Serving Gateway Support Node Connection Relocation
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Solution Overview
Problem
The restart of a Serving Gateway (SGW) in radio telecommunications networks leads to severe disruptions, including interruption of user plane bearers and increased signaling load, causing congestion and instability in the network due to the lack of a traffic offloading mechanism for planned SGW restarts, resulting in service disruptions and network instability.
Innovation Solution
A Serving Gateway Support Node detects failure or restart of an SGW and initiates relocation of connections to a secondary SGW, restoring context information upon recovery, thereby minimizing service disruptions and maintaining network stability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the Serving Gateway is restarted for maintenance or updates, then the gateway can be upgraded or maintained, but user plane bearers are interrupted and services are disrupted
Solution Approach 1:
The source MME/S4-SGSN performs relocation of PDN connections from the first SGW to a second SGW before the first SGW is restarted for maintenance. This preliminary action ensures that traffic is already redirected to an alternative gateway, preventing service disruption when the original gateway is taken offline for maintenance or updates.
Solution Approach 2:
A second SGW acts as an intermediary gateway to temporarily assume the traffic load from the first SGW during its restart. The second SGW receives and forwards traffic that would otherwise go through the maintenance-bound gateway, enabling seamless maintenance without service interruption.
2Reliability
If the Serving Gateway is restarted, then gateway functionality can be restored or updated, but signaling load increases causing network congestion
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary relocation of PDN connections before SGW restart, so that when the SGW restarts and generates signaling traffic, the majority of user traffic is already routed through alternative gateways. This reduces the signaling load on the network during the restart process.
Solution Approach 2:
By maintaining active PDN connections through relocation to a second SGW, the system ensures continuous data transmission without interruption. This continuity prevents the need for re-establishing connections after SGW restart, thereby reducing signaling load and avoiding network congestion.
3Reliability
If connections are relocated to a secondary Serving Gateway, then service continuity is maintained during restart, but network complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The MME/S4-SGSN is enhanced to support multiple SGWs and manage PDN connections across different gateways. This multi-functionality allows the same control node to serve multiple SGWs, managing failover and load balancing without requiring separate dedicated control nodes for each gateway, thereby limiting the increase in network complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
In a radio telecommunications network, a serving gateway support node controls connections between user equipment nodes and a packet-based network that pass through at least one serving gateway and at least one packet gateway. The serving gateway support node detects failure of communications to a first serving gateway. The serving gateway support node responds to the detected failure by initiating relocation of existing connections through the first serving gateway to instead pass through a second serving gateway. The serving gateway support node detects recovery of communications to the first serving gateway, and responds by ceasing relocation of at least some of the existing connections that have not yet been relocated to the second serving gateway. Related methods, serving gateways, and packet gateways are also disclosed.