6 ms·

Open source 5G core network

168 points by polymorph1sm 6y ago

castratikron 6y ago
So will this let me run a 5G baseband? I've read about Osmocom but I've never tried it out.
- oddeyed 6y ago
  Not quite, this is the "core network" which handles things like handset authz/authn, billing, base station attachement etc. A 5G basestation is called a gNB, and a handset is called a UE. This project doesn't involve the radio interface of 5G, so neither of those are included. There's another comment on the post outlining how you might go about standing up an actual network using this.
Jhsto 6y ago
For those interested, this project seems to be a rewrite of https://nextepc.org/ https://nextepc.org/ into Go. Alternative projects include https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma and https://github.com/openairinterface https://github.com/openairinterface. You can start your own telenetwork with these projects (but of course doing such would be highly illegal without a spectrum license), but first, you need a gNB or eNodeB which is lingo for a base station. It is possible to buy an SDR and use software like https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE to make the SDR receive and broadcast LTE/5G connections. After this, you need to have blank SIM cards to code. For example, this post instructs how to do so: https://cyberloginit.com/2018/05/03/build-a-lte-network-with-srslte-and-program-your-own-usim-card.html https://cyberloginit.com/2018/05/03/build-a-lte-network-with.... You might also consider writing eSIMs https://github.com/bagyenda/njiwa https://github.com/bagyenda/njiwa. After this, you should be able to use a commercial phone to connect to the network. In general, these networks function quite well even on commodity hardware. Some tests I worked on produced end-to-end latency of around 20ms on LTE, and throughput of around 7MB/s. This was using NextEPC on a 400 euro computer with a 50 euro router and a Nokia base station. Further, it was possible to make the system to work in a Heroku like manner by exposing PaaS endpoints and running Kubernetes in the access network: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Open-source-RANs-in-Practice%3A-an-Over-The-Air-for-Haavisto-Arif/38aa0fcd59646de9cf54fdae812349def01fb02a https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Open-source-RANs-in-Pr... I think it's quite likely that sooner or later we will have 5G networks with intra-services running as edge-services, providing us low-latency. It's worth noting that with the latest LTE versions 5G and LTE access latency is virtually the same. The real latency-optimization would be, at least to my perspective, to allow software to be deployed _into_ these cellular networks to minimize network hops.
- newhouseb 6y ago
  I'm not an expert, but there are variants of LTE and 5G (LTE-U and 5G NR-U) that support operating in the unlicensed 5Ghz band. That said, I'm not sure a commercial handset would connect to anything in that range. You could probably get an SDR-based UE (UE is telecom-speak for "thing that connects to a cell network") to work.
  - Jhsto 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm not an expert either, but there are initiatives to this as well. One such initiative is Nokia Kuha: https://www.kuha.io/ https://www.kuha.io/ The problem is exactly what you described: there are currently no commercial UE or base stations. So yeah, I suppose one is supposed to use SDR for the 5Ghz band.
    - sdjkfgsdjkfghjh 6y ago
      That site does not load here. I get a CSP error. sigh, nokia. https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-network/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-ne... is this the same? there is zero information about nokia kuha! interesting if this can hold more 24/7 broadband clients than wifimax et al.
      - Jhsto 6y ago
        It seems to be the same thing. The use-case displayed on Nokia's website matches to one of the blog-posts available on kuha.io
        sdjkfgsdjkfghjh 6y ago
        thanks, it's loading here now. It seems that this is aimed exclusively at operators that already have the infrastructure to issue SIM cards et al, and communities that are barred from deploying their own infrastructure but willing to pay for it. A weird use case but clearly aimed at US and AU markets I'd guess. You need a community that will want to front the cost of laying fiber, and then instead of distributing or starting a small ISP/coop will give that new termination to a telecom giant who will plug this device into their existing billing network to provision their new subscribers with access under the existing plans costs.
rob-olmos 6y ago
