This project implements a 4G/5G User Plane Function (UPF) compliant with 3GPP TS23.501. It follows the 3GPP Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) architecture, making use of the PFCP protocol for the communication between SMF (5G) / SPGW-C (4G) and UPF.
This UPF implementation is actively used as part of the Aether platform in conjunction with the SD-Core mobile core control plane.
The UPF implementation consists of two layers:
The PFCP Agent implements datapath plugins that translate PFCP messages to datapath-specific configurations. We currently support two datapath implementations:
Note: The source code for the BESS-based datapath is in https://github.com/omec-project/bess
The combination of PFCP Agent and UP4 is usually referred to as P4-UPF. While BESS-UPF denotes the combination of PFCP Agent and the BESS datapath.
PFCP Agent internally abstracts different datapaths using a common API, while the different plug-ins can use specific southbound protocols to communicate with the different datapath instances. Support for new datapaths can be provided by implementing new plugins.
This repository provides code to build two Docker images: pfcpiface
(the PFCP
Agent) and bess
(the BESS-based datapath).
To build all Docker images run:
make docker-build
To build a selected image use DOCKER_TARGETS
:
DOCKER_TARGETS=pfcpiface make docker-build
The latest Docker images are also published in the OMEC project's DockerHub registry: upf-epc-bess, upf-epc-pfcpiface.
P4-UPF implements a core set of features capable of supporting requirements for a broad range of enterprise use cases.
See the ONF's blog post for an overview of P4-UPF. Additionally, refer to the SD-Fabric documentation for the detailed feature set.
Please see installation document here for details on how to set up the PFCP Agent with BESS-UPF.
To install the PFCP Agent with UP4 please follow the SD-Fabric documentation.
Please see the configuration guide here to learn more about the different configurations.
The UPF project currently implements three types of tests:
Unit tests for the PFCP Agent's code. To run unit tests use:
make test
E2E integration tests that verify the inter-working between the PFCP Agent and a datapath.
We provide two modes of E2E integration tests: native
and docker
.
The native
mode invokes Go objects directly from the go test
framework, thus
it makes the test cases easier to debug. To run E2E integration tests for
BESS-UPF in the native
mode use:
make test-bess-integration-native
The docker
mode uses fully containerized environment and runs all components
(the PFCP Agent and a datapath mock) as Docker containers. It ensures the
correct behavior of the package produced by the UPF project. To run E2E
integration tests for UP4 in the docker
mode use:
make test-up4-integration-docker
NOTE: The
docker
mode for BESS-UPF and thenative
mode for UP4 are not implemented yet.
PTF tests for BESS-UPF verify the BESS-based implementation of the UPF datapath (data plane). Details to run PTF tests for BESS-UPF can be found here.
The UPF project welcomes new contributors. Feel free to propose a new feature, integrate a new UPF datapath or fix bugs!
Before contributing, please follow these guidelines:
To report any other kind of problem, feel free to open a GitHub Issue or reach out to the project maintainers on the ONF Community Slack (aether-dev).
The project is licensed under the Apache License, version 2.0.