Why it matters:
Writing about the benefits of virtualization, Sachin Katti of Intel states that "Full virtualization of the RAN . . . offers immense technical and business benefits, including agility, flexibility and scalability. It supports new innovations, like AI algorithms across functions in the RAN, evolving networks to deliver ever-more capabilities at an optimized cost," and enables network operators to "easily implement dynamic power management and network function redistribution. Failures in network operation and system upgrades can be handled by moving the network workload to a different server – without sending technicians to the field"(1).
VNF (Virtual Network Function) → CNF (Cloud-Native Function)
- VNF: Runs in virtual machines on standard servers (e.g. Linux KVM).
- CNF: Runs in containers, splitting the VNF into smaller microservices managed by Kubernetes — more efficient and portable
- Containers are small, fast programs that can be controlled by tools like Kubernetes, which help run more or fewer of them as needed
Importance:
CNFs start up faster, scale out automatically, and use less hardware — all ideal for cloud-native Open RAN.