Traffic Jam: Handling the Increasing Volume of Mobile Data Traffic

Today's mobile operators face significant challenges with handling the ever increasing volume of mobile data traffic. With new mobile communication standards, the mobile backhaul architecture has a clear split of a packet-only data plane and a management plane. Although this new backhaul architecture yields to easier management, we find that this architecture can be improved further by applying the principles of software-defined networking (SDN). SDN allows for better evolvability of the data plane without depending on a slew of management or control protocols, allows for centralized control of the overall infrastructure, and allows for a richer feature set based on its programmable nature. This article investigates the redesign and illustrates its potential with mobility management as an example.