disclosed service can provide a private zone to run local applications within a cloud provider network. This private zone can be connected to and effectively part of a broader regional zone, and allows the customer to manage the private zone using the same APIs and tools as used in the cloud provider network. Like an availability zone, the private zone can be assigned a virtual private network subnet. An API can be used to create and assign subnets to all zones that the customer wishes to use, including the private zone and existing other zones. A management console may offer a simplified process for creating a private zone. Virtual machine instances and containers can be launched in the private zone just as in regional zones. Customer can configure a network gateway to define routes, assign IP addresses, set up network address translation (NAT), and so forth. Automatic scaling can be used to scale the capacity of virtual machine instances or containers as needed in the private zone. The same management and authentication APIs of the cloud provider network can be used within the private zone. In some cases, since cloud services available in the regional zone can be accessed remotely from private zones over a secure connection, these cloud services can be accessed without having to upgrade or modify the local deployment.

Turning now to FIG. 3B, shown is one example of a radio-based network 103a having a pluggable architecture for customizing data-processing network functions. In the radio-based network 103a, wireless devices 106 communicate with a radio access network 310 having an associated core network 313, which provides access to the network 121. One or more network functions 316 are executed in the core network 313, which may correspond to a cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A) or a provider substrate extension 224 (FIG. 2A) at an edge location 303 (FIG. 3A) of the cloud provider network 203.

The network function(s) 316 may correspond to a UPF, an SMF, an AMF, or another data-processing network function. The network function(s) 316 are in communication with one or more customized function plug-ins 319 executed in the core network 313. The customized function plug-ins 319 may be stock plug-ins or customer-provided plug-ins that perform some customized functionality extending beyond the basic functionality of the network function(s) 316 such as, for example, the functionality called for by a standard (e.g., the 5G standard). The functionality may incorporate encryption/decryption, compression/decompression, traffic shaping, enhanced QoS functionality, firewalling, intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, logging, deep-packet inspection, and so forth, that involves data processing of packets processed by the network function 316.

In one example, the network function 316 transfers the network traffic to the customized function plug-in(s) 319 for processing, while simultaneously forwarding the network traffic. In another example, the network function 316 transfers the network traffic to the customized function plug-in(s) 319 for processing, receives the processed (and possibly modified) network traffic from the customized function plug-in(s) 319, and then forwards the processed network traffic. The network traffic may correspond to packets received from the network 121 and to be forwarded to the wireless devices 106, or packets received from the wireless devices 106 and to be forwarded to other wireless devices 106 or to the network 121.

It is noted that the network traffic may be processed at a selected one of a plurality of stages within the network function 316 if a plurality of such stages are present. For example, a packet may be processed as soon as it arrives at the network function 316 at a pre-routing stage, a packet may be processed after a routing decision but before a traffic shaping decision and a marking decision, a packet may be processed after a routing decision and a traffic shaping decision but before a marking decision, or a packet may be processed after a routing decision, a traffic shaping decision, and a marking decision. Where multiple customized function plug-ins 319 are present and enabled, the customized function plug-ins 319 may process network traffic in parallel or sequentially according to a customer-defined or provider-defined order.

In another example, the network traffic may include a request from a wireless device 106 for a network address, and the customized function plug-in(s) 319 may implement a customized approach toward assigning the network address to the wireless device 106. In another example, the network traffic may include an authentication request from a wireless device 106, and the customized function plug-in(s) 319 may implement customized authentication logic.

Moving on to FIG. 3C, shown is one example of a radio-based network 103b that provides configurable data-processing network functions by way of integrated customizations. As compared to the radio-based network 103a (FIG. 3B), the network functions 316 integrate customizations that may be enabled by customers to become enabled customizations 322, while other integrated customizations that are disabled or inactive are shown as non-enabled customizations 323. For example, customers may check a box in a user interface or set a parameter value in a configuration file that enables an integrated customization in a network function 316 to perform functionality beyond that of the standard implementation of the network function 316. Multiple integrated customizations may be provided, which may be enabled simultaneously or serially in various cases. To illustrate, an enabled customization 322 may specify that network addresses that have already been assigned within a time period are not to be reassigned within the time period. By contrast, another enabled customization 322 may instead specify that the least recently used network address will be assigned.

