Page 53 - SAMENA Trends - April 2020

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

ARTICLE

How Does Network Slicing Differ from QoS?

Network slicing should enable operators
to be more agile, launch customized
services more quickly (e.g., for a music
festival or sports tournament), and target
smaller opportunities. Slicing enables
isolation during service deployment and

reduces interoperability testing, thereby
enabling faster launches.

Operators have had techniques to ensure QoS for particular
traffic types for many years. Network slicing builds on existing
technologies such as the following:
• Differentiated Services (DiffServ): IETF RFC 2475 published
in 1998.
• eDecor: A 3GPP Release 14 feature (an enhanced version of
Release 13’s dedicated core network selection mechanism,
Decor).
While these techniques can already be applied to 4G mobile
networks, 5G will expand on them, enabling more automated,
end-to-end network slicing. What distinguishes 5G network
slicing is that it is not restricted to applying QoS solely in
transport and the core, as with DiffServ. Rather, 5G network
slicing has the ability to also apply QoS in the radio frequency Manish Mangal
(RF) domain. Unlike DiffServ, 5G slicing will be able to
discriminate between the same types of traffic (Voice over CTO, Network Services
Internet Protocol [VoIP], video, and Internet of Things [IoT]) Tech Mahindra
coming from different tenants. 5G slicing will also, unlike
DiffServ, be able to isolate specific traffic streams (e.g., for
privacy and security reasons) to restrict them to certain areas
of the network (e.g., a dedicated server).

In 4G, the basic granularity of QoS control is the Evolved
Packet System (EPS) bearer. The service type is mapped to a
specific EPS bearer, and all the data flows on that bearer are
given a certain QoS guarantee. In 5G, the QoS model is based
on QoS flows. A protocol data unit (PDU) session provides a
connectivity service between a user equipment (UE) and the

53 APRIL 2020