Intent-based 5G UPF configuration via Kubernetes Operators in the Edge

The expected growing number of edge clouds in the telecommunication industry requires new types of configuration management approaches in order to deal with the increased complexity. The Kubernetes Operator pattern widely used for lifecycle management of cloud native applications could be also applied to network management and configuration. In this paper we present our approach on using Kubernetes Operators to automatically adapt the configuration of the edge-located User Plane Functions (UPFs) to intents coming from an Edge Application. The owner of the Edge Application does not need to deal with network-related configuration as the chain of Kubernetes Operators manage it. Furthermore, we also provide numerical results about the speed of automatic configuration.

I. Introduction

Intent-based networking (IBN) with its declarative description of requirements where only the desired state is requested has depicted new approaches for the networking industry. This is different from the existing approaches where detailed steps of execution are used for tasks. One of the benefits of IBN comes with its layered abstraction levels which provides interfaces to business and low-level technical solutions as well. This is important for application developers too who require specific network settings for their services: they do not have to deal with network configuration at all. Application developers only need to request a specific network service (via intent) and the rest is taken care by the network operator.