What Is 5G Network Slicing, and Where Is It Going?

The 5G market is expanding rapidly, with network slicing as one of the major forces driving its growth. Slicing allows the deployment of services that are optimized for different use cases. Slices share a physical network infrastructure, economically allocating its capacity to clients with different needs.

What is network slicing?

5G connections offer a huge amount of bandwidth. A well-distributed set of endpoints makes very low latency and fast, consistent service available at the same time. Most situations don’t call for maximizing all of these capabilities at once, though. Some uses prioritize speed, others reliability or latency, and so on.

Network slicing makes it possible to address varied needs with a single physical infrastructure. Each “slice” is a virtual network with tailored operational characteristics. Each one is presented as a separate service, and users can’t readily tell that it’s sharing hardware with other virtual networks.

Network slicing is a form of software-defined networking (SDN), using network function virtualization (NFV). The term refers to the 5G standard’s techniques for setting up a software-defined network. It has a hardware dimension as well as being a software concept; slices for different purposes call for different frequencies, bit rates, and power levels.

Slices can be temporarily allocated to meet short-term needs, or they can be set up as persistent services. Whether temporary or permanent, slices can scale up and down to match the demand on them.

What are the customer benefits?

We can see how customers benefit by looking at some use cases.

• In gaming, low latency is the most important consideration. A dedicated gaming network can be optimized to keep the time from hitting a key to getting a response down to a few milliseconds.
• An IoT (Internet of things) farm needs the capacity to process lots of devices. Speed isn’t critical, but giving reliable access to each device in the network is important. The devices don’t move around, so a large number of low-power endpoints may be the best solution.
• Conferencing requires high bandwidth and steady delivery. It can tolerate some packet loss, and a moderate amount of lag is acceptable as long as it’s consistent.
• Cell phones will remain the largest use case, but they will coexist smoothly with these other cases.

Few use cases need to optimize everything at once. Tailoring the quality of service lets customers get what they need without incurring excessive costs. Network slicing lets providers meet user requirements with enough confidence that they can offer service-level agreements.

A slice can be set up for a short-term need, such as a weekend conference. The network exists just as long as it’s needed, and the only hardware requirement (if any) is the deployment of endpoints for the occasion.

What will the future be?

According to Deloitte, “network slicing is emerging as a potential source of future revenue growth for communication service providers.” Security remains something of a concern; while network slicing uses state-of-the-art security, sharing hardware always raises questions in some minds. Some enterprises are looking at slicing on their private 5G networks for this reason.

It’s a tradeoff between cost and the very strongest level of security. If public service providers can convince enterprises that their security is adequate even for the most sensitive data, they will win on price. Some organizations will always require private 5G, but as public networks demonstrate the ability to deliver highly secure slicing, adoption will grow rapidly. The highest security will come with end-to-end slices. In effect, a private network over the public network.

The interoperability of different providers’ services will be a short-term issue. Over time, standards should emerge that will make it easier to work with slicing and not be locked into a vendor.

There is still a lot of work to be done, but network slicing holds great promise for specialized 5G applications.

Talk with us if you’re looking at fitting 5G into your IT operations.