University of Surrey abuzz with talk of Flat Distributed Cloud

They know how to party over at the University of Surrey and NFV-based Flat Distributed Cloud (FDC) is what all the cool kids are talking about these days.

The 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) opened at the University of Surrey a year ago, with everyone who’s anyone involved. When not sleeping all day or going on demos the 5GIC has been busy looking at clever implementations of NFV for the 5G era.

FDC is a big deal, apparently, because it significantly reduces deployment, optimisation and upgrade costs for network operators. The headline is that the 5GIC has demoed FDC for the first time and that it was done over a regular LTE-A network, using regular connected devices.

It consists of a virtualized 5G architecture running on regular sever blades and a Linux OS, claiming to move the NFV dream along significantly, which is just as well as it’s struggling to deliver on its lofty initial claims.

“This successful demonstration of the FDC is a huge step forward towards the development of a viable 5G network that supports mobile broadband, Internet of things and high quality applications such as Ultra High Definition video, Virtual and Augmented Reality applications,” said Professor Rahim Tafazolli, Head of the 5GIC. “The next step for the 5GIC team will be to demonstrate FDC-based network slicing – the partitioning of network resources for different purposes to create the perception of infinite capacity.”

Network slicing is where the fun really starts and in this era of endless partnerships and nebulous aspirations it’s good to see at least one organisation actually do something, or at least claim to do so. The 5GIC has earned its ten pints and a doner kebab on the way home, in our opinion.