Continuing to FIG. 3D, shown is one example of a radio-based network 103c that provides configurable data-processing network functions by way of different customized network function versions 325. The customized network function versions 325 may be curated by the cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A) as opposed to being customer-provided, though they may be selected and enabled by customers. The operation of the customized network function versions 325 may also be configured by customer-supplied parameters. A plurality of customized network function versions 325 may provide functionality beyond a standard implementation of a network function 316 (FIG. 3B). In one example, a customized network function version 325 may encrypt all traffic bound for the wireless devices 106 with a customer-provided encryption key. In another example, a customized network function version 325 may compress all network traffic bound for the wireless devices 106.

Turning now to FIG. 3E, shown is one example of a radio-based network 103d that provides configurable data-processing network functions by way of integrated customizations. As compared with the radio-based network 103a (FIG. 3B), an external service 328 is used to perform the customized function in lieu of a customized function plug-in 319 (FIG. 3B). The external service 328 may be executed on customer-owned hardware inside or outside the cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A) or on customer-operated hardware (such as a machine instance) within the cloud provider network 203. In some cases, the external service 328 may be operated for the customer by a third party.

With the external service 328, the network traffic inbound to the wireless devices 106 and/or outbound to the network 121 may be exported to the external service 328 for processing. In some cases, the network traffic may be exported to a plurality of external services 328. For example, the network traffic may be logged by the external service 328. In various implementations, the processed network traffic may be returned to the network function(s) 316 for further processing and/or forwarding. For example, the external service 328 may transcode video data being sent to the wireless devices 106 to a lower bitrate. In some scenarios, the network function 316 may rely upon the external service 328 to generate an output (e.g., a network address assignment, an authentication confirmation, etc.), which is then returned to the network function 316 to complete an action (e.g., assigning a network address, completing authentication, etc.).

With reference to FIG. 4, shown is a networked environment 400 according to various embodiments. The networked environment 400 includes a computing environment 403, one or more client devices 406, and one or more radio-based networks 103, which are in data communication with each other via a network 412. The network 412 includes, for example, the Internet, intranets, extranets, wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), wired networks, wireless networks, cable networks, satellite networks, or other suitable networks, etc., or any combination of two or more such networks.

The computing environment 403 may comprise, for example, a server computer or any other system providing computing capacity. Alternatively, the computing environment 403 may employ a plurality of computing devices that may be arranged, for example, in one or more server banks or computer banks or other arrangements. Such computing devices may be located in a single installation or may be distributed among many different geographical locations. For example, the computing environment 403 may include a plurality of computing devices that together may comprise a hosted computing resource, a grid computing resource, and/or any other distributed computing arrangement. In some cases, the computing environment 403 may correspond to an elastic computing resource where the allotted capacity of processing, network, storage, or other computing-related resources may vary over time. For example, the computing environment 403 may correspond to a cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A), where customers are billed according to their computing resource usage based on a utility computing model.

In some embodiments, the computing environment 403 may correspond to a virtualized private network within a physical network comprising virtual machine instances executed on physical computing hardware, e.g., by way of a hypervisor. The virtual machine instances and any containers running on these instances may be given network connectivity by way of virtualized network components enabled by physical network components, such as routers and switches.

Various applications and/or other functionality may be executed in the computing environment 403 according to various embodiments. Also, various data is stored in a data store 415 that is accessible to the computing environment 403. The data store 415 may be representative of a plurality of data stores 415 as can be appreciated. The data stored in the data store 415, for example, is associated with the operation of the various applications and/or functional entities described below.

The computing environment 403 as part of a cloud provider network offering utility computing services includes computing devices 418 and other types of computing devices 418. The computing devices 418 may correspond to different types of computing devices 418 and may have different computing architectures. The computing architectures may differ by utilizing processors having different architectures, such as x86, x86_64, ARM, Scalable Processor Architecture (SPARC), PowerPC, and so on. For example, some computing devices 418 may have x86 processors, while other computing devices 418 may have ARM processors. The computing devices 418 may differ also in hardware resources available, such as local storage, graphics processing units (GPUs), machine learning extensions, and other characteristics.

The computing devices 418 may have various forms of allocated computing capacity 421, which may include virtual machine (VM) instances, containers, serverless functions, and so forth. The VM instances may be instantiated from a VM image. To this end, customers may specify that a virtual machine instance should be launched in a particular type of computing device 418 as opposed to other types of computing devices 418. In various examples, one VM instance may be executed singularly on a particular computing device 418, or a plurality of VM instances may be executed on a particular computing device 418. Also, a particular computing device 418 may execute different types of VM instances, which may offer different quantities of resources available via the computing device 418. For example, some types of VM instances may offer more memory and processing capability than other types of VM instances.

