Monitoring 6G UPFs: A Software-based Network Tomography Framework
Key: RPMS25-1
Author: Florian Raskob, Wilton Arthur Poth, Tobias Meuser, Björn Scheuermann
Date: May 2025
Kind: In proceedings
Publisher: IEEE
Keywords: 6g, mobile networks, resilience, monitoring, network tomography
Abstract: The architecture of 6G networks comprises many software-based Network Functions (NFs) that can run on and migrate between different devices. To make future 6G networks resilient, a flexible framework is needed to detect failures in individual NFs. In this work, we present a software-based Network Tomography (NT) monitoring framework for 6G NFs, enabling flexible real-time monitoring. As a case study, we measured the performance of the User Plane Function (UPF), which is responsible for forwarding user traffic in the core network. To determine packet loss and latency, the framework matches ingress and egress packets of UPFs while it monitors packet and data rates by analyzing only the egress packets. In our evaluation, we demonstrated the framework’s accuracy of a Mean Percentage Error (MPE) of 0.2% for packet rates, 0.13% for packet loss, and 0.05% for data rates. Latencies were measured with 1.86 μs precision. Our findings demonstrate that software-based monitoring can achieve high-precision performance measurements, which is fundamental for enabling resilience in future 6G networks.
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