Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Open source 5G core network

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 49 posts

Re: Open source 5G core network

#31

Post by g_p »

14k12j41j211 wrote: post #30
ComodoHacker wrote: post #29

Can't find where COVID-19 infection code is. Is it not implemented yet?

Let's hope nobody finds out about Presidential Alerts. Basically, it lets you send Tweets to any mobile user.

Fairly straightforward to use these in other core networks. Not sure if this one implements the signalling for it.

Fun fact though - if a phone is without signal on its home network, it will attempt to join any valid 3GPP network it sees, and the cell broadcast/emergency alert will be triggered on the handset (even without a valid SIM) - no authentication takes place.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#32

Post by mcspiff »

Jhsto wrote: post #3

For those interested, this project seems to be a rewrite of https://nextepc.org/ into Go. Alternative projects include https://github.com/facebookincubator/magma and https://github.com/openairinterface . You can start your own telenetwork with these projects (but of course doing such would be highly illegal without a spectrum license), but first, you need a gNB or eNodeB which is lingo for a base station. It is possi…

That’s basically what AWS has proposed with Wavelength: https://aws.amazon.com/wavelength/

Re: Open source 5G core network

#33

Post by g_p »

chvid wrote: post #26

Is this really what constitutes a "5G core network"? Does it mean that I can buy Huawei for the rest of it and set it up in the UK?

This is a few components that make up the very baseline of some aspects of a standalone 5G core.

If you want to add commercial base stations to it, you'll find you're missing a few non-standardised things missing from all "open source" solutions - you'd need base station orchestration and control, to handle configuring and managing the base stations and getting them to behave in the ways you want.

For one or two base stations you might cope without it, if you can figure out how to configure the radios, and they happen to work. But generally, there's a load of integration to be done that isn't part of the standards, and that you'll need in addition to this. You'll also need to handle scaling up and clustering some of the components that need to scale up with traffic.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#34

Post by 14k12j41j211 »

g_p wrote: post #31
14k12j41j211 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope nobody finds out about Presidential Alerts. Basically, it lets you send Tweets to any mobile user.

Fairly straightforward to use these in other core networks. Not sure if this one implements the signalling for it. Fun fact though - if a phone is without signal on its home network, it will attempt to join any valid 3GPP network it sees, and the cell broadcast/emergency alert will be triggered on the handset (even without a valid SIM) - no authentication takes place.

I think this vulnerability potentially has the biggest real-world impact. This has been shown in a couple of proof-of-concepts… Merging this into public repos would have zero positive impact, I think.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#35

Post by g_p »

14k12j41j211 wrote: post #34
g_p wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fairly straightforward to use these in other core networks. Not sure if this one implements the signalling for it. Fun fact though - if a phone is without signal on its home network, it will attempt to join any valid 3GPP network it sees, and the cell broadcast/emergency alert will be triggered on the handset (even without a valid SIM) - no authentication takes place.

I think this vulnerability potentially has the biggest real-world impact. This has been shown in a couple of proof-of-concepts… Merging this into public repos would have zero positive impact, I think.

I'm inclined to agree with you there. Anyone that wanted to do it could figure it out anyway from the standards docs and broadcast the right data in the SIBs, but it is probably better not available as a "click and run" type setup.

Although in saying that, this is unlikely to change any time soon, as the idea of CB/PWS is to provide an emergency message that can be highly time sensitive in some scenarios (earthquake, tsunami, etc.) without delays due to authentication etc. Failing to show the message could be higher risk than showing a false message in a very localised area (based on what someone with an SDR can send.)

Re: Open source 5G core network

#36

Post by Nextgrid »

14k12j41j211 wrote: post #10
solarkraft wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's quite likely that sooner or later we will have 5G networks with intra-services running as edge-services, providing us low-latency. Noob question, sorry, but: Why not Wifi?

Mobile networks allow seamless switching of cells. If you're on a call while in the car, your connections won't drop and ideally you wouldn't loose a single packet. Network and smartphone monitor nearby cells. If you're just about to switch the cell because the quality becomes too bad, everything is already being prepared in the next cell.

With proper configuration, Wi-Fi can do this too. Things like 802.11r, 802.11k, etc allow a station to roam between access points near-instantly.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#37

Post by tpmx »

This won't have a chance to win unless e.g. Cisco/Google/Apple/FB somehow decides to fund a few thousand developers each yearly. And they won't do that unless there's clear incentive for them.

In a way I really hope they won't. How could anything good come out of that?

From an engineering perspective: the software stack is conceptually (if you squint enough) a bit like webkit/chromium, but on top of that you also need cutting edge radio/antenna development.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#38

Post by sdjkfgsdjkfghjh »

Jhsto wrote: post #6
newhouseb wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert, but there are variants of LTE and 5G (LTE-U and 5G NR-U) that support operating in the unlicensed 5Ghz band. That said, I'm not sure a commercial handset would connect to anything in that range. You could probably get an SDR-based UE (UE is telecom-speak for "thing that connects to a cell network") to work.

Yeah, I'm not an expert either, but there are initiatives to this as well. One such initiative is Nokia Kuha: https://www.kuha.io/ The problem is exactly what you described: there are currently no commercial UE or base stations. So yeah, I suppose one is supposed to use SDR for the 5Ghz band.

That site does not load here. I get a CSP error. sigh, nokia.

https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-ne...

is this the same?

there is zero information about nokia kuha! interesting if this can hold more 24/7 broadband clients than wifimax et al.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#39

Post by ex3ndr »

Nextgrid wrote: post #36
14k12j41j211 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile networks allow seamless switching of cells. If you're on a call while in the car, your connections won't drop and ideally you wouldn't loose a single packet. Network and smartphone monitor nearby cells. If you're just about to switch the cell because the quality becomes too bad, everything is already being prepared in the next cell.

With proper configuration, Wi-Fi can do this too. Things like 802.11r, 802.11k, etc allow a station to roam between access points near-instantly.

MacOS + UniFi actually have seamless reconnection.

Re: Open source 5G core network

#40

Post by Jhsto »

sdjkfgsdjkfghjh wrote: post #38
Jhsto wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not an expert either, but there are initiatives to this as well. One such initiative is Nokia Kuha: https://www.kuha.io/ The problem is exactly what you described: there are currently no commercial UE or base stations. So yeah, I suppose one is supposed to use SDR for the 5Ghz band.

That site does not load here. I get a CSP error. sigh, nokia. https://www.nokia.com/networks/solutions/community-hosted-ne... is this the same? there is zero information about nokia kuha! interesting if this can hold more 24/7 broadband clients than wifimax et al.

It seems to be the same thing. The use-case displayed on Nokia's website matches to one of the blog-posts available on kuha.io
Post reply on HN