Telefonica completes ZTE vIMS and vSBC performance tests in Madrid NFV Lab

ZTE Corporation, an international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, and Telefonica have jointly tested ZTE vIMS & vSBC VNFs, part of ZTE’s Cloud UniCore portfolio, in Telefonica’s NFV Reference Lab in Madrid, Spain.

OpenMANO stack, the ground-breaking module for the easy creation and deployment of complex network scenarios of Telefonica’s NFV Reference Lab, was used to test ZTE’s solutions.

The objective of the tests was to benchmark the deployment and performance of network functions virtualisation (NFV) solutions. The resulting data has provided clear evidence of the performance range service providers can expect from virtualised, software-based networking infrastructure.

The establishment of NFV benchmarks is part of a joint effort by both companies within the Telefonica NFV Reference Lab framework. ZTE’s virtualised evolved packet core (vEPC) was previously tested in Telefonica’s Reference Lab as part of this effort.

Cloud UniCore is based on virtualisation technology with software and hardware decoupling. Hardware resources are virtualised and various applications can be deployed on the same virtualised hardware platform. With the quick deployment capabilities of cloud computing, Cloud UniCore shortens the configuration and provisioning process from several weeks to several minutes, thus significantly enhancing agility of network expansion. It also implements dynamic scalability of virtualised network functions to eliminate capacity bottlenecks.

The vIMS & vSBC Cloud UniCore solutions were deployed on a set of virtual machines (VM) which takes advantage of Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers and the Intel® Data Plane Development Kit in order to meet the performance required by the world's largest telecommunication and service providers.

In the tests, the vIMS & vSBC Cloud UniCore solutions achieved highCall Attempts Per Second(CAPS)capacity and throughput with excellent Mean Opinion Score(MOS)on a Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Intel®-based server.

The results delivered were outstanding, reaching Telefonica’s expected performance levels and smooth deployment objectives which allowed the test to be completed in a very short amount of time. ZTE and Telefonica will continue testing other elements of ZTE’s NFV portfolio in the coming months.

Javier Gavilán, Planning and Technology Director at Telefonica- Global CTO said: “Telefonica has been and will be quite active on the evolution of network virtualisation technologies. With our NFV Reference Lab we aim to help the ecosystem of partners and network equipment vendors to test and develop virtualised network functions, so we are very pleased to collaborate with ZTE, a reference partner in NFV.”

Antonio Elizondo, Head of Network Virtualisation Strategy at Telefonica I+D-Global CTO said:“The performance of ZTE vIMS & vSBC Cloud UniCore solutions is quite high and aligned with our expectations on a well-designed VNF, as it is needed for its deployment in the commercial network. We’re looking forward to continuing our work with ZTE, and strengthening our collaboration in the NFV field.”

ZTE is committed to the development of NFV and cloud-based network technologies, cooperating with operators and technology providers around the world in proof of concept (PoC) projects. To date, ZTE’s virtualised core network solutions are deployed in 5 commercial, and 28 trial projects globally.