Somewhat related recent curiosity: Is there anything new about 5G tower/backhaul infrastructure for edge computing that wasn't already feasible for 4G?
- g_p 6y ago
  Nothing hugely different to "late stage 4G" (Release 14). The main difference with 5G (that was available in Rel14 but not widely used by anyone) is control and user plane separation, which means some network traffic can leave the user plane at the base station, and go elsewhere, rather than be routed all the way back to the core network. That enables edge computing by allowing traffic for the edge computing node to be routed to the local edge node directly, without it going down the backhaul. This is very much a software change though in the implementation of the base station.
  - foobiekr 6y ago
    exactly, control-userplane separation is the primary differentiator for "5g." the whole point is to eliminate backhaul and allow closer CDNs and caches..
    - martinald 6y ago
      Is it? So Netflix is going to install a massive rack of storage in every cell tower, with expensive power and cooling and risk of vandalism and theft? Even if you cached the enterity of netflix, it's still only 10% of Internet traffic. Backhaul is becoming less and less of a problem as more and more sites get fibre backhaul. Point to point links can easily do 10gig/sec now even if they don't have fibre (to another tower with fibre). That is almost certainly as much if not more than the total capacity of most cell towers even with a stupendous amount of spectrum allocated.
      - foobiekr 6y ago
        The userplane doesn't run on the cell tower. The mobile network backhaul is multiple stages, and the tower is just the first hop. The problem with backhaul isn't the availability of fiber, it's the _concentration of bandwidth_.
chvid 6y ago
Is this really what constitutes a "5G core network"? Does it mean that I can buy Huawei for the rest of it and set it up in the UK?
- g_p 6y ago
  This is a few components that make up the very baseline of some aspects of a standalone 5G core. If you want to add commercial base stations to it, you'll find you're missing a few non-standardised things missing from all "open source" solutions - you'd need base station orchestration and control, to handle configuring and managing the base stations and getting them to behave in the ways you want. For one or two base stations you might cope without it, if you can figure out how to configure the radios, and they happen to work. But generally, there's a load of integration to be done that isn't part of the standards, and that you'll need in addition to this. You'll also need to handle scaling up and clustering some of the components that need to scale up with traffic.
ComodoHacker 6y ago
Can't find where COVID-19 infection code is. Is it not implemented yet?
- 14k12j41j211 6y ago
  Let's hope nobody finds out about Presidential Alerts. Basically, it lets you send Tweets to any mobile user.
  - g_p 6y ago
    Fairly straightforward to use these in other core networks. Not sure if this one implements the signalling for it. Fun fact though - if a phone is without signal on its home network, it will attempt to join any valid 3GPP network it sees, and the cell broadcast/emergency alert will be triggered on the handset (even without a valid SIM) - no authentication takes place.
    - 14k12j41j211 6y ago
      I think this vulnerability potentially has the biggest real-world impact. This has been shown in a couple of proof-of-concepts… Merging this into public repos would have zero positive impact, I think.
      - g_p 6y ago
        I'm inclined to agree with you there. Anyone that wanted to do it could figure it out anyway from the standards docs and broadcast the right data in the SIBs, but it is probably better not available as a "click and run" type setup. Although in saying that, this is unlikely to change any time soon, as the idea of CB/PWS is to provide an emergency message that can be highly time sensitive in some scenarios (earthquake, tsunami, etc.) without delays due to authentication etc. Failing to show the message could be higher risk than showing a false message in a very localised area (based on what someone with an SDR can send.)
tpmx 6y ago
This won't have a chance to win unless e.g. Cisco/Google/Apple/FB somehow decides to fund a few thousand developers each yearly. And they won't do that unless there's clear incentive for them. In a way I really hope they won't. How could anything good come out of that? From an engineering perspective: the software stack is conceptually (if you squint enough) a bit like webkit/chromium, but on top of that you also need cutting edge radio/antenna development.

