Centralized Data Plane Flow Control

• Main Authors: WITZEL ANDREAS, KAMPMANN DIRK
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 09.10.2014
• Subjects: ELECTRIC COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUE; ELECTRICITY; WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS

The invention relates to a central control entity (100) configured to control a data plane flow of a stream of data packages in an access network part of a mobile communications network, the central control entity comprising:-a detecting unit (140), configured to detect a presence of data plane applications (300) linked to forwarding elements (200) of the access network part, configured to detect information about a type of data plane application that is to be applied to said data plane flow, and configured to detect flow information reports from forwarding elements (200) which are directly linked to one network node containing the determined type of data plane application, each flow information report from one of the forwarding elements (200) containing information about a data packet volume transmitted from said one forwarding element to said one data plane application,-a flow control unit (110) configured to determine a path of the data plane flow through the forwarding elements (200) of the access network part to one of the network nodes containing the determined type of data plane application (300), wherein the flow control unit (110) is configured to determine a load of said one data plane application provided on said one network node, taking into account the flow information reports from the forwarding elements (200) which are directly linked to said one data plane application, wherein the flow control unit (110) determines the path of the data plane flow, taking into account the determined load of said one data plane application.