The v1.6 software update to Aether, the ONF’s open source private 4G/5G managed service platform, was recently released. Aether features secure, scalable and cost effective private 5G connectivity for enterprises to use in enabling Industry 4.0 applications including IIoT, AR/VR, M2M communications and many more.
The focus of this release is expansion of the Quality of Service (QoS) feature to include the ability to have per-Slice and per-Device-by-Application QoS settings, as well as to add a new Application Filtering feature. Aether modeling continues to be improved as documented below, and many additional reliability improvements have been made to the underlying subsystems.
Aether v1.6 New Features and Enhancement
Three levels of QoS Control
Aether now supports Maximum Bitrate Quality of Service (MBR QoS) settings at three different levels:
- Per-Device
- Per-Device by Application
- Per-Slice
In addition to MBR, Aether also allows a Traffic Class to be specified at the Per-Device (Device-Group) and Application contexts.
Application Filtering
Aether supports application filtering performed by the User Plane Function (UPF). The application filtering feature allows devices in a slice to have access to only those applications allocated to the slice, and vice-versa, thereby extending the isolation capabilities of a slice to the edge-applications. Some applications (such as public Internet access) can also be shared across slices. Aether allows a total of five user-defined application endpoint filtering rules, plus one default rule that may be set to either Allow-All, Deny-All, or Allow-Public.
UPF Pools
Aether allows a set of UPFs to be created at customer onboarding, and those UPFs may later be associated with Slices as the customer creates additional slices. Additional UPFs may be added to the pool at any time by the operator. The GUI maintains the invariant that a UPF may only be assigned to one Slice at a time, that the UPF must be located at the same Site as the VCS, and assists the user in filtering out in-use UPFs when a VCS is created.
Monitoring Support
The Aether GUI now displays site health statistics which are collected by Aether and fetched on demand by the GUI. Aether can display metrics such as the number of nodes and number of healthy edge monitoring devices at a site.
Aether Certification
The following hardware has been certified by ONF’s Continuous Certification Program for the Aether v1.6 release and will continue to be re-verified on a daily basis against the most recent version of the software. Details about these products can be viewed in the ONF Marketplace:
- Sercomm SCE4255W-BCS-A5 Small Cell
- Wiwynn EP100 Server
Learn More
The Aether project is in the "Incubation Phase" under the ONF Member-Only Software License, which grants ONF members access to the project repositories. Please review the ONF Member-Only Software License, License Overview, and Licensing & IPR FAQ before requesting access. Members wishing to gain access should contact membership@opennetworking.org.
Join Live Techinar
Join us for a live virtual session on January 25, 2022 at 9am PST to learn more about the Aether v1.6 release and SD-Core v1.0 from project leads and collaborators. There will be application demonstrations along with technical highlights about the features of the release and attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions during the live Q&A. Click here to register.