The components executed on the computing environment 403, for example, include network functions 316, a network function customization service 424, a security analysis service 427, a sandboxed environment 430, and/or other components. Each of these components may be executed as allocated computing capacity 421 on computing devices 418 that may be located at cell sites, at customer sites, at local zone data centers, at region data centers, and so on. The network functions 316 may correspond to a UPF, an AMF, an SMF, or another function for a radio-based network 103, which may be defined by a standard employed by the radio-based network 103.

The network function customization service 424 is executed to facilitate customization of network functions 316 by customers. In this regard, the network function customization service 424 may generate user interfaces that enable users to select and enable additional customized functionality, and/or provide source code or binary code to implement additional customized functionality. Alternatively, the network function customization service 424 may support an application programming interface (API) to programmatically configure customized functionality. In another example, the network function customization service 424 may receive configuration files from users by file transfer protocol (FTP), email, web-based upload, and/or other approaches, to configure customized functionality.

The security analysis service 427 is executed to perform a security analysis on customer-provided, or untrusted, code used to implement network function 316 customizations. This may include performing a static analysis on the source code or binary code, and/or executing the code to perform a dynamic analysis. The security analysis may look for excessive resource consumption, malware signatures, inappropriate operations or function calls, or any other issue that may interfere with the operation of the network function 316 or other customers of the cloud provider network 203.

The sandboxed environment 430 may be executed to provide a protected environment for execution of untrusted code, such as customizations to network functions 316. In various implementations, the sandboxed environment 430 may limit access of the code to one or more computing resources of the computing environment 403, such as processing time, memory, data storage, hardware devices, etc. Thus, the sandboxed environment 430 may protect the computing environment 403 from intentionally malicious code and/or defective code that results in excessive resource consumption. The sandboxed environment 430 may also ensure that the code does not access confidential, protected, or sensitive resources that should not be accessed by customers or exfiltrated.

The data stored in the data store 415 includes, for example, one or more network plans 439, one or more cellular topologies 442, one or more spectrum assignments 445, device data 448, one or more RBN metrics 451, customer billing data 454, radio unit configuration data 457, antenna configuration data 460, network function (NF) configuration data 463, one or more network function workloads 466, one or more customer workloads 469, one or more customer-provided network function customizations 471, one or more stock network function customizations 472, one or more security parameters 473, and potentially other data.

The network plan 439 is a specification of a radio-based network 103 to be deployed for a customer. For example, a network plan 439 may include premises locations or geographic areas to be covered, a number of cells, device identification information and permissions, a desired maximum network latency, a desired bandwidth or network throughput for one or more classes of devices, one or more quality of service parameters for applications or services, and/or other parameters that can be used to create a radio-based network 103. A customer may manually specify one or more of these parameters via a user interface. One or more of the parameters may be prepopulated as default parameters. In some cases, a network plan 439 may be generated for a customer based at least in part on automated site surveys using unmanned aerial vehicles. Values of the parameters that define the network plan 439 may be used as a basis for a cloud service provider billing the customer under a utility computing model. For example, the customer may be billed a higher amount for lower latency targets and/or higher bandwidth targets in a service-level agreement (SLA), and the customer can be charged on a per-device basis, a per-cell basis, based on a geographic area served, based on spectrum availability, etc.

The cellular topology 442 includes an arrangement of a plurality of cells for a customer that takes into account reuse of frequency spectrum where possible given the location of the cells. The cellular topology 442 may be automatically generated given a site survey. In some cases, the number of cells in the cellular topology 442 may be automatically determined based on a desired geographic area to be covered, availability of backhaul connectivity at various sites, signal propagation, available frequency spectrum, and/or on other parameters.

The spectrum assignments 445 include frequency spectrum that is available to be allocated for radio-based networks 103, as well as frequency spectrum that is current allocated to radio-based networks 103. The frequency spectrum may include spectrum that is publicly accessible without restriction, spectrum that is individually owned or leased by customers, spectrum that is owned or leased by the provider, spectrum that is free to use but requires reservation, and so on.

