Overview

Overall Introduction to MEP Projects

With the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, mobile Internet, big data, and big video, as well as the maturity of network resources and computing power of the ICT-open ecosystem, the evolution of resource concentration and marginalization is gradual.

MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing) is a typical resource marginalisation mode, providing IT service environments and cloud computing capabilities on the edge of the mobile network to complete business processing of mobile network edges in real time. The MEC will continue to develop rapidly with the convergence of CT and IT depth, the rise of the Internet of Things, the development of artificial intelligence technology, and the safety and real-time nature of the enterprise’s production data.

Under the MEC scenario, big applications will operate on the edge of the network for business processing, and the application can use the network’s open ability, and it can also provide and consume each other.

The EdgeGallery MEP project aims to create an open source and open reference MEP platform on the edge side, and MEP projects currently include both MEP and MEP-Agent components.

MEC platform is a network element defined by the ETSI MEC standard. The deployment location is on the edge side, mainly covering the following functions:

  • Provides service governance capabilities for ME APP (registration, discovery, subscription, notification).

  • Receives a flow rule (Traffice Rules) configuration issued by MEPM.

  • Receives DNS Rules (DNS Rules) configurations issued by MEPM.

  • Provides MEC public services such as DNS for the MEC APP.

The MEP component runs with the following microservices:

  • Mepauth: Provides the authentication authentication for the application while taking part in the configuration management capability.

  • Mep: Provides functions related to service governance, app subscription notification management.

  • Kong: Using open-source gateway software kong, it is responsible for the relevant route forwarding and plugin configuration.

  • Postgres: Postgres provides data storage capabilities for kong and mepauth.

MEP-Agent Assembly: The application of an integrated adapter, which the application developer can use as part of the application. The invention realizes the related basic functions of the instance configuration information leading-in, service registration and so on, which can simplify the integration of the application and the platform.

MEP Overall Framework

The main MEP related interfaces involved in the figure are:

  • Mp1: Between APP and MEP, it provides APP service registration discovery, APP status notification subscription and other capabilities.

  • Mp2: Between MEP and UPF, it provides data plane configuration capabilities.

  • Mm3: Provides package management and APP life cycle management capabilities between MEO and MEPM.

  • Mm5: Between MEPM and MEP, MEP platform can perform configuration management, configure APP rules and other capabilities.

For the application APP, Mp1 is the most important interface between APP and MEP, and APP can register its own services to MEP via Mp1, while the MEP can be found to be called MEP services by service.