NTT DOCOMO unrolled architecture of Cisco ACI for virtualization of network functions

The NTT DOCOMO company unrolled at the beginning of 2016 the infrastructure of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) focused on applications for virtualization of network functions in LTE mobile telecommunication systems. DOCOMO selected Cisco ACI as the SDN solution for increase in overall effectiveness using automation of implementation of virtual network functions and improvement of the network overview. Using Cisco ACI, DOCOMO will be able to reorient network in case of changes in a configuration of subscribers and applications and also to increase the user quality of perception at repair work and overloads on network, adapting functioning of factory taking into account the politician of applications.

DOCOMO services more than 70 million mobile users in Japan and understands need for flexible and maneuverable infrastructure for the virtualized mobile networks of the next generation. Having held successful testing of the virtualized package core of Evolved Packet Core (EPC) for LTE systems in the heterogeneous environment, DOCOMO selected architecture of Cisco ACI for automation of all the network.

The SDN solution of generation Cisco ACI includes profiles of applications for the integrated management of the virtualized network functions which can be unrolled on the specialized hardware, physical or virtual servers and also in the form of container microservices. The Cisco switches Nexus 9000, the controller the politician of Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) and the ACI OS operating system are a part of the solution ACI.

The expected advantages of the ACI solution for DOCOMO:

• simplification of the network transactions thanks to application the politician tied to the DOCOMO NFV platform;
• increase in efficiency thanks to automation of deployment of virtual network functions;
• centralized operation by network infrastructure and its configuring using the APIC controller providing monitoring and control of applications in real time irrespective of deployment type (physical, virtual, container);
• improvement of service of customers thanks to dynamic resource management of network infrastructure taking into account requirements of applications, overloads and renewal periods of network;
• support 100GE, IPv4, IPv6, gateway anycast gateway, BFD and QOS.