Traffic Jam: Handling the Increasing Volume of Mobile Data Traffic

Today´s mobile operators face significant challenges with handling the ever increasing volume of mobile data traffic. With new mobile communication standards, the mobile backhaul architecture has a clear split of a packet-only data plane and a management plane. Although this new backhaul architecture yields to easier management, we find that this architecture can be improved further by applying the principles of software-defined networking (SDN). SDN allows for better evolvability of the data plane without depending on a slew of management or control protocols, allows for centralized control of the overall infrastructure, and allows for a richer feature set based on its programmable nature. This article investigates the redesign and illustrates its potential with mobility management as an example.