The industry is racing to the next generation – 5G – which will be virtualized, replacing the costly, legacy, hardware-based infrastructure that has been in place for decades with common off-the-shelf (COTS) servers that offer a host of cost and operational advantages. But did you know they also offer network performance benefits as well?

5G Network Performance

As network operators transform existing 4G networks the need to continually improve performance and scalability has become a key business imperative to drive the cost per bit delivered.

With the arrival of 5G, this need becomes even more pronounced in order to profitably serve the bandwidth demands of 5G applications and services. This will require significantly more data-processing horsepower from the network than we have ever seen to support the exponential rise in high-bandwidth data traffic (e.g., video), the creation of data-rich services, and the introduction of billions of “talking” machines via the Internet of Things (IoT). 5G network performance will be required across all areas of the network, especially the mobile core.

And, these network performance gains are not a one-time event.

We are fortunate to be part of an industry that never stands still, and that continues to innovate and improve. In no area is this more evident than in the continued advances in processing technologies from leaders like Intel.

By combining these advances with innovative, market-proven NFV solutions for the mobile core, we have achieved performance gains of as much as 10X over purpose-built mobile core offerings and competitive virtualized offerings.

For those of us at Affirmed Networks seeing this type of network performance confirms what we’ve known all along: virtualized network functions (VNFs) that leverage the latest server technology and are architected for high data plane throughput are the best path to building the high-speed, high-capacity networks that 5G will require.

Learn more about the 5G performance advantages of virtual evolved packet core over legacy hardware in this Intel Performance Report.