168 points by polymorph1sm 6y ago

castratikron 6y ago

So will this let me run a 5G baseband? I've read about Osmocom but I've never tried it out.

oddeyed 6y ago
Not quite, this is the "core network" which handles things like handset authz/authn, billing, base station attachement etc. A 5G basestation is called a gNB, and a handset is called a UE. This project doesn't involve the radio interface of 5G, so neither of those are included. There's another comment on the post outlining how you might go about standing up an actual network using this.

Jhsto 6y ago

For those interested, this project seems to be a rewrite of https://nextepc.org/ https://nextepc.org/ into Go. Alternative projects include https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma and https://github.com/openairinterface https://github.com/openairinterface. You can start your own telenetwork with these projects (but of course doing such would be highly illegal without a spectrum license), but first, you need a gNB or eNodeB which is lingo for a base station. It is possible to buy an SDR and use software like https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE https://github.com/srsLTE/srsLTE to make the SDR receive and broadcast LTE/5G connections. After this, you need to have blank SIM cards to code. For example, this post instructs how to do so: https://cyberloginit.com/2018/05/03/build-a-lte-network-with-srslte-and-program-your-own-usim-card.html https://cyberloginit.com/2018/05/03/build-a-lte-network-with.... You might also consider writing eSIMs https://github.com/bagyenda/njiwa https://github.com/bagyenda/njiwa. After this, you should be able to use a commercial phone to connect to the network. In general, these networks function quite well even on commodity hardware. Some tests I worked on produced end-to-end latency of around 20ms on LTE, and throughput of around 7MB/s. This was using NextEPC on a 400 euro computer with a 50 euro router and a Nokia base station. Further, it was possible to make the system to work in a Heroku like manner by exposing PaaS endpoints and running Kubernetes in the access network: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Open-source-RANs-in-Practice%3A-an-Over-The-Air-for-Haavisto-Arif/38aa0fcd59646de9cf54fdae812349def01fb02a https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Open-source-RANs-in-Pr... I think it's quite likely that sooner or later we will have 5G networks with intra-services running as edge-services, providing us low-latency. It's worth noting that with the latest LTE versions 5G and LTE access latency is virtually the same. The real latency-optimization would be, at least to my perspective, to allow software to be deployed _into_ these cellular networks to minimize network hops.

newhouseb 6y ago
I'm not an expert, but there are variants of LTE and 5G (LTE-U and 5G NR-U) that support operating in the unlicensed 5Ghz band. That said, I'm not sure a commercial handset would connect to anything in that range. You could probably get an SDR-based UE (UE is telecom-speak for "thing that connects to a cell network") to work.
- Jhsto 6y ago
  Yeah, I'm not an expert either, but there are initiatives to this as well. One such initiative is Nokia Kuha: https://www.kuha.io/ https://www.kuha.io/ The problem is exactly what you described: there are currently no commercial UE or base stations. So yeah, I suppose one is supposed to use SDR for the 5Ghz band.
  - sdjkfgsdjkfghjh 6y ago
    That site does not load here. I get a CSP error. sigh, nokia. https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-network/ https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-ne... is this the same? there is zero information about nokia kuha! interesting if this can hold more 24/7 broadband clients than wifimax et al.
    - Jhsto 6y ago
      It seems to be the same thing. The use-case displayed on Nokia's website matches to one of the blog-posts available on kuha.io
      - sdjkfgsdjkfghjh 6y ago
        thanks, it's loading here now. It seems that this is aimed exclusively at operators that already have the infrastructure to issue SIM cards et al, and communities that are barred from deploying their own infrastructure but willing to pay for it. A weird use case but clearly aimed at US and AU markets I'd guess. You need a community that will want to front the cost of laying fiber, and then instead of distributing or starting a small ISP/coop will give that new termination to a telecom giant who will plug this device into their existing billing network to provision their new subscribers with access under the existing plans costs.

