| Description |
Serverless cloud computing is an evolving paradigm that brings advantages in terms of scalability, the flexibility of resource usage, and cost. Serverless computing means that the services are managed by the cloud provider. It is the next level of the offering by cloud providers where the infrastructure and platform are fully managed by the provider. The services include Function as a Service, databases, networking, and security. Some of the managed services by AWS are Lambda, S3, DynamoDB, and IAM. The control plane for mobile wireless (e.g., cellular) networks faces many challenges with respect to scaling, burst handling, and robustness. In this work, we show how serverless computing is a natural fit for this type of control plane: client devices are modeled using a finite state machine (FSM), and transitions in this state machine map well to serverless functions. Using a prototype of the LTE/EPC Mobility Management Entity (MME), we demonstrate how to architect a mobile control plane using serverless functions and demonstrate its practicality. To do this, we first evaluate a serverless platform for the features it promises in terms of scaling and cost. Then we redesign the Mobility Management Entity of LTE as stateless functions running on the serverless platform. These platforms provide APIs for users to run code or functions and return the results. The caller uses different invocation triggers to invoke the functions. This request and response model fits well with the network control plane use case. We also use the cloud managed datastore. We evaluate this implementation to draw conclusions about how a network entity like MME can benefit from the advantages of a serverless platform. This model promises the operational ease with "unlimited" scaling capabilities. With our experiments and evaluations, we demonstrate the feasibility of redesigning old implementations to leverage benefits of new paradigms. |
