Network Testing Evolution in Telco Cloud for VoLTE Services

Today Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is one of the fields in telecommunications that is developing and growing at the fastest pace as a fundamental element in the Telco equipment marketplace. Network Functions that have traditionally been deployed over proprietary hardware now are remarkably decoupling of that, taking the functions and moving them into the software and putting them into the common hardware. There are a lot of elements which are moving to software such as IMS, Mobile Core, PE Router, etc. IMS is just one of them, and even within IMS architecture there are significant elements include the CSCF, the HSS, the SBC, the MRF, voice application servers which are starting to move to NFV and each of these elements considered to be a virtual network function (VNF). Migration to the virtual IMS bring the operators the benefits of lower cost regarding CAPEX, fast scaling services, introducing fast new network services, reducing complexity, operational efficiency, etc. In the future, testing network elements will be more necessary since the aim is to implement as software as an on-demand service similar in networks for some aspects such as protocol compliance performance. Moreover, load balancing can join with Software Defined Networking (SDN) to bring the possibility to vary routing of the packets in an NFV enabled network, but routing is not mandatory to be by the software. This dissertation presents the testing on the general NFV and, particularly it study the testing on a network element of virtualized IMS that is Call Session Control Function (CSCF).