Cloud Signaling Director

Signaling is the relay of control messages between network functions (NFs) in a network. A well-designed signaling architecture is crucial for achieving optimum performance, balancing load across network elements, and ensuring high reliability. Implementing a robust signaling architecture from the start, rather than simply connecting network elements, leads to simpler deployment and operation, and a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

The Cloud Signaling Director (CSD) is Nokia’s cloud-native software that provides comprehensive control for network signaling. For 5G networks, CSD manages HTTP/2 signaling both within the 5G core and between the 5G core and untrusted peer networks & untrusted slices (e.g., enterprise, IoT).

It provides three important 5G core network functions:

• 5G Service Communication Proxy (5G SCP)
• 5G Security Edge Protection Proxy (5G SEPP)
• 5G Binding Support Function (5G BSF)

For 4G networks, CSD implements the 4G’s Diameter Signaling Controller (DSC).
Nokia CSD can be deployed in any environment, as a CNF, VNF, or PNF. It is designed for extremely high performance, using the Agile Rules Processing (A.R.T.) engine. CSD supports every standard signaling model, as well as non-standard models.

In 5G networks, signaling changes from Diameter to 5G’s HTTP/2 and JSON. The challenges in deploying your 5G core include:

• Fully utilizing the 5G core’s Service Based Architecture (SBA), including dynamic configurations, massive scaling, and resilience.
• Ensuring interoperability across the 5G core, both within and between networks.
• Building in security from the start for internal and external threats.

In 4G networks, Diameter-based control plane traffic is escalating as consumers embrace advanced mobile broadband services. This growth results in an increasingly complex control topology and creates inefficiency and unpredictability.

To deliver the rich, secure experiences your customers want, you need an intelligent product that brings greater flexibility to the signaling control plane.

The SCP is the 5G core network function that allows service-based architecture to deliver its maximal benefit. It acts like a “switch” between network functions, simplifying interconnection between NFs. It provides load balancing, protocol adaptation and provides a single location to probe and observe signaling communication in the core.

Including the SCP right from the start of deploying a 5G core reduces the total cost of the deployment, compared to adding it later – by as much as 26%. For CSPs who have already deployed the 5G core without the SCP, adding one will reduce operational complexity and costs.

Together with ABI Research, we created a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator to determine an optimal approach for deploying 5G signaling in the core. We discovered that it’s far less costly to deploy advanced 5G signaling right from the start of a 5G core project.