The number of mobile Internet users has skyrocketed and with the advent of the Internet of things we are reaching the limits of the current telecommunications standard 4G. The improvements and goals set for the next standard, 5G, are not trivial and research is in progress to reach them. Improvements across all involved technology fields is needed.
In this thesis we present a novel mobile network architecture-coreless mobile networks- and develop state management concepts, which we base on the analysis of the current 4G/LTE architecture. The coreless mobile network focuses on the redesign of the state management in mobile networks, more precisely, removal of state from 4G core network entities into an eternal ubiquitous data store. The architecture follows trends in current research, particularly network function virtualisation, software defined networking and mobile edge computing.
The new network architecture requires a data storage solution that is capable of functioning as the state store in the mobile network environment. Thus, we present an overview of promising data stores and evaluate their suitability. Further in this thesis we present the results of benchmarking the Apache Geode data store, as an example of a state management solution that could be leveraged in realising the coreless mobile network architecture. We discovered that the Apache Geode data store is, depending on configuration, capable of delivering the data model, consistency, high availability, scaling, throughput and latency that are required in our proposed architecture.
ACM Computing Classification System (CCS):
- Information systems ~ Distributed storage
- Information systems ~ Hierarchical storage management
- Networks ~ Middle boxes / network appliances
- Networks ~ Mobile networks
