{"id":146567,"date":"2025-03-20T23:01:53","date_gmt":"2025-03-20T23:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/5g-technology\/what-is-a-cnf-5-characteristics-of-a-cloud-native-network-function\/"},"modified":"2025-03-20T23:01:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-20T23:01:53","slug":"what-is-a-cnf-5-characteristics-of-a-cloud-native-network-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=146567","title":{"rendered":"What is a CNF? 5 characteristics of a cloud-native network function"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

Unlike legacy VNFs \u2014 often monolithic and dependent on virtual machines \u2014 CNFs are designed from the ground up for cloud environments<\/h2>\n

As telecom networks evolve to meet the demands of 5G, edge computing and automation, traditional physical and virtual network functions (PNFs and VNFs) are being replaced by cloud-native network functions<\/a> (CNFs), which are network functions implemented as software running in containers, typically orchestrated by Kubernetes that deliver greater scalability, resilience and efficiency. Unlike legacy VNFs \u2014 often monolithic and dependent on virtual machines (VMs) \u2014 CNFs are designed from the ground up for cloud environments.<\/p>\n

Spirent Communications\u2019 Principal Product Manager of Cloud-Native 5G Deployment Validation Bill Clark provided the following five defining characteristics of a CNF:<\/p>\n

They support microservices<\/h3>\n

The Access and Mobility Management Function (AMF) was traditionally deployed as a single monolithic application running on dedicated hardware. With the shift to VNFs, AMF was broken into multiple components, often spread across different VMs depending on the vendor\u2019s architecture.<\/p>\n

Now, in the cloud-native era, AMF is further disaggregated into microservices running inside containers. Instead of a single application, we now see 100-plus Kubernetes pods \u2014 containerized workloads that host telecom network functions and their supporting services \u2014 each handling a discrete function that, in aggregate, make an AMF.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would you do that? Well, if you have little pieces and they fail, you can repair them very quickly. If you need to scale, you only need to scale a little bit, not the whole application,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n

They are container-based<\/h3>\n

Cloud-native functions also represent an evolution from VMs to containers, with containers being much more efficient. Clark said that this because CNFs do not require a full host application or operating system inside each container. This architectural difference leads to several major benefits including reduced resource overhead, faster startup and scaling, simplified management and automation, enhanced security and better agility.<\/p>\n

They have orchestration that is most likely <\/em>Kubernetes<\/h3>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be Kubernetes<\/a> \u2014 no one says it must be \u2014 but it typically is,\u201d said Clark. In fact, while previously in the VNF world, you may have VMware, Red Hat Openstack and AWS \u2014 all VMs \u2014 utilizing different orchestration mechanisms, now in cloud-native, Kubernetes has become the de facto standard. \u201cKubernetes EKS [Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service] is Kubernetes, Red Hat Openshift is Kubernetes,\u201d he illustrated. \u201cThe core of all of the cloud environments and what enables multi-cloud much easier is now fundamentally Kubernetes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kubernetes simplifies network function orchestration, enabling multi-cloud deployments, seamless scaling and automated management.<\/p>\n

They are self-healing<\/h3>\n

One of the key advantages of CNF is their self-healing capability, which ensures high availability and resilience in telecom networks. CNFs leverage Kubernetes\u2019 built-in orchestration to automatically detect failures and recover without human intervention. If a CNF pod crashes, Kubernetes immediately restarts the failed pod, reschedules it on a healthy node, or spins up a replacement to maintain service continuity.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the health and status of CNF workloads are continuously monitored, ensuring that only healthy instances handle network traffic.<\/p>\n

They can scale, automatically\u00a0<\/h3>\n

Clark noted that Spirent is seeing CNF vendors adopting Horizontal Pod Autoscaling (HPA), in which Kubernetes automatically updates a workload resource so that it scales to match demand.<\/p>\n

Horizontal scaling will response to increased load by deploying more\u00a0pods. This is different from\u00a0vertical<\/em>\u00a0scaling, which for Kubernetes would mean assigning more resources such as memory or CPU to the Pods that are already running for the workload. Then, if the load decreases, and the number of pods is above the configured minimum, HPA would instruct the workload resource to scale down.<\/p>\n

And for Clark, it\u2019s the scaling down telcos should be paying attention to: \u201cWhat is much more interesting about scaling is not scaling up but scaling down \u2014 at night when there is no traffic, you can start turning off resources which directly correlates to cost savings,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He adds that without effective scaling strategies, the entire cloud-native model could be questioned: \u201cIf the Tier 1s don\u2019t figure out scaling, it arguably puts the whole cloud-native thing in question \u2014 why are we investing all of this money to build something that looks very much like what we\u2019ve always built?\u201d<\/p>\n

What Clark is getting at, perhaps, is that ultimately, CNFs are not just an evolution but a necessity for the future of telecom. As operators continue their cloud-native journey, the key to success lies in leveraging automation, optimizing scaling strategies and ensuring seamless multi-cloud interoperability. And the transition to CNFs promises networks that are more agile, more resilient and more cost-efficient than ever before.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unlike legacy VNFs \u2014 often monolithic and dependent on virtual machines \u2014 CNFs are designed from the ground up for cloud environments As telecom networks evolve to meet the demands of 5G, edge computing and automation, traditional physical and virtual network functions (PNFs and VNFs) are being replaced by cloud-native network functions (CNFs), which are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12020],"tags":[32351,37327,61692,5264,9809],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-146567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5g-technology","tag-characteristics","tag-cloudnative","tag-cnf","tag-function","tag-network"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is a CNF? 5 characteristics of a cloud-native network function - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=146567\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is a CNF? 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