On the need for adaptive connectivity management in multi-access architectures

The emergence of heterogeneous access technologies and the increasing need for ubiquitous connectivity have driven the network operators to evolve their mono-access architectures towards a multi-access convergent architecture. Hence, the network operators face the challenge to host several categories of subscribers such as static subscribers, subscribers with high mobility, subscribers with small amount of data, etc. With the traditional connectivity management, network mechanisms such as mobility management, QoS control and security mechanisms are designed to be activated in a systematic manner leading to rising the network operating cost. They do not take into consideration the real requirements of each subscriber. For instance, a static subscriber does not need the mobility management mechanisms. Therefore, it is clear that the connectivity management should be tailored to the subscriber context and the network situation. In this paper, we highlight the need for a flexible connectivity management that optimizes network resource usage. As the security is one of the connectivity management key components, we analyze the security implementation in the EPS architecture. This analysis leads to an interesting conclusion on the technical challenges related to the deployment of a flexible security management.