Hi,
I'm part of security research and we are mainly interested in the core network part and not on the UE part.
What we want to do is have a PGW which has some the EPC "machinery" behind to get a TEID and have MME, HSS, SGW initialized and some not real UEs i.e. the fake UEs would sit in or next to the eNB.
In the end we are interested in plugging this EPC next to a real one with a real S8 connection.
We do not need real internet connection for the "fake UE" and user plane is also not that important for us. So how can we get a "fake UE" into the eNB, so that is makes all the protocol runs for data communication set-up.
Any hints?
Greetings silke
Hi Silke,
Good to see you here on the list! :) I am also quite new here, because although I worked once on some core network stuff some years ago I just signed up for this list yesterday.
I think, as far as I remember the only virtual UE implementation I saw came from EURECOM/openAirInterface.
Maybe that is something worth checking out. Otherwise a fake UE can be implemented even in Python with the help of libmich/pycrate I think.
I am still new in thr area of available open-source core networks. I know that a very lightweight and compact package is offeted by srsEPC - although it probably does not have the S8 interface you require. I need to have a closer look at nextEPC to see how exactly it looks like, so I won’t talk about that now.
Wish you good luck!
Cheers, Domi (the guy from P3 ;) )
2019. júl. 10. dátummal, 10:21 időpontban Holtmanns, Silke (Nokia - FI/Espoo) silke.holtmanns@nokia-bell-labs.com írta:
Hi,
I’m part of security research and we are mainly interested in the core network part and not on the UE part.
What we want to do is have a PGW which has some the EPC “machinery” behind to get a TEID and have MME, HSS, SGW initialized and some not real UEs i.e. the fake UEs would sit in or next to the eNB.
In the end we are interested in plugging this EPC next to a real one with a real S8 connection.
We do not need real internet connection for the “fake UE” and user plane is also not that important for us. So how can we get a “fake UE” into the eNB, so that is makes all the protocol runs for data communication set-up.
Any hints?
Greetings silke
Hi Silke,
I'm not entirely sure if I'm getting this right, so please clarify:
You are looking for all of the below:
1) a simulated UE (possibly integrated with eNB) which can perform things like attach + PDN connection establishment over S1 to a MME, just like a real UE
2) an EPC (MME, S-GW, P-GW, HSS) exposing at least the S8 interface between S-GW and P-GW
so that you can then also a) connect a real eNB to that same MME above b) operate a second, 3rd party P-GW next to the P-GW above, interfacing over S8 (GTP) to the S-GW above
Does that correctly represent your requirement?
I would assume that in general, nextepc would be able to work as your MME/S-GW/P-GW/HSS. I'm not sure which exact procedures you will need it to support (quite a number of them are not yet implemented, e.g. the S6 between MME and HSS is quite "rudimentary" AFAICT.
The more interesting question is the "simulated eNB" part. I know that srsUE contains all the related NAS logic for the UE, but I'm not aware of a (public / open source) way to run it e.g. without real hardware against srsENB so that you have both UE and eNB covered, exposing an S1 interface. It would probably be best to inquire with SRS about this, maybe they can make that functoinality available either in their open source version or you could obtain it under their dual-licensing scheme.
Unrelated to the above: I'm currently working on a TTCN-3 test suite for the MME, which basically includes the eNB-Side S1 interface, as well as the basic NAS procedures of a UE, so we can test the [nextepc] MME. But it's unfortunately at a development stage where it's not yet doing anything useful yet - and it's also just a hobby/pet project I'm doing in my spare time, without any clear timeline or any commercial backing :/
There are of course various proprietary options available on the market (like the NG4T testers), but I guess you're inquiring here as you're specifically looking for open source.
-
Harald Welte -
Holtmanns, Silke (Nokia - FI/Espoo) -
Tomcsányi, Domonkos