Open Source Packet Core Workshop

February 18, 2025

Recording Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing

• Slide decks:

  • Workshop Slide Deck - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wIa2d4PekxZVFvwTMOjKLtaGpRJQ8acGjzL-1TT9euM/edit?usp=sharing

  • Free5GC - <upload here>

  • Magma - <upload here>

  • OAI -

  • Open5GS -

  • Aether SD-Core -

• Discussion/Notes:

  • Free5GC

    • Started in 2019 as a 5G SA implementation

    • Tested with commercial Radios from Nokia, Huawei and others

    • Tested with emulators

    • 5,000 UEs

    • Over 160,000 downloads, over 600 forks

    • Major roadmap items - Helm charts, UI, Rel 17, TSN, NTN

    • Use cases in private networks mostly. Base station vendors in Taiwan use it for product testing

  • Magma

    • Originally created by Meta in 2019 to reach the next unconnected billion users

    • Became an LF project

    • 1.7K stars, over 600 forks

    • 1 Release per year

    • Support LTE, 5G (r16), CG-WiFi

    • Designed as distributed mini-cores with a central orchestrator. Data Plane uses SDN architecture

    • 6000 UEs

    • Roadmap - 5G Handover, eBPF DP, Helm, R17,R18

    • 5/6 startups in the community use it as a base for their core commercial product

    • Starter kit for easy adoption

  • Aether SD-Core

    • Part of the Aether platform (RAN+5GCore+4GCore)

    • Started in 2019, moved to LF in 2024

    • Used to be a managed service

    • Designed for edge deployment

    • OnRamp - deployment management component. Deployment can scale from a single server to multi site

    • There are “blueprints” that are configurations for different use cases

    • Tested with OAI, srsRAN and commercial RAN

    • Some commercial deployments - Canonical, DT

    • Delivered as K8S workload

    • Open to collaboration on testing tools. SIM card handling

    • Originally forked from Free5GC - Could it be merged?

  • Open5GS

    • Started in 2017 as a “hobby project” by SukChan Lee. Open5GS launched in 2020

    • Modular architecture

    • Integration with 4G available

    • Emphasis on community

  • OAI

    • Created to provide fully 3GPP compatible 5G stack

    • Started in 2020

    • 11 Network functions

    • Provides basic core procedures as well as advanced features (Handover, Slicing,NWDAF …)

    • Different flavors - modes (minimal, basic, full), database, UPF, Deployment options

    • Tested with various simulators and OAI RAN

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• Discussion

  • Collaboration areas:

    • Testing is a common challenge for many of the projects

      • Simulators:

        • SD-Core offers gNBSIM. It is packaged as a docker container and has some documentation, but may not be adequate - gnbsim/README.md at main · omec-project/gnbsim . It has been tested against several open source core implementation.

      • Challenges around testing with UEs

        • The challenge is acknowledged by more than one community. Some communities developed their own workarounds and solutions (e.g. Asterisk as an IMS)

        • Can be addressed by joint interoperability efforts

        • newer (Android) and Iphone

          • require IMS to bring up phones (iphone)

        • SIM cards writers

          • Very limited availability - proposal to create a knowledge group for this very poorly documented domain

          • The goal would be providing a fully functional solution for all the open source communities.

      • Non-Packet Core Infrastructure for testing core

        • Radio Vendors equip (Sharing information and lab?)

        • Common IMS for testing

    • Software Development

      • Dependency of Libraries (eg ASN.1 Parser)

      • OSS as a defacto standard and push upstream into 3GPP as needed (Pick 1 or 2 low hanging fruits) - What problem is being solved and is that important?

    • Tooling for generating interfaces

      • Generating code based on 3GPP API specifications

      • Analyzing 3GPP specifications with each release

    • Interop within Core between components of various cores (Tien to add) - commercial and open source

      • E.g., Interchangeable UPF (May not be applicable to all - Magma does not follow internal core interfaces)

      • Is there a possibility to pick the “best of best” pieces of all NF for core - pull to create a mix and match as the “Super Open Packet Core”? (assuming we are generating same Inter Network function APIs)

        • Is code language an issue - may not be as long as API is followed. License

    • Jointly approaching 3GPP with proposed improvements and alternative implementations

    • Common Packet Core Lab - existing or expandable

      • PAWR ? OTIC?

      • SD-Core has rotating equip, but vitrual

      • Magma - 5 Starter Kits with various Radio Freq

      • free5GC - Lab in Taiwan with hardware and donated RBS

      • Sharing Test equip (Spirent etc)

    • LF Level Collaboration

      • Education, Marketing and Sharing Positioning

        • Buyer persona (Tier 2, Private 5G Networks, Private Institutions, MVNO, Labs, Research, POC, Private 5G Startups (as base for commercial product) - Direct deployment by operators or Commercial project Integration

        • Not currently targeting Tier 1 deployments (top 30 service providers) - poc and evaluation possible

        • Global Regional deployments based on Spectrum policies

        • Is there a 6G requirement that requires Open Source? Any other next gen technology Show case that can take

      • Security Dashboard and scans

        • license scans

        • CVE - Sharing across projects

        • LFX Security and OpenSSF Guidelines/dashboard

      • Cheat sheet and Guidelines on “where to start” based on their use case?

        • Questions to ask when deploying an open source packet core versus proprietary?

        • Decision Tree by end user to evaluate/pick the specific packet core..

          • Key first criteria - 3GPP Release support, Technical Features/side by side list exists or done by 3rd party

          • Personal Team strengths / language skills / use cases that they want / community strength

          • (White paper or a Research note) - ongoing doc versus static? (half page per project + PPT pitch deck)

          • Front end Wiki

• Landscape:

• Action Items:

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    Upload project presentations to this page - All project leaders

  • Follow up with specific collaboration