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Somewhat related recent curiosity: Is there anything new about 5G tower/backhaul infrastructure for edge computing that wasn't already feasible for 4G?
by 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 agoNothing 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 agoexactly, control-userplane separation is the primary differentiator for "5g." the whole point is to eliminate backhaul and allow closer CDNs and caches..
- martinald 6y agoIs 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 agoThe 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_.