The device data 448 corresponds to data describing wireless devices 106 (FIG. 1A) that are permitted to connect to the radio-based network 103. This device data 448 includes corresponding users, account information, billing information, data plan, permitted applications or uses, an indication of whether the wireless device 106 is mobile or fixed, a location, a current cell, a network address, device identifiers (e.g., International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, Equipment Serial Number (ESN), Media Access Control (MAC) address, Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) number, etc.), and so on.

The RBN metrics 451 include various metrics or statistics that indicate the performance or health of the radio-based network 103. Such RBN metrics 451 may include bandwidth metrics, dropped packet metrics, signal strength metrics, latency metrics, and so on. The RBN metrics 451 may be aggregated on a per-device basis, a per-cell basis, a per-customer basis, etc.

The customer billing data 454 specifies charges that the customer is to incur for the operation of the radio-based network 103 for the customer by the provider. The charges may include fixed costs based upon equipment deployed to the customer and/or usage costs based upon utilization. In some cases, the customer may purchase the equipment up-front and may be charged only for bandwidth or backend network costs. In other cases, the customer may incur no up-front costs and may be charged purely based on utilization. With the equipment being provided to the customer based on a utility computing model, the cloud service provider may choose an optimal configuration of equipment in order to meet customer target performance metrics while avoiding overprovisioning of unnecessary hardware.

The radio unit configuration data 457 may correspond to configuration settings for radio units deployed in radio-based networks 103. Such settings may include frequencies to be used, protocols to be used, modulation parameters, bandwidth, network routing and/or backhaul configuration, and so on.

The antenna configuration data 460 may correspond to configuration settings for antennas, to include frequencies to be used, azimuth, vertical or horizontal orientation, beam tilt, and/or other parameters that may be controlled automatically (e.g., by network-connected motors and controls on the antennas) or manually by directing a user to mount the antenna in a certain way or make a physical change to the antenna.

The network function configuration data 463 corresponds to configuration settings that configure the operation of various network functions 316 (FIGS. 3B-3C and 3E) for the radio-based network 103. In various embodiments, the network functions 316 may be deployed in VM instances located in computing devices 418 that are at cell sites, at customer aggregation sites, or in data centers remotely located from the customer. Non-limiting examples of network functions 316 may include an access and mobility management function (AMF), a session management function (SMF), a user plane function (UPF), a policy control function, an authentication server function, a unified data management function, an application function, a network exposure function, a network function repository, a network slice selection function, and/or others. The network function configuration data 463 may include configuration parameters that, in various implementations, enable or disable built-in customizations in a network function 316, select a particular version from a plurality of customized versions of a network function 316, enable a customer-provided plug-in, enable redirection of network traffic from the network function 316 to a customer-operated service 328 (FIG. 3E), and so on. The network function configuration data 463 may include data that is used in customized processing in a network function 316, such as cryptographic keys, codecs, intrusion detection rulesets, traffic shaping rulesets, network address assignment rulesets, intrusion prevention rulesets, authentication rulesets, and so forth.

The network function workloads 466 correspond to machine images, containers, or functions to be launched in the allocated computing capacity 421 to perform one or more of the network functions 316. The network function workloads 466 may include network functions 316 that support a pluggable architecture (FIGS. 3B and 3E), network functions 316 that include enabled customizations 322 (FIG. 3C) and/or non-enabled customizations 323 (FIG. 3C) to perform customized functions, and customized network function versions 325 (FIG. 3D) that perform customized functions.

The customer workloads 469 correspond to machine images, containers, or functions of the customer that may be executed alongside or in place of the network function workloads 466 in the allocated computing capacity 421. For example, the customer workloads 469 may provide or support a customer application or service.

The customer-provided network function customizations 471 may correspond to plug-ins developed by the customer or a third party and uploaded to the computing environment 403 in order to provide custom functionality to network functions 316. The stock network function customizations 472 may correspond to plug-ins or different customized network function versions 325 that are offered by the cloud service provider or approved third parties for use in customizing the functionality provided by network functions 316.

The security parameters 473 may correspond to parameters that configure the security analysis service 427 and/or the sandboxed environment 430 in order to recognize problematic code or to limit access of untrusted network function customizations to resources. For example, the security parameters 473 may include processor time limits, memory consumption limits, data storage limits, disallowed system calls, disallowed service calls, malware definitions, and/or other parameters.

