CUPS (Control Plane & User Plane Separation)

5G is separated into "control plane" and "user plane" [2]. CUPS enables cost-efficient scaling through geo-distribution of essential 5G network functions and services.

Features and Benefits

  * Independent Control- and user-plane scalability: Ability to independently scale control and user planes as the mobile network needs. Provides the ability to dynamically adjust the network to ever-changing demands.
  * User-Plane specialization: CUPS offers the ability to leverage a single control plane for multiple user planes, some of which can be specialized for key applications. Lower equipment costs and operational costs result.
  * 5G Readiness: Architectural readiness for 5G provides lower implementation costs in the future.
  * Lower backhaul costs: Data termination at the edge of the network where appropriate brings substantial savings in backhaul costs.
  * Traffic offload: The architecture allows for some traffic to be directed to regional and metro caches in cases such as OTT video and certain enterprise applications, improving overall customer experience.
  * New use case enablement: Ability to cater to new use cases (e.g., ultra-low-latency applications, multi-gigabit per session, and mobile edge computing) provides opportunities to increase revenue.
  * Multilevel CUPS offerings: Inline, co-located, remote CUPS offers successive levels of CUPS implementation, bringing maximum flexibility to match an operator's preferred pace of deployment [1].

Bibliography:

  - [[https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ultra-services-platform/data-sheet-c78-741416.html|https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/ultra-services-platform/data-sheet-c78-741416.html]]
  - [[https://moniem-tech.com/questions/why-cups-is-important-at-5g/|https://moniem-tech.com/questions/why-cups-is-important-at-5g/]]
  - [[https://mobilepacketcore.com/what-is-5g-cups-in-5g-network/|https://mobilepacketcore.com/what-is-5g-cups-in-5g-network/]]