Control Plane Metadata

The mobility control plane metadata feature is used to support the metadata export in JSON format for each transaction occurring in the 3G/4G/5G network.

The mobility network core control traffic is tapped and mirrored to GTP/HTTP2 GigaSMART engines for correlation. The GTP/HTTP2 correlation engine generates metadata for a transaction. It can either be a GTP transaction for 3G/4G control traffic or an HTTP2 transaction for 5G control traffic. The GTP correlation application supports generating metadata for 3G and 4G network. The 5G CPN application supports generating the control plane metadata for 5G network.

The metadata of subscriber activities is extracted using GTP or 5G correlation. After extraction, the metadata is exported to the data collection center in JSON format.

The records are exported for the following transactions:

For 3G:

o   Create PDP
o   Update PDP
o   Delete PDP

For LTE:

o   Create Session
o   Delete Session
o   Create Bearer
o   Modify Bearer
o   Update Bearer
o   Delete Bearer

For 5G

o   Create SM Context
o   Modify SM Context
o   Release SM Context
o   N1 N2 Transfer

By default, values such as IMSI/SUPI, IMEI/PEI, MSISDN/GPSI and APN/DNN are added from the Create record to Modify and Delete records.

The control plane metadata can be exported in the following two formats:

o   Flat
o   Hierarchical

The mobility control metadata JSON is encoded from the session table information, current transaction and sent to the AMX application running on GigaVUE V Series Node which is connected at L4 protocol (UDP) level.

Once the transaction is complete in the session table and the metadata is created, it is scheduled for export to AMX. The AMX stores the received mobility control metadata in its internal database and is periodically sent to customer tools either by Kafka bus or as JSON file upload. For information on the export of 3G/4G/5G control plane metadata by AMX, refer Application Metadata Exporter.

Note:  When the 5G subscriber reattaches through the createSMContext before the clean-up is done for the previous user tunnel with the same IMSI and PDU session id, the UE IP address and the Tunnel ID that are populated based on the old user tunnel information will be exported.