LOS ALTOS, Calif. – Cloud native communications leader Metaswitch today announced that its Access Gateway Function (AGF) solution has been successfully tested by Vodafone for the industry’s first implementation of the 5G Wireless Wireline Convergence (WWC) AGF standard. The AGF in Metaswitch’s 5G Fusion Core solution, which is aligned with Broadband Forum and 3GPP specifications, was tested in Vodafone Group labs in the U.K

The Metaswitch AGF is part of its 5G Fusion Core solution and is a true cloud native solution in which all functional elements, including User Plane Function (UPF) and Access Gateway Function (AGF), are deployed in containers and orchestrated by Kubernetes to ensure strong performance and network deployment flexibility for service providers.

5G Wireless Wireline Convergence offers a path to a fully converged broadband access network that serves both wireline and mobile subscribers from a single technology stack. This facilitates the use of common credentials, authentication and a unified approach to applying network policy. When fully implemented, WWC seamlessly integrates fixed and wireless services, simplifying service provider offerings, reducing the overall complexity of subscriber and service management, and promoting always-on services through converged connectivity.

Vodafone 5G Access Gateway Function evaluation milestones
The Metaswitch Fusion Core 5G WWC solution includes an Access Gateway Function built to align with the new Broadband Forum TR-456 specification, in addition to other 5G packet core functions including the world’s highest-performance software UPF. The Fusion Core UPF and AGF are both powered by Metaswitch’s Composable Network Application Processor (CNAP) software packet processing technology, which in recent tests conducted with Intel demonstrated 500 Gbps UPF throughput on a single two-socket industry-standard server.

The trial system was deployed in Vodafone Labs entirely remotely, taking advantage of the automation capabilities of Kubernetes and Helm, and has successfully demonstrated the attachment of standard fixed network residential gateways (FN-RG) to the 5G packet core, with mapping between wireline broadband and 5G authentication, authorization and session establishment procedures performed in the AGF.

Metaswitch Networks