SD-RAN for Beginners:
Imagine a packed lunchbox from a restaurant. For four people without further optimization and selection options for the user.
- This is more or less how you have to imagine a classic radio access network (RAN) for end customers. A black box with fixed components and little scope for the network operator to influence the hard- and software.
It would be to your taste if you could change the ingredients of the lunchbox and also influence parameters such as the cooking level of a steak (rare to well done).
- For a RAN, this means that greater flexibility is desired, and the RAN can be better adapted to the requirements of the network operators.
For the lunchbox, the price also changes if you could choose chicken instead of wagyu beef.
- This is where Software Defined RAN comes into play. The most expensive software is not necessary everywhere and a mix of different open-source software can do the trick just as well.
In the end, the lunchbox customer still needs to know which ingredients go together and which don’t.
- The tests for all components of a RAN is done by the i14y Lab and the results are made available to its partners.
