Cloud Packet Core (CPC)

Nokia’s Session Restoration Service (SRS) is designed to help telcos keep the Packet Core network running smoothly even when individual nodes fail, while lowering total cost of ownership. In this unique solution, instead of traditional “one primary, one standby” designs that force operators to overprovision capacity, SRS uses a shared pool of resources where any node can restore user sessions from a common backup. This spreads recovery load across the cluster, so networks no longer need to be sized with ~50% idle headroom.

SRS also reduces unnecessary signaling between core functions. By only updating what has changed in the user context and streamlining acknowledgements, it cuts backup‑related signaling by about half and overall control‑plane signaling by roughly 20%. That translates into lower overhead, faster recovery, and more predictable performance during large outages or mass reattachments.

At the data layer, SRS uses a secondary database partition rather than stand‑alone backup nodes. This simplifies lifecycle management, removes the need for extra backup instances, and can reduce the overall core footprint by up to 30%.

The result for telcos is a more resilient cloud core network architecture that delivers higher availability, better efficiency, and lower operating costs.

Nokia’s Packet Core Appliances give telecommunication providers a practical path to meet edge performance and capacity demands by delivering pre-packaged, production-ready software stacks for high-performance servers that enable network disaggregation, accelerate deployment, and simplify operations—helping reduce latency while improving reliability. They combine high throughput and low latency for demanding edge workloads with automated, customizable deployment workflows, reduce infrastructure and power consumption to lower total cost of ownership, and provide built-in resilience with consistent lifecycle management. Versatile applications include delivering Ethernet services over 5G Fixed Wireless Access (Eo5G FWA) with predictable performance and supporting resilient, low-latency connectivity for healthcare clinical applications and telemetry.

Nokia’s Cloud Mobility Manager (CMM), integrated with the Machine Learning Intelligence Service (MLIS), delivers a cloud‑native, real‑time learning Packet Core that leverages microservices, event streaming, and deep observability to power forecasting, anomaly detection, automated root‑cause analysis, mitigation, and predictive reachability. AI/ML use cases run as controllable pods with enable/disable options, and trained models drive closed‑loop automation across autoscaling, anomaly mitigation, and QoS tuning—advancing toward agentic AI in multi‑vendor, multi‑cloud environments. The result is measurable impact: more than 97% first‑attempt reachability through UE location forecasting, up to 50% reduction in peak paging fanout, optimized compute autoscaling for resource efficiency, and faster incident detection with resilient disaster protection—benefiting operations with proactive automation and reduced time to detect/resolve, architects with an interoperable and explainable AI‑native core aligned to open multi‑cloud designs, and business leaders with quantifiable improvements in user experience and cost that accelerate an AI supercycle.

The Non‑3GPP Interworking Function (N3IWF) is the 5G/6G gateway for untrusted access, such as Wi‑Fi and residential broadband, implemented as an NG‑RAN element that connects directly to the 5G Core. Building on and modernizing the 4G ePDG, it aligns non‑3GPP access with 3GPP procedures and call flows, centralizes authentication, and delivers NAS‑native services with encrypted IPsec transport. Security is strengthened through unified integrated authentication and encryption, use of temporary identifiers, end‑to‑end NAS protection. Service quality improves with consistent NAS‑based capabilities, 3GPP‑grade QoS, and exposure of slicing, policy, and analytics for monetization and low‑latency experiences (e.g., gaming, VR/AR). Signaling is optimized by eliminating re‑authentication during mobility between 3GPP and non‑3GPP access, reducing signaling load, energy use, and latency—especially beneficial for public and transport UEs.