The client device 406 is representative of a plurality of client devices 406 that may be coupled to the network 412. The client device 406 may comprise, for example, a processor-based system such as a computer system. Such a computer system may be embodied in the form of a desktop computer, a laptop computer, personal digital assistants, cellular telephones, smartphones, set-top boxes, music players, web pads, tablet computer systems, game consoles, electronic book readers, smartwatches, head mounted displays, voice interface devices, or other devices. The client device 406 may include a display comprising, for example, one or more devices such as liquid crystal display (LCD) displays, gas plasma-based flat panel displays, organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays, electrophoretic ink (E ink) displays, LCD projectors, or other types of display devices, etc.

The client device 406 may be configured to execute various applications such as a client application 436 and/or other applications. The client application 436 may be executed in a client device 406, for example, to access network content served up by the computing environment 403 and/or other servers, thereby rendering a user interface on the display. To this end, the client application 436 may comprise, for example, a browser, a dedicated application, etc., and the user interface may comprise a network page, an application screen, etc. The client device 406 may be configured to execute applications beyond the client application 436 such as, for example, email applications, social networking applications, word processors, spreadsheets, and/or other applications.

Referring next to FIG. 5, shown is a flowchart that provides one example of the operation of a portion of the network function customization service 424 according to various embodiments. It is understood that the flowchart of FIG. 5 provides merely an example of the many different types of functional arrangements that may be employed to implement the operation of the portion of the network function customization service 424 as described herein. As an alternative, the flowchart of FIG. 5 may be viewed as depicting an example of elements of a method implemented in the computing environment 403 (FIG. 4) according to one or more embodiments.

Beginning with box 503, the network function customization service 424 operates a data-processing network function 316 (FIG. 4) for a radio-based network 103 (FIG. 4) on behalf of a customer. Such a network function 316 may correspond to an AMF, an SMF, a UPF, or another type of network function 316. The network function 316 may be operated by a cloud service provider in a regional data center 309 (FIG. 3A) of a cloud provider network 203 (FIG. 2A), or potentially in a provider substrate extension 224 (FIG. 2A) of the cloud provider network 203 at an edge location 303 (FIG. 3A). The network function 316 may perform conventional processing according to functionality outlined in a standard utilized by the radio-based network (e.g., a 3GPP 5G standard).

In box 506, the network function customization service 424 authenticates a customer user at a client device 406 (FIG. 4) for configuration access for the radio-based network 103. For example, the customer user may be required to provide a username, password, one-time code, security token, and/or other credentials. Such credentials may be provided using a client application 436 (FIG. 4) via a web-based form, an application user interface, or via an API.

In box 509, the network function customization service 424 receives input data from the customer to configure the data-processing network function 316 to perform a customized function. The input data may be provided by way of an API or a user interface. In a first example, a customer user uploads via a user interface one or more customized function plug-ins 319 (FIG. 3B), which may be developed by the customer or by a third party. The customer user may also select from one or more customized function plug-ins 319 developed by the cloud service provider or a third party and which are made available for customer use.

In a second example, a customer user uploads input data corresponding to a selection of customizations to be enabled customizations 322 (FIG. 3C) and/or a selection of customizations to be non-enabled customizations 323 (FIG. 3C), where the customizations are integrated with the network functions 316 and enabled or disabled based on parameters supplied by customer input. For instance, the customer user may select one or more checkboxes on a user interface to select or deselect customizations. For customizations that are mutually exclusive, the user interface may use radio buttons to ensure that only one of the mutually exclusive customizations is selected.

In a third example, the customer may select a particular version from among a plurality of customized network function versions 325 (FIG. 3D) to be enabled in lieu of a standard network function 316. In a fourth example, the customer may specify configuration parameters for the network function 316 to communicate with a customer-operated service 328 (FIG. 3E) that performs the customized functionality. Such parameters may include network address, port, type of network traffic to be forwarded, percentage or fraction of network traffic to be forwarded if less than the entire network traffic, etc.

Additionally, the input data from the customer may include codecs, cryptographic keys, rulesets, and/or other data that enable the customized processing to be performed, whether in customized network function versions 325, customized function plug-ins 319, or enabled customizations 322. The input data may specify at what stage in the network function 316 that the customized processing should occur, if there are multiple stages. In some cases, the input data may include uniform resource locators (URLs) or links whereby the network function customization service 424 can download customized function plug-ins 319 or other configuration data. The customer user may also submit the customized function plug-ins 319 or configuration data by email, text message, or another form of communication.

