Equinix has partnered with Kaloom to develop network slicing for interconnection of core and edge (NICE) technology within our 5G and Edge Technology Development Center (5G ETDC) in Dallas.
NICE technology is built using cloud-native network fabric and high-performance 5G UPF from Kaloom. This is a production-ready software solution, running on white boxes built with P4 programmable application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), allowing for deep network slicing and support for high-performance 5G UPF with extremely fast data transfer rates.
With NICE technology in the 5G ETDC, Equinix demonstrates:
- 5G UPF deployment/activation and traffic breakout at Equinix for multiple slices.
- Software-defined interconnection between the 5G core and MEC resources from multiple providers. - Software-defined interconnection between the 5G core and multiple cloud service providers. - Orchestration of provisioning and automation of interconnection across the 5G core, MEC and cloud resources.
This demonstrates the benefit of having the UPF as a feature of the interconnection fabric, effectively allowing UPF activation as part of the virtual fabric configuration. This ultimately enables high-performance UPF that’s suitable for use cases such as high-speed 5G fixed wireless access.
Combining UPF instances and MEC environments into an interconnection fabric makes it possible to create continuity for the slices and influence performance and functionality. Equinix Fabric adds multicloud connectivity to slices, enabling organizations to directly integrate network slicing with their mobile hybrid multicloud architectures.
Suresh Krishnan, CTO, Kaloom
Secure, reliable connectivity and scalable resources are essential at the edge. A multivendor strategy with best-of-breed components complemented by telemetry, advanced analytics with management and orchestration—as demonstrated with NICE in Equinix data centers—is a most effective way to meet those requirements.
