The challenging and ever increasing requirements of future applications demand new concepts for better control and management of network resources. The Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) introduced in their latest specifications the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) architecture for transparently unifying the parameters of different tech- nologies, like the UMTS, WLAN, non-3GPP access technologies and a future Evolved Radio Access Network, called Long Term Evolution (LTE), with the use of multiple application platforms such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and the Internet. This paper describes a testbed implementation of the Evolved Packet Core named OpenEPC which provides a reference imple- mentation of 3GPP's EPC developed by the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS. OpenEPC is a set of software components offering advanced IP mobility schemes, policy-based QoS control, and integration with different application platforms in converging network environments. This initiative, in addition to fostering research and development, enables academic and industry re- searchers to rapidly realize state-of-the-art NGMN infrastructures and applica- tion testbeds.
['Marius Corici', 'Fabricio Carvalho de Gouveia', 'Thomas Magedanz', 'Dragos Vingarzan']
OpenEPC: A Technical Infrastructure for Early Prototyping of NGMN Testbeds