P4-enabled Trusted WLAN Access Network with Edge Computing Support

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Abstract
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposed a new non-3GPP access network, the Trusted WLAN Access Network (TWAN), in Release 16 of the 5th Generation Mobile Communication Network (5G). TWAN enables devices without 5G capability to access 5G networks via WLAN, allowing operators to serve non-5G devices in the market through Wi-Fi services. This paper divides TWAN into a control plane and a user plane, which are handled by an SDN controller and P4 switches, respectively. This setup, named P4-TWAN, is further integrated with User Plane Function (UPF) to eliminate unnecessary tunneling. Experimental results show that P4-TWAN processed user traffic at line rate while the integration with UPF benefited from the elimination of unneeded tunneling.