DEPRECATION NOTICE

This repository is no longer maintained. For an updated installation guide for Free5GC, please visit our new repository at free5gc-k8s.

About

This repository contains Kubernetes manifest files to run a 5G network consisting of 5G core network using the Free5GC project and RAN using the UERANSIM project.

Installation

1. You need to have a working kubernetes cluster. Instructions for setting up a multi-node Kubernetes cluster is available in the official docs. Note that we are using kubeadm=1.23.6-00 kubectl=1.23.6-00 kubelet=1.23.6-00 as this is the last version that supports Docker as a container runtime out of the box. If you are using the latest Kubernetes with docker, see instructions here.

2. You need to install Flannel CNI and Multus CNI. Flannel is used for cluster networking. Multus CNI enables attaching multiple network interfaces to pods in Kubernetes, which is required for 5G NFs with multiple interfaces (e.g., UPF has the N3 interface towards gNB and the N4 interface towards SMF).

3. You need to create a local persistent volume for MongoDB. Free5GC uses MongoDB for storage. This can be created using the create-free5gc-pv.sh script. Note that you need to change the path and values in the free5gc-pv.yaml file according to your cluster.

4. The Multus CNI interfaces in the manifests, denoted by k8s.v1.cni.cncf.io/networks in the deployment files have static IPs assigned to them according to our lab setup (129.97.168.0/24 subnet). All these IPs need to be changed according your scenario. Use an IP range that you can access from all nodes of your Kubernetes cluster.

5. The Free5GC core can be installed as follows:

kubectl apply -f free5gc-slice-x2 --recursive -n <namespace>

and uninstalled using:

kubectl delete -f free5gc-slice-x2 --recursive -n <namespace>

Once free5GC has been deployed, you should see the pods similar to the screenshot below.

6. The RAN (gNB) can be installed as follows:

kubectl apply -f ueransim-gnb --recursive -n <namespace>

and uninstalled using:

kubectl delete -f ueransim-gnb --recursive -n <namespace>

6. Follow similar commands for deploying UEs. Before deployign the UEs, make sure you have entered UE subscription information in Free5GC mongodb database (e.g., using the Free5GC webui) to ensure UEs are authorized.

Running into issues!

The manifest files are not working? Please see the FAQ.

Different slicing configurations?

Check out the develop branch for various other slicing configurations. The develop branch of this repository is used for ongoing development and may contain experimental, incomplete, or broken features. This is the branch where we experiment with different configurations and deployments. While we strive to keep it in a working state, there is no guarantee that it will always work as expected.

Credits

These manifest files are heavily inspired from towards5gs-helm and the Docker images used are based on free5gc-compose.