Huawei released the industry's first 5G network slicing router, enabling the best application experience across industries for carriers, at the MWC 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.

It provides 50GE base station access and seamless compatibility with 100GE, and achieves physical isolation of port channels based on innovative Flexible Ethernet technology to provide differentiated SLA guarantee, the company said.

With the arrival of 5G, human-to-human connections are becoming human-to-machine or machine-to-machine connections. In light of these changes, 3GPP defined three key scenarios for 5G applications: eMBB, mMTC, and uRLLC. eMBB is related to user experience while mMTC and uRLLC are to meet machine-to-machine interconnection requirements.

This requires that the bearer network infrastructure provide E2E slicing capabilities to ensure differentiated SLA guarantee, the company said.

Huawei's network slicing router implements resource slicing from the control, protocol, and forwarding dimensions. A full series of network slicing routers can generate E2E network slicing for specific 5G scenarios. Each network slice is a self-sufficient logical network and each service can have an independent network slice. For example, specialised video, IoT, or key communications network slices. Different service slices have their own O&M views and can independently implement resource scheduling and management.

This realises on-demand network SLA guarantee, on-demand bandwidth adjustment, and rapid fault locating for each scenario, meeting the differentiated SLA service bearer requirements of 5G scenarios, it said.

The routing protocols of different network slices can be independently configured to quickly provide physically isolated slices for traditional 2G/3G/4G and other mobile services. In the future, the router will be smoothly compatible with 5G services by providing new slices. On a network using different generations of mobile system, this will fully utilize network resources and protect the customer's investment.

Gai Gang, president of Huawei's Router & Carrier Ethernet Product Line, stated: "Network slicing is the key technology that effectively enables diversified network features for different industries in the 5G era. The launch of the 5G network slicing router will effectively promote the development of 5G services and help operators quickly enter more vertical industries. Huawei is committed to providing high-quality 5G bearer solutions and actively promoting technical advances in Flexible Ethernet and network slicing. We hope industry partners will also participate in these initiatives to prepare for the arrival of 5G."

Huawei's mobile backhaul (MBH) solution, which focuses on business innovation and customer experience, has been widely deployed by top service providers from around the globe. In the 4.5G/5G field, Huawei will provide users with the best network experience and help operators achieve business success by continuously innovating device capacity, network slicing, bearer protocols and other key technologies, it said. - TradeArabia News Service