Cisco Mobility Services Gateway Partner Validated

• Both Control-Plane functional components as well as the User-Plane component of the Mobility Services Gateway are deployed using a cloud-native/containerized construct, allowing seamless deployment, automation and orchestration using Cisco’s Cloud Native Deployment Platform for pure Bare-Metal or OpenShift options. 
• Cisco has optimized the MSG deployment on OpenShift to take advantage of the OpenShift services while maintaining the same level of automation & orchestration available with our CNDP / Bare-Metal approach.

·      The Mobility Services Gateway supports 3GPP-compliant handovers across network generations. The EPC GW supports handovers for non-5G users across 2G, 3G, and 4G. For example, a 4G subscribed user can attach to or move between 2G, 3G, and 4G access networks. The 5GSA GW supports handovers for 5G users across 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. Table1 shows the supported handovers.

Both components of the Mobility Services Gateway, the EPC GW and 5GSA GW, can be configured using a single function pack with Cisco Crosswork Network Services Orchestrator (NSO). Currently the function pack used by NSO to configure and manage 4G services (4G-CUPS) is different from the function pack used for 5G SA services (SMF). The unification of function packs provides operational efficiency and ease of management across both non-5G and 5G networks.

As part of the full adoption of the Red Hat OpenShift framework, Cisco is also providing an update to the standard Automation/Orchestration framework above by supporting the Git Automation  built into OpenShift. This functionality will streamline Cisco and 3rd party CNFs for onboarding & lifecycle management. 

Currently, most existing Cisco operators with Cisco 4G-CUPS or ASR5500 based monolithic Packet data network Gateway (PGW) depend on bulk statistics generated by these nodes to oversee network operations. With the Mobility Services Gateway, CSPs can achieve a unified and efficient monitoring strategy by integrating bulk statistics from the EPC GW for non-5G users alongside Prometheus-based metrics & telemetry from the 5GSA GW for 5G users, all within a single Grafana dashboard. This consolidated approach enhances operational efficiency and simplifies the monitoring process, offering customers a more streamlined and effective method of managing their network environments.