Spirent Communications has released its latest report based on a benchmarking analysis study conducted with STL Partners via real-world mobile edge network testing. The report shines light on several key findings into multi-access edge computing (MEC) performance requirements, potential uses cases and what can be achieved via today’s networks.
Among the interesting trends highlighted by the study, enterprise users were found to overwhelmingly prioritize latency consistency to support the edge applications they plan to deploy. 56% would be willing to pay for an SLA with guaranteed latency that never exceeds a predefined window, while 66% needed latencies of 50ms or less. The report also found a disconnect in the edge application demand and supply in terms of what latency will be required, when it will be required, and for which use cases. The study also revealed a wide variation in latency among regions, not only between cloud and MEC implementations, but also between different markets within the same region.
Addiotnally, the report outlined several key recommendations operators could take to improve their MEC latency, such as establishing the right application testing regime, early upgrades to 5G standalone (SA), the rollout of a private 5G MEC on enterprise premises that acheives the proximity for localized processing, and the implementation of 3GPP release upgrades.
Steve Douglas, Head of Market Strategy, Spirent
In 2021, Spirent saw service provider 5G engagements increase by more than 50% year-on-year, as customers raced to make 5G a reality. Market competition intensified, and the impact of the pandemic accelerated business automation and monetization plans. As a result, service providers established early partnerships with public cloud providers with heightened focus on edge-delivered low latency services, which is where our report is focused.
Rich McNally, Director of Mobile Service Strategy, Spirent
We work with the world’s leading service providers and the expectation of near real-time latency has generated keen interest in MEC network architectures. Pushing cloud computing capabilities to the edge of the network is seen as a way to provide enterprises with improved service reliability via consistent, optimal latency and less jitter. Our study shows that the industry is off to a solid start, but there is still work to do. What we’re seeing through our 5G benchmarking service engagements is that the latency of real-world MEC services can fluctuate significantly - by time and across regions - with a lack of symmetry between the uplink and downlink. Ultimately, latency must be managed holistically, and end-to-end, to achieve reliable and desired customer experiences, and to meet service-level agreements (SLAs).
