Virtualized Evolved Packet Core for LTE Networks (vEPC)

vEPC is a simple virtualized form of Long Term Evolution Evolved Packet Core (LTE EPC). It simulates the working of a typical EPC for handling signaling and data traffic. vEPC is developed in C++11. Current Version is 1.0, released on June 10, 2016. We are currently working on a more advanced v2.0.

Synopsis

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a popular concept being proposed for redesigning various components in telecom networks. A bulk of NFV design proposals focus on EPC, which faces severe scalability and flexibility issues. This has set a new trend among network equipment manufacturing companies to build commercial implementations of vEPC. All such implementations try to achieve a highly scalable and flexible architecture to suit the needs of future mobile traffic. However, no complete open-source free vEPC exists to the best of our knowledge. Our code is a first step in this direction. Note that our code is not fully standards compliant, and is not intended for commercial use. Our code is intended for consumption by researchers to build and evaluate various NFV-based EPC architectures.

List of developed software modules

• Mobility Management Entity
• Home Subscriber Server
• Serving Gateway
• Packet Data Network Gateway
• Radio Access Network Simulator
• Sink node

Supported LTE procedures

• Initial Attach
• Authentication
• Location update
• Create Session
• Modify Session
• Delete Session
• User plane data transfer

Required software packages/tools

• mysql-server
• libmysqlclient-dev
• openvpn
• libsctp-dev
• openssl
• iperf3/iperf

Note: Above packages/tools correspond to linux-based machines

Directory structure

• src: Contains source code files
• doc: Contains documents related to vEPC
• scripts: Contains necessary scripts for using vEPC

User Manual

Please find the document user_manual.pdf under the doc folder. It contains detailed instructions for running the code and experimenting under different traffic conditions.

Developer Manual

Please find the document developer_manual.pdf under the doc folder. It contains detailed instructions for understanding the codebase. It will be helpful while modifying/adding code functionalities to test out new ideas using our vEPC.

Authors

1. Sadagopan N S, Master's student (2014-2016), Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay.
2. Prof. Mythili Vutukuru, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay.

Contact

• Sadagopan N S, ssnattamai[AT]gmail.com
• Prof. Mythili Vutukuru, mythili[AT]cse.iitb.ac.in