In box 512, the network function customization service 424 invokes the security analysis service 427 (FIG. 4) to perform a security analysis on any untrusted code provided in the input data. This security analysis may be controlled by the security parameters 473 (FIG. 4) and may include static analysis in which source code or binary code is scanned for possible security issues and/or a dynamic analysis whereby code is executed to determine whether it exhibits security issues. In some scenarios, the code corresponds to code that has been previously examined (e.g., a plug-in developed by a third party and already approved by the cloud service provider for use). In such cases, the security analysis service 427 may verify a checksum or signature of the code to determine that it has already been examined and approved for use.

In box 515, the network function customization service 424 configures the data-processing network function 316 to perform the customized function when the data-processing network unction 316 is executed in the radio-based network 103. The configuration is performed in response to the input data received from the customer user. In a first example, this may include instantiating a customized function plug-in 319 and configuring the network function 316 to route network traffic to the customized function plug-in 319. The customized function plug-in 319 may be configured to be executed in a sandboxed environment 430 (FIG. 4) in order to limit access to one or more computing resources of the computing environment 403. In a second example, this may include enabling or disabling customizations within a network function 316. In a third example, this may include swapping out a network function 316 with a different customized network function version 325. In a fourth example, this may involve configuring the network function 316 to redirect network traffic to the customer-operated service 328.

The customized function may be unspecified in a standard that specifies the network function 316. In one scenario, the network function 316 is a UPF, and the customized function corresponds to one or more of an encryption function, a decryption function, a logging function, a traffic shaping function, a quality-of-service modification function, an intrusion detection function, a compression function, a decompression function, or an intrusion prevention function. The customized function may use deep-packet inspection to examine a packet payload in a way that standard network functions 316 are not equipped to examine packets.

In another scenario, the network function 316 is an AMF, and the customized function corresponds to an authentication function. That is to say, the customized AMF may perform authentication in a customer-defined way, such as requiring different types of security credentials or multiple authentication factors (e.g., biometric, possession, and knowledge). An AMF may also be customized to provide configurable admission control. For example, a radio-based network 103 serving a stadium or convention center may be designed with a particular limit on the number of wireless devices 106 in order to ensure service quality. The AMF may be customized to enforce that limit and prevent additional wireless devices 106 from connecting, but the AMF may also be customized to prioritize or enable wireless devices 106 of first responders and/or security personnel to connect to the radio-based network 103 in spite of the limit.

In another scenario, the network function 316 is a SMF, and the customized function corresponds to a function for assigning network addresses to user equipment in the radio-based network 103. For example, the SMF may be configured by the customer to control how internet protocol (IP) addresses are reused within an allocation. An SMF may also be customized with rules to assign wireless devices 106 to different UPFs. In one example, wireless devices 106 that have small displays (e.g., smartwatches or smartphones) may be assigned to a customized UPF that performs transcoding of video data to optimize the video for small displays, while wireless devices 106 that have larger displays (e.g., tablets) may be assigned to a normal UPF that is not customized to implement the transcoding. In another example, wireless devices 106 associated with a first group of users may be assigned to a UPF that is customized to perform logging, while wireless devices 106 associated with a second group of users may be assigned to a UPF that does not perform the logging.

In some cases, the plug-in or other code that implements the customization may need to be executed on specific hardware provisioned in the computing environment 403. For example, the code may require a graphics processing unit (GPU), a field programmable gate array (FPGA), a specific type of processor (e.g., ARM or x86), or other hardware.

In some implementations, in configuring the network function 316, the network function customization service 424 may set up a parallel network function 316 running side-by-side with the previous network function 316 with the updated configuration and begin redirecting network traffic to the parallel network function 316, such that existing network flows are not interrupted by the configuration change. In such cases, if problems are detected in the customization, the network traffic can be redirected to the previous network function 316. After successful testing of the customized network function 316, operation of the previous network function 316 may be discontinued. Thereafter, the operation of the portion of the network function customization service 424 ends.

Moving on to FIG. 6, shown is a flowchart that provides one example of the operation of a portion of a network function 316 according to various embodiments. It is understood that the flowchart of FIG. 6 provides merely an example of the many different types of functional arrangements that may be employed to implement the operation of the portion of the network function 316 as described herein. As an alternative, the flowchart of FIG. 6 may be viewed as depicting an example of elements of a method implemented in the computing environment 403 (FIG. 4) according to one or more embodiments.

