Apple Inc.
Systems, methods and devices for user plane traffic forwarding

Abstract:

A traffic offloading function (TOF) of a mobile edge computing (MEC) platform uses a traffic forwarding table and a location database updated by monitoring control plane messages. User plane traffic in a default bearer passes through an extended TOF where the IP packets retrieved from a General Packet Radio Service Tunneling Protocol (GTP) tunnel are forwarded following a policy that is created by detecting (or sniffing) control plane messages exchanged over the S1-MME interface. An additional entity, a location database, is responsible for tracking a location of a UE and other hosts in the mobile network. The location database can be used to guide the forwarding policy creation in an absence of the control plane messages.