rob-olmos 6y ago

Somewhat related recent curiosity: Is there anything new about 5G tower/backhaul infrastructure for edge computing that wasn't already feasible for 4G?

g_p 6y ago
Nothing hugely different to "late stage 4G" (Release 14). The main difference with 5G (that was available in Rel14 but not widely used by anyone) is control and user plane separation, which means some network traffic can leave the user plane at the base station, and go elsewhere, rather than be routed all the way back to the core network. That enables edge computing by allowing traffic for the edge computing node to be routed to the local edge node directly, without it going down the backhaul. This is very much a software change though in the implementation of the base station.
- foobiekr 6y ago
  exactly, control-userplane separation is the primary differentiator for "5g." the whole point is to eliminate backhaul and allow closer CDNs and caches..
  - martinald 6y ago
    Is it? So Netflix is going to install a massive rack of storage in every cell tower, with expensive power and cooling and risk of vandalism and theft? Even if you cached the enterity of netflix, it's still only 10% of Internet traffic. Backhaul is becoming less and less of a problem as more and more sites get fibre backhaul. Point to point links can easily do 10gig/sec now even if they don't have fibre (to another tower with fibre). That is almost certainly as much if not more than the total capacity of most cell towers even with a stupendous amount of spectrum allocated.
    - foobiekr 6y ago
      The userplane doesn't run on the cell tower. The mobile network backhaul is multiple stages, and the tower is just the first hop. The problem with backhaul isn't the availability of fiber, it's the _concentration of bandwidth_.

chvid 6y ago

Is this really what constitutes a "5G core network"? Does it mean that I can buy Huawei for the rest of it and set it up in the UK?

g_p 6y ago
This is a few components that make up the very baseline of some aspects of a standalone 5G core. If you want to add commercial base stations to it, you'll find you're missing a few non-standardised things missing from all "open source" solutions - you'd need base station orchestration and control, to handle configuring and managing the base stations and getting them to behave in the ways you want. For one or two base stations you might cope without it, if you can figure out how to configure the radios, and they happen to work. But generally, there's a load of integration to be done that isn't part of the standards, and that you'll need in addition to this. You'll also need to handle scaling up and clustering some of the components that need to scale up with traffic.

ComodoHacker 6y ago

Can't find where COVID-19 infection code is. Is it not implemented yet?

14k12j41j211 6y ago
Let's hope nobody finds out about Presidential Alerts. Basically, it lets you send Tweets to any mobile user.
- g_p 6y ago
  Fairly straightforward to use these in other core networks. Not sure if this one implements the signalling for it. Fun fact though - if a phone is without signal on its home network, it will attempt to join any valid 3GPP network it sees, and the cell broadcast/emergency alert will be triggered on the handset (even without a valid SIM) - no authentication takes place.
  - 14k12j41j211 6y ago
    I think this vulnerability potentially has the biggest real-world impact. This has been shown in a couple of proof-of-concepts… Merging this into public repos would have zero positive impact, I think.
    - g_p 6y ago
      I'm inclined to agree with you there. Anyone that wanted to do it could figure it out anyway from the standards docs and broadcast the right data in the SIBs, but it is probably better not available as a "click and run" type setup. Although in saying that, this is unlikely to change any time soon, as the idea of CB/PWS is to provide an emergency message that can be highly time sensitive in some scenarios (earthquake, tsunami, etc.) without delays due to authentication etc. Failing to show the message could be higher risk than showing a false message in a very localised area (based on what someone with an SDR can send.)

tpmx 6y ago

This won't have a chance to win unless e.g. Cisco/Google/Apple/FB somehow decides to fund a few thousand developers each yearly. And they won't do that unless there's clear incentive for them. In a way I really hope they won't. How could anything good come out of that? From an engineering perspective: the software stack is conceptually (if you squint enough) a bit like webkit/chromium, but on top of that you also need cutting edge radio/antenna development.