Beginning with box 603, the network function 316 receives network traffic, which may be inbound network traffic directed to one or more wireless devices 106 (FIG. 1A) or may be outbound network traffic from one or more wireless devices 106 to a network 121 (FIG. 1A).

In box 606, the network function 316 then performs processing on the network traffic, which can include, for example, QoS processing, metering, and/or other types of processing as may be conventionally performed in the network function 316 according to a standard.

In box 609, the network function 316 causes custom processing to be performed on the network traffic, such as customer-defined arbitrary processing not defined by the standard. This may involve processing the network traffic by a plug-in, by integrated customized processing logic, and/or routing the network traffic to a customer-operated service 328 (FIG. 3E).

In box 612, the network function 316 forwards the network traffic to a next destination, such as toward a network 121 or to one or more wireless devices 106. In some cases, the network traffic forwarded may be that the same as received or initially processed by the network function 316. In other cases, the network traffic forwarded may be modified or processed network traffic generated by the customer-operated service 328, a customized function plug-in 319, or other customized processing logic of the network function 316. Although FIG. 6 depicts the customized processing as occurring after the normal processing of the network function 316, the customized processing may in other cases occur at any stage of processing in the network function 316. Thereafter, the operation of the portion of the network function 316 ends.

With reference to FIG. 7, shown is a schematic block diagram of the computing environment 403 according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The computing environment 403 includes one or more computing devices 700. Each computing device 700 includes at least one processor circuit, for example, having a processor 703 and a memory 706, both of which are coupled to a local interface 709. To this end, each computing device 700 may comprise, for example, at least one server computer or like device. The local interface 709 may comprise, for example, a data bus with an accompanying address/control bus or other bus structure as can be appreciated.

Stored in the memory 706 are both data and several components that are executable by the processor 703. In particular, stored in the memory 706 and executable by the processor 703 are the network functions 316, the network function customization service 424, the security analysis service 427, the sandboxed environment 430, and potentially other applications. Also stored in the memory 706 may be a data store 415 and other data. In addition, an operating system may be stored in the memory 706 and executable by the processor 703.

It is understood that there may be other applications that are stored in the memory 706 and are executable by the processor 703 as can be appreciated. Where any component discussed herein is implemented in the form of software, any one of a number of programming languages may be employed such as, for example, C, C++, C#, Objective C, Java®, JavaScript®, Perl, PHP, Visual Basic®, Python®, Ruby, Flash®, or other programming languages.

A number of software components are stored in the memory 706 and are executable by the processor 703. In this respect, the term “executable” means a program file that is in a form that can ultimately be run by the processor 703. Examples of executable programs may be, for example, a compiled program that can be translated into machine code in a format that can be loaded into a random access portion of the memory 706 and run by the processor 703, source code that may be expressed in proper format such as object code that is capable of being loaded into a random access portion of the memory 706 and executed by the processor 703, or source code that may be interpreted by another executable program to generate instructions in a random access portion of the memory 706 to be executed by the processor 703, etc. An executable program may be stored in any portion or component of the memory 706 including, for example, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), hard drive, solid-state drive, USB flash drive, memory card, optical disc such as compact disc (CD) or digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk, magnetic tape, or other memory components.

The memory 706 is defined herein as including both volatile and nonvolatile memory and data storage components. Volatile components are those that do not retain data values upon loss of power. Nonvolatile components are those that retain data upon a loss of power. Thus, the memory 706 may comprise, for example, random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), hard disk drives, solid-state drives, USB flash drives, memory cards accessed via a memory card reader, floppy disks accessed via an associated floppy disk drive, optical discs accessed via an optical disc drive, magnetic tapes accessed via an appropriate tape drive, and/or other memory components, or a combination of any two or more of these memory components. In addition, the RAM may comprise, for example, static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), or magnetic random access memory (MRAM) and other such devices. The ROM may comprise, for example, a programmable read-only memory (PROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), or other like memory device.

Also, the processor 703 may represent multiple processors 703 and/or multiple processor cores and the memory 706 may represent multiple memories 706 that operate in parallel processing circuits, respectively. In such a case, the local interface 709 may be an appropriate network that facilitates communication between any two of the multiple processors 703, between any processor 703 and any of the memories 706, or between any two of the memories 706, etc. The local interface 709 may comprise additional systems designed to coordinate this communication, including, for example, performing load balancing. The processor 703 may be of electrical or of some other available construction.

