Aviz Service Node details PFCP session visibility on Sxb
Companies mentioned
Aviz Service Node (ASN) provides correlated visibility into PFCP sessions carried over the Sxb interface in mobile core networks, capturing session establishment, modification, and deletion signaling for operational reporting and analytics exports.
Research Overview
The blog describes how mobile core networks using control and user plane separation rely on the Sxb interface to manage user-plane subscriber sessions from the control plane. It explains that PFCP signaling on Sxb supports creating, deleting, and modifying subscriber sessions along with forwarding, QoS, charging, and usage reporting configuration.
It then frames ASN as a way to collect and update information contained in PFCP messages throughout the session lifecycle, producing an enriched session view for downstream use. The blog states that metadata can be exported via Kafka and IPFIX.
Key Findings
ASN processes PFCP signaling continuously and correlates information across the complete subscriber session lifecycle, from establishment through termination. The blog positions Sxb PFCP traffic as a rich source of session-related data, including subscriber identifiers, policy configuration, charging setup, and session outcomes.
For operations, the blog says the consolidated session metadata supports validation of forwarding and QoS policies, monitoring of charging and usage reporting configuration, and faster troubleshooting of session lifecycle events. It also states that ASN provides session state visibility for analysis and operational reporting workflows.
Technical Breakdown
The blog states that ASN supports PFCP Session Establishment Request and Response, PFCP Session Modification Request and Response, and PFCP Session Deletion Request and Response. As sessions evolve, it updates stored session information and exports the latest state.
It lists metadata categories ASN extracts from PFCP sessions, including subscriber information (IMSI, MSISDN, Username, RAT Type), session identifiers (control plane F-SEID, user plane F-SEID, Session ID), Packet Detection Rules (such as rule ID and traffic endpoint associations), Forwarding Action Rules (such as destination interface and tunnel information), QoS Enforcement Rules (including gate status and maximum bit rate), and Usage Reporting Rules (including measurement method and reporting triggers). The blog also includes charging information (Charging Group, AAA Group, GTPP Group), traffic endpoint information (network instance, UE IPv4/IPv6, QCI, and tunnel identifiers), and session status (usage reports and last PFCP cause).
Operational Impact
The blog describes the operational use of the extracted metadata as an aggregated view of subscriber information, including forwarding policies, QoS configuration, charging details, usage reporting, and session state. It also describes troubleshooting scenarios such as session establishment errors, forwarding changes, QoS updates, charging updates, and session release reasons through inspection of PFCP messaging.
For downstream systems, it states that ASN can export PFCP session metadata to Kafka and IPFIX and that this output supports external analytics and operational reporting tools. The blog also notes that ASN can parse compressed or uncompressed PFCP packets to provide uniform metadata to downstream systems across deployments.
Overall, the blog presents Aviz Service Node as a component that collects and correlates PFCP signaling on the Sxb interface to generate an enriched subscriber session view containing forwarding, QoS, charging, usage reporting, and session state metadata, with exports available via Kafka and IPFIX; this Blog Signals brief is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.
Blog post, originally published by Infant Ruban Suresh at aviznetworks.com.