AWS Telco Network Builder FAQs
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Open allWhat is AWS Telco Network Builder (TNB)?
AWS TNB is a network automation service that makes it easier and faster for communications service providers (CSPs) to deploy and manage telco networks on AWS using telecom industry standards.
What types of telco networks can use AWS TNB?
With AWS TNB, you can efficiently deploy and manage multiple types of telco networks, such as mobile and cable, using AWS infrastructure and services.
In which AWS Region is AWS TNB available?
AWS TNB is supported in the following AWS Regions:
US East (N. Virginia)
us-east-1
US West (Oregon)
us-west-2
EU (Frankfurt)
eu-central-1
EU (Paris)
eu-west-3
Asia Pacific (Sydney)
ap-southeast-2
EU (Spain)
eu-south-2
Canada (Central)
ca-central-1
EU (Stockholm)
eu-north-1
South America (Sao Paulo)
sa-east-1
Asia Pacific (Seoul)
ap-northeast-2
Why should I use AWS TNB?
AWS TNB reduces the complexity of mapping telco network requirements to a cloud architecture. With AWS TNB, CSPs define network requirements by using telecom industry standards. Then, AWS TNB maps the requirements to a cloud architecture and provisions the right compute, storage, and networking resources automatically. AWS TNB simplifies network lifecycle management because CSPs can use a single service for deploying, updating, and upgrading network functions and services. AWS TNB provides a centralized dashboard so that CSPs can monitor and manage their network functions and AWS services from one place.
What are the support prerequisites for using AWS TNB?
You must have AWS Business Support, AWS Enterprise On-Ramp Support, or AWS Enterprise Support. Learn more about AWS Support Plan Pricing.
How do I get started with AWS TNB?
First, sign in to the AWS Management Console. Next, read the documentation for getting started. Finally, start building with AWS TNB by defining your network requirements.
How does AWS TNB work with other AWS services?
A telco network is composed of a set of interconnected, containerized network functions that are deployed across thousands of Kubernetes clusters. AWS TNB abstracts the AWS services as telecom-specific APIs.
AWS TNB integrates with the following AWS services:
- For storing network function artifacts from independent software vendors (ISVs) – Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
- For setting up clusters – Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- For networking constructs – Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC)
- For security groups – AWS CloudFormation
- For deployment targets across AWS Regions – AWS CodePipeline
- To define roles and permissions – AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- To control access to AWS TNB APIs – AWS Organizations
- For network health monitoring – AWS Health Dashboard and Amazon CloudWatch
- For a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service – AWS CloudTrail
Which telecom industry standards does AWS TNB follow?
AWS TNB supports the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) definitions to deploy network functions and services on general purpose compute infrastructure. AWS TNB complies with the ETSI Management and Orchestration (MANO) standards, which allow high-layer service orchestrators to make calls that instruct AWS TNB to create, upgrade, manage, scale, and delete network functions.
What do I need to provide as inputs to use AWS TNB?
Define the individual network function (NF) resource requirements, such as compute, storage, and databases, as network function descriptors (NFDs) in the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) format. Along with these requirements, provide the software images of NFs from your independent software vendor (ISV) as pointers to Amazon ECR images.
You then define the network services that comprise your networks as network services descriptors (NSDs) in TOSCA format. NSDs can include one or many NFs. AWS TNB offers many ways for you to provide NFDs and NSDs, including through the use of industry-specific APIs and directly through the AWS TNB console.
How will I use AWS TNB?
After you have described the network service topology and NF resource requirements and dependencies, AWS TNB creates the right AWS CloudFormation templates, Amazon VPCs, and accounts. When deploying the network, your third-party service orchestrator will use standardized ETSI APIs to call AWS TNB to start the individual network services. AWS TNB will instantiate the required AWS resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EKS clusters, and Amazon VPC resources, to create an operational network service. When the network is running, the service orchestrator continually interacts with AWS TNB to manage the lifecycle of the network services, including scaling resources, monitoring, health checking, and reconfiguring. At any point, you can redefine existing network services, update network functions, change your network topology, and deploy new services by using the AWS TNB APIs and AWS Management Console. You will also use the AWS TNB dashboard to inspect and monitor your AWS resources.
How can I access AWS TNB?
You can access AWS TNB through the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), and AWS APIs or AWS SDKs to create the network service and network functions.
How is AWS TNB different from AWS CloudFormation?
AWS TNB offers a telecom-industry interface through which CSPs can define network services using standardized descriptors. CSPs also define requirements for network function infrastructure and software dependencies. AWS TNB translates these definitions to AWS CloudFormation templates that reflect the intended network topology. Although AWS TNB uses AWS CloudFormation to launch AWS resources, it also performs the following tasks:
- Loads the appropriate network functions into Amazon EKS clusters
- Sets up the right IAM permissions across account structures
- Establishes the Amazon VPC interconnectivity required for the network functions to communicate with each other