Preliminary Evaluation of a Software-based 5GC Release 17 5MBS Prototype

Point-to-multipoint communications were introduced in the 5G System as part of Release 17. This technology is known as 5G Multicast-Broadcast Services (5MBS) and provides a scalable procedure to reuse New Radio in mass delivery of multimedia. In order to evaluate the impact of Point-to-multipoint communications in the 5G Core, a 5MBS software prototype was implemented by extending existing Point-to-point Network Functions of Open5GCore, a commercial 5G Core solution. A performance comparison between Point-to-point and developed Point-to-Multipoint components has been carried out; using network traffic tools and video delivery. The results show that the 5MBS prototype can course traffic to multiple users simultaneously without demanding more network bandwidth on different topologies, but the maximum bitrate coursed is degraded when compare versus Point-to-point components.