Although the network functions 316, the network function customization service 424, the security analysis service 427, the sandboxed environment 430, and other various systems described herein may be embodied in software or code executed by general purpose hardware as discussed above, as an alternative the same may also be embodied in dedicated hardware or a combination of software/general purpose hardware and dedicated hardware. If embodied in dedicated hardware, each can be implemented as a circuit or state machine that employs any one of or a combination of a number of technologies. These technologies may include, but are not limited to, discrete logic circuits having logic gates for implementing various logic functions upon an application of one or more data signals, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) having appropriate logic gates, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), or other components, etc. Such technologies are generally well known by those skilled in the art and, consequently, are not described in detail herein.

The flowcharts of FIGS. 5 and 6 show the functionality and operation of an implementation of portions of the network function 316 and the network function customization service 424. If embodied in software, each block may represent a module, segment, or portion of code that comprises program instructions to implement the specified logical function(s). The program instructions may be embodied in the form of source code that comprises human-readable statements written in a programming language or machine code that comprises numerical instructions recognizable by a suitable execution system such as a processor 703 in a computer system or other system. The machine code may be converted from the source code, etc. If embodied in hardware, each block may represent a circuit or a number of interconnected circuits to implement the specified logical function(s).

Although the flowcharts of FIGS. 5 and 6 show a specific order of execution, it is understood that the order of execution may differ from that which is depicted. For example, the order of execution of two or more blocks may be scrambled relative to the order shown. Also, two or more blocks shown in succession in FIGS. 5 and 6 may be executed concurrently or with partial concurrence. Further, in some embodiments, one or more of the blocks shown in FIGS. 5 and 6 may be skipped or omitted. In addition, any number of counters, state variables, warning semaphores, or messages might be added to the logical flow described herein, for purposes of enhanced utility, accounting, performance measurement, or providing troubleshooting aids, etc. It is understood that all such variations are within the scope of the present disclosure.

Also, any logic or application described herein, including the network functions 316, the network function customization service 424, the security analysis service 427, and the sandboxed environment 430, that comprises software or code can be embodied in any non-transitory computer-readable medium for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system such as, for example, a processor 703 in a computer system or other system. In this sense, the logic may comprise, for example, statements including instructions and declarations that can be fetched from the computer-readable medium and executed by the instruction execution system. In the context of the present disclosure, a “computer-readable medium” can be any medium that can contain, store, or maintain the logic or application described herein for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system.

The computer-readable medium can comprise any one of many physical media such as, for example, magnetic, optical, or semiconductor media. More specific examples of a suitable computer-readable medium would include, but are not limited to, magnetic tapes, magnetic floppy diskettes, magnetic hard drives, memory cards, solid-state drives, USB flash drives, or optical discs. Also, the computer-readable medium may be a random access memory (RAM) including, for example, static random access memory (SRAM) and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), or magnetic random access memory (MRAM). In addition, the computer-readable medium may be a read-only memory (ROM), a programmable read-only memory (PROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM), an electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), or other type of memory device.

Further, any logic or application described herein, including the network functions 316, the network function customization service 424, the security analysis service 427, and the sandboxed environment 430, may be implemented and structured in a variety of ways. For example, one or more applications described may be implemented as modules or components of a single application. Further, one or more applications described herein may be executed in shared or separate computing devices or a combination thereof. For example, a plurality of the applications described herein may execute in the same computing device 700, or in multiple computing devices 700 in the same computing environment 403.

Disjunctive language such as the phrase “at least one of X, Y, or Z,” unless specifically stated otherwise, is otherwise understood with the context as used in general to present that an item, term, etc., may be either X, Y, or Z, or any combination thereof (e.g., X, Y, and/or Z). Thus, such disjunctive language is not generally intended to, and should not, imply that certain embodiments require at least one of X, at least one of Y, or at least one of Z to each be present.

It should be emphasized that the above-described embodiments of the present disclosure are merely possible examples of implementations set forth for a clear understanding of the principles of the disclosure. Many variations and modifications may be made to the above-described embodiment(s) without departing substantially from the spirit and principles of the disclosure. All such modifications and variations are intended to be included herein within the scope of this disclosure and protected by the following claims.

CUSTOMIZABLE DATA-PROCESSING NETWORK FUNCTIONS FOR RADIO-BASED NETWORKS

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