Toward a Cloud-Native Telecom Infrastructure: Analysis and Evaluations of Kubernetes Networking

To realize a 6G network, Cloud-Native is a key technology for improving the scalability, agility, and resilience of telecom networks. Kubernetes is the de-facto standard container orchestrator and adaptation to the Cloud-Native Network Function (CNF) infrastructure is progressing. However, several discrepancies exist between standard Kubernetes networking and CNF networking. In this paper, we analyze the discrepancies and clarify the telecom network requirements for Kubernetes. Then, we perform qualitative and quantitative evaluations on several network extensions developed as open-source software. From the results, we discuss the extensions that satisfy the requirements and represent the suitable combinations of network extensions for several CNF use cases.