Improvements in and relating to load balancing in microservice-based core networks

Abstract

The invention relates to networks where procedures (e.g. UE registration) are provided by sets of instances / copies of microservices interoperating (see Fig. 2). The invention determines the paths (0-I

Claims

1. A method of operating a telecommunication network to load-balance external requests across multiple execution path instances, the method comprising the steps of:gathering, on a periodic or on-demand basis, information relating to a current input and output load of at least one microservice instance running in the network;when triggered by a trigger, employing the gathered information to calculate an execution graph; andenacting the execution graph in telecommunication network.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the triggering occurs:periodically;in response to a particular event, such as where a third-party entity in the network prompts execution of a load-balancing task; orfor any given pair of microservices where, from a logical standpoint, a first microservice i generates outputs intended for a second microservice j.

3. The method of any preceding claim further comprising the step of clustering a plurality of microservices to achieve load-balancing among different execution path instances implementing the same procedure in an end-to-end fashion.

4. The method of any preceding claim further comprising gathering load status information and updating a Microservice Load Profile, MLP, database.

5. The method of any preceding claim wherein if it is decided that a difference between the calculated execution graph and one that is currently running is below a certain threshold, then the calculated execution graph is not enacted.

6. The method of any one of claims 1 to 4 wherein if it decided to enact the calculated execution graph, all producer-consumer relations between all pairs of microservice instances that are no longer connected by a direct edge in the calculated execution graph are broken.

7. The method of any of claims 1 to 4 wherein if it decided to enact the calculated execution graph, the calculated execution graph is transmitted to a Service Communication Proxy, SCP.

8. A telecommunication network arranged to perform the method of any preceding claim.

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