Benu Networks has delivered its industry-leading cloud-native Broadband Network Gateway (cnBNG) in collaboration with Red Hat. cnBNG provides a disaggregated routing platform with full provider edge and broadband subscriber service capabilities on course to revitalize network flexibility and subscriber experience. cnBNG is included as part of Benu Networks' Software-Defined Edge (SD-Edge) Platform, a vendor validated cloud-native network function (CNF) for Red Hat OpenShift.

Telcos are faced with the challenge of mitigating the rapid decline in traditional television services while rising to meet the increasing bandwidth demands brought on by over-the-top streaming media. With broadband revenues relatively flat, operators are seeking ways to shift to disaggregated networks and minimize bandwidth costs. The Benu Networks Broadband Network Gateway (BNG), coupled with the Intel® Xeon® processors, Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), and Red Hat OpenShift, provides a versatile, flexible cnBNG designed to scale elastically, increase automation, and support the increasing global IP network traffic created by exponentially growing subscriber demand.

"We're delighted to work with Red Hat to validate our SD-Edge platform for Red Hat OpenShift and make it easier for operators to become more agile, sustain high levels of performance, and efficiently manage resource utilization," said Mads Lillelund, CEO of Benu Networks. "We're looking forward to expanding our cloud-native 5G ecosystem, and ultimately, empowering our customers to deliver cutting edge new services to subscribers across fixed and mobile."

The cloud-native, disaggregated architecture allows operators to more easily distribute BNGs to edge locations using commercially off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware. This approach, combined with control and user plane separation (CUPS), offers carriers up to 70% reduction in hardware costs while pushing services like video content distribution closer to customers. The new network architecture improves the customer experience, reduces backhaul costs by serving data at the edge of the network, and prepares broadband networks to support low-latency, high bandwidth applications like augmented reality and virtual reality. Plus, the Benu BNG enhances performance by leveraging the Intel Dynamic Device Personalization (DDP), DPDK libraries, processor cache alignments, and non-uniform memory access (NUMA)-aware design.

"As the industry's leading enterprise Kubernetes platform, Red Hat OpenShift empowers teams to build and scale containerized applications by providing an open, consistent hybrid cloud foundation," said Julio Tapia, senior director, Partner Ecosystem, Core Cloud Platforms, Red Hat. "We're excited to help support Benu Networks' push for network disaggregation and virtualization in the telecommunications space. The Benu cnBNG solution, building on Red Hat OpenShift as its flexible Kubernetes backbone, enables operators to become more agile, and automate network functions while leaning on the resiliency and distributed scale-out capabilities of a cloud-native environment."

Creating a great subscriber experience shouldn't be as difficult as it is today. Benu Networks works with operators all over the globe, such as Comcast and Liberty Global, to simplify the edge, optimize performance, and deliver stunning end user experiences. In collaboration with Red Hat, Benu Networks is actively working to simplify networks so that operators can more easily embrace open networking, hybrid cloud and containerization to deliver 5G services such as network slicing and edge computing.