OAI Core network
The OAI Core Network (CN) is a fully 3GPP-compliant, high-performance implementation of the 5G Standalone core. It offers flexible deployment options, supports extensive interoperability testing, and enables end-to-end experimentation with OAI and commercial RANs.
Features
Standards compliance and performance
Built on solid 3GPP foundations, the system evolves continuously to stay aligned with future releases and industry standards.
- Fully compliant with 3GPP Release 16, evolving toward Releases 17 and 18.
- Supports 5000+ UEs with strong control and user plane performance.
- eBPF-based UPF achieves a throughput of up to 100 Gbps.
- Future-ready for high-throughput and high-density network scenarios.
Flexible and integrated architecture
Designed for versatility, the architecture adapts seamlessly to various deployment environments and end-to-end network setups.
- Configurable control and user plane options.
- Deployable in cloud-native, containerized, or bare-metal environments.
- Natively integrated with UE, RAN, and OAM frameworks.
- Scalable design suitable for private networks and operator-grade systems.
Reliability and openness
Code quality and transparency are at the core of the development process, ensuring a stable and interoperable system.
- Continuous refactoring and code optimization for clarity and modularity.
- Extensive unit and integration testing for long-term stability.
- Regular interoperability validation with other open-source 5GCs.
- Verified compatibility across AMF, SMF, and UPF components.
Rich feature set
The platform integrates a broad and evolving range of capabilities for realistic network testing and future-oriented research:
- End-to-end QoS for control and user planes.
- Ethernet PDU Sessions for Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN).
- Framed routing, location services, and network analytics (NWDAF).
- Event exposure (NEF), N2 handover, network slicing, multiple UPFs, and ULCL support.
Deployment modes
- Minimalist 5GC with AMF, SMF, UPF (and NRF)
- Basic 5GC with AMF, SMF, UPF, RF, UDM, AUSF, and UDR
- Slicing 5GC with basic 5GC and NSSF
- QoS-enabled 5GC with basic 5GC and PCF
- AI-enabled 5GC with basic 5GC and NWDAF
UPF flavors
- UPF simple-switch, an easy-to-deploy and manage UPF, well-suited for tasks such as functional testing and validation
- eBPF/XDP-based UPF, providing a high-performance data path to meet the requirements of various 5G and beyond scenarios
- VPP-UPF (relying on VPP-Travelping, with DPDK support)
Deployment platforms
- Bare-metal installation or in virtual machines
- Automated deployment of NFs in Docker containers using Docker-Compose
- Cloud-native deployment using Helm Chart (on OpenShift/Kubernetes cluster)
OAI CN Roadmap
– October 2025
We invite the OAI community to refer to the following roadmap, which outlines the sequencing and timeline for the availability of different functions of a 3GPP-compliant 5G core.
