How Rakuten Mobile Built the World’s First Cloud‑Native 5G Network with Containers
Rakuten Mobile leveraged Kubernetes, OpenNESS, and the open‑source Kube‑OVN data‑plane to replace virtual machines with containers in its NFV and RAN infrastructure, creating the first cloud‑native 5G network and outlining future enhancements for telecom‑grade performance and scalability.
Rakuten Mobile is building the world’s first cloud‑native 5G radio‑access network (RAN) layer that runs on containers instead of virtual machines. The 5G RAN core is implemented as a micro‑service architecture and is deployed on Kubernetes to enable rapid rollout and independent component upgrades.
Edge Platform – OpenNESS
For edge networking, Rakuten selected OpenNESS (Open Network Edge Services Software) , an Intel‑open‑source platform that extends vanilla Kubernetes with networking capabilities required for telecom workloads. OpenNESS provides a fully cloud‑native, multi‑access, multi‑platform, multi‑cloud micro‑service stack and exposes a comprehensive API set for edge service orchestration.
Kube‑OVN as the Default Data‑Plane
Within OpenNESS, the default data‑plane component is Kube‑OVN , an open‑source Kubernetes networking solution based on OVN. Kube‑OVN supplies the essential data‑networking functions for telecom applications.
Enhanced Telecom Features
Subnet management and static IP allocation
Security policies (ACLs) and QoS controls tailored for 5G scenarios
Support for OVS‑DPDK with performance‑optimised code paths
These features were added through close collaboration between the OpenNESS and Kube‑OVN teams and are slated for inclusion in the Kube‑OVN main branch.
Roadmap
Network‑trace diagnostic tool
Generic IPAM module
Deeper integration with DPDK for higher throughput and lower latency
Adoption and Community Impact
Kube‑OVN is already deployed in production environments such as the OpenNESS suite, kubeasz, and kubespray. Since its open‑source launch in mid‑2019, it has been listed in the CNCF CloudNative Landscape and is recognized for its feature completeness, straightforward installation, and low maintenance overhead.
References
OpenNESS data‑plane specification: https://github.com/open-ness/specs/blob/master/doc/dataplane/openness-ovn.md
OpenNESS project site: https://www.openness.org
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