TLS Performance Evaluation in the Control Plane of a 5G Core Network Slice

3GPP has recommended 5G service providers adopt Transport Layer Security (TLS) to secure communications among different Network Functions (NFs) in 5G core network slice. It is imperative to study the impact of TLS on 5G control plane traffic. Previous research has shown that TLS adds costs to protocols, like Session Independent Protocol (SIP) and The Onion Router (ToR). This study aims to study different TLS cipher suites impact on network performance parameters such as packet size, time, and the number of messages sent in distinct 5G control flows. We emulated a 5G core network slice using an open-source project and measured the overhead on the network parameters while 5G slice components transmit control plane traffic in both cases of TLS and no TLS. We examined the impact of three cipher suites of TLS with key exchange algorithm of Rivest Shamir Adleman (RSA) on the NF registration with Network Repository Function (NRF).