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NASP: Network Slice as a Service Platform for 5G Networks

Felipe Hauschild Grings, Gustavo Zanatta Bruno, Lucio Rene Prade, Cristiano Bonato Both, José Marcos Camara Brito

TL;DR

NASP presents a Network Slice as a Service platform that unifies end-to-end network slicing across 3GPP and non-3GPP domains. It translates GSMA GST business templates into NSI/NST/NSST descriptors, orchestrates deployment through a hierarchical NSMF/CSMF model, and uses CI/CD/IaC with AI-driven closed-loop assurance to meet SLAs. A working prototype on Kubernetes/ONOS/Free5gc demonstrates NASP across four scenarios (mMTC, URLLC, Shared, non-3GPP), showing CN-domain configuration as the main latency driver and substantial gains in URLLC session setup. The results indicate NASP's potential as a flexible, standards-aligned NSaaS path with economic implications for edge vs central deployments and point to future improvements in mobility, security, and cross-operator interoperability.

Abstract

With 5G's rapid global uptake, demand for agile private networks has exploded. A defining beyond-5G capability is network slicing. 3GPP specifies three core slice categories, massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC), enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC), while ETSI's Zero-Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) targets human-less operation. Yet existing documents do not spell out end-to-end (E2E) management spanning multiple domains and subnet instances. We introduce the Network Slice-as-a-Service Platform (NASP), designed to work across 3GPP and non-3GPP networks. NASP (i) translates business-level slice requests into concrete physical instances and inter-domain interfaces, (ii) employs a hierarchical orchestrator that aligns distributed management functions, and (iii) exposes clean south-bound APIs toward domain controllers. A prototype was built by unifying guidance from 3GPP, ETSI, and O-RAN, identifying overlaps and gaps among them. We tested NASP with two exemplary deployments, 3GPP and non-3GPP, over four scenarios: mMTC, URLLC, 3GPP-Shared, and non-3GPP. The Communication Service Management Function handled all requests, underlining the platform's versatility. Measurements show that core-network configuration dominates slice-creation time (68 %), and session setup in the URLLC slice is 93 % faster than in the Shared slice. Cost analysis for orchestrating five versus ten concurrent slices reveals a 112 % delta between edge and centralized deployments. These results demonstrate that NASP delivers flexible, standards-aligned E2E slicing while uncovering opportunities to reduce latency and operational cost.

NASP: Network Slice as a Service Platform for 5G Networks

TL;DR

NASP presents a Network Slice as a Service platform that unifies end-to-end network slicing across 3GPP and non-3GPP domains. It translates GSMA GST business templates into NSI/NST/NSST descriptors, orchestrates deployment through a hierarchical NSMF/CSMF model, and uses CI/CD/IaC with AI-driven closed-loop assurance to meet SLAs. A working prototype on Kubernetes/ONOS/Free5gc demonstrates NASP across four scenarios (mMTC, URLLC, Shared, non-3GPP), showing CN-domain configuration as the main latency driver and substantial gains in URLLC session setup. The results indicate NASP's potential as a flexible, standards-aligned NSaaS path with economic implications for edge vs central deployments and point to future improvements in mobility, security, and cross-operator interoperability.

Abstract

With 5G's rapid global uptake, demand for agile private networks has exploded. A defining beyond-5G capability is network slicing. 3GPP specifies three core slice categories, massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC), enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), and Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC), while ETSI's Zero-Touch Network and Service Management (ZSM) targets human-less operation. Yet existing documents do not spell out end-to-end (E2E) management spanning multiple domains and subnet instances. We introduce the Network Slice-as-a-Service Platform (NASP), designed to work across 3GPP and non-3GPP networks. NASP (i) translates business-level slice requests into concrete physical instances and inter-domain interfaces, (ii) employs a hierarchical orchestrator that aligns distributed management functions, and (iii) exposes clean south-bound APIs toward domain controllers. A prototype was built by unifying guidance from 3GPP, ETSI, and O-RAN, identifying overlaps and gaps among them. We tested NASP with two exemplary deployments, 3GPP and non-3GPP, over four scenarios: mMTC, URLLC, 3GPP-Shared, and non-3GPP. The Communication Service Management Function handled all requests, underlining the platform's versatility. Measurements show that core-network configuration dominates slice-creation time (68 %), and session setup in the URLLC slice is 93 % faster than in the Shared slice. Cost analysis for orchestrating five versus ten concurrent slices reveals a 112 % delta between edge and centralized deployments. These results demonstrate that NASP delivers flexible, standards-aligned E2E slicing while uncovering opportunities to reduce latency and operational cost.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 8 sections, 16 figures, 3 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background and Evolution of 5G Networks
  3. Related Work
  4. NSaaS Platform Overview
  5. Prototype Implementation
  6. Evaluation Methodology
  7. Experimental Evaluation
  8. Conclusion

Figures (16)

  • Figure 1: 5G Core architecture.
  • Figure 2: NS orchestration architecture.
  • Figure 3: End-to-End NS Management and Orchestration Across GSMA, 3GPP/ETSI, and ETSI Standards. Automation Scopes (AS1--AS4) follow the ETSI ZSM model for the evaluation, selection, configuration, and deployment of slice subnets.
  • Figure 4: NASP architecture.
  • Figure 5: Sequence diagram of slice resource allocation.
  • ...and 11 more figures