InterDigital Flips platform uses NFV and SDN ‘fabric’
InterDigital, a mobile technology research and development company, announced its mobile edge computing (MEC) 5G network architecture trial in Bristol, U.K., was a success.
Bistol Is Open, a collaborate smart city project run by the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council, sponsored the three-week trial using InterDigital’s Flexible-IP services (Flips) platform. The trial consisted of a “treasure hunt” mobile application made available to anyone with an Android device in central Bristol.
MEC is a network architecture that provides IT and cloud-computing capabilities at the edge of a cellular network. The purpose of the architecture is to alleviate network congestion and boost applications by performing processing tasks closer to the end user. The technology is intended to be placed at cellular base stations to deploy applications, among other customer services, swiftly.
The trial was part of the approved ETSI MEC proof-of-concept, which was demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2016 and ETSI MEC World Congress. Participants of the trial had to unearth various “treasures” within the city and solve riddles based on their location.
InterDigital says the trial demonstrates the benefits of its Flips platform, which is intended to improve the delivery of IP-based content and streaming media to user devices. Company reps say the video distribution of the Flips platform was “six times” more efficient than conventional IP technology.
InterDigital’s Flips platform creates network functions virtualization (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) “fabric,” which providse content at the network edge. NFV and SDN are two similar but distinct technologies. NFV provides the agility and speed necessary to launch various network functions, including firewall and encryption, automatically. SDN, on the other hand, providers a centrally controlled data center that manages network traffic flows through application program interfaces (APIs). The company says the trial demonstrates its software solution is a superior alternative to standard computing hardware and commercial SDN-based switches, and doesn’t require an entire IP network.
“Latency reduction, higher bandwidth utilization, and the ability to deploy such services very close to end users rather than in some distant cloud are crucial to the success of MEC services,” said Dirk Trossen, senior principal engineer at InterDigital. “This trial showcases the solutions, developed under the leadership of InterDigital, that can deliver those performance improvements under realistic conditions and with real users fulfilling the highest criteria of trials in the 5G world.”
