F5 has announced enhancements to their cloud-native network functions and new observability features, aimed at assisting service providers in upgrading their networks as they transition from virtualised to Kubernetes-based and cloud-native architectures. This move addresses the growing demands of 5G, edge, IT, and emerging AI workloads, offering greater efficiency and maintaining the necessary performance and security for carrier-grade services.
The shift to using Kubernetes for network functions offers service providers increased flexibility in their infrastructure use. However, it also brings new requirements for managing traffic, ensuring security, and maintaining visibility across distributed environments. F5's recent enhancements aim to facilitate these transitions. Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5, remarked, "Service providers should not have to choose between cloud-native agility and the performance, security, and control required for critical network infrastructure."
Efficiency gains in core services
Independent tests conducted by The Tolly Group highlight significant improvements in infrastructure efficiency with F5's BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions. In tests simulating DNS operations, F5 achieved 1.9 times more queries per second while reducing CPU usage by 91.5%. Comparable improvements were seen in CGNAT, where CPU usage decreased by 79.7% and memory consumption by 98.5%, all while maintaining throughput.
This includes DNS, CGNAT, network security, traffic management, and subscriber policy enforcement
F5's BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition integrates core services from the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform into Kubernetes environments. This includes DNS, CGNAT, network security, traffic management, and subscriber policy enforcement. The platform operates at the Kubernetes level, enhancing networking, application delivery, and security with kernel-level observability.
Advancements in traffic management
The enhanced network functions provide Layer 4–7 support, facilitating the transition of a wide range of network services into Kubernetes environments. This not only supports a variety of networking protocols but also allows operators to apply quality-of-service, traffic-shaping, and content-filtering policies dynamically based on subscriber needs.
With Kubernetes-native lifecycle management, service providers can streamline deployment and management workflows, moving smoothly from virtual machines to containerised infrastructure. This helps in efficiently handling increasing network traffic and service demands.
Enhancing visibility in distributed environments
The BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition, alongside features such as BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes
To address troubleshooting challenges across distributed networks, the new F5 BIG-IP eBPF Observability offers real-time, low-overhead telemetry. This provides detailed insights into applications and networks, facilitating the investigation of performance or connectivity issues without extensive instrumentation.
Testing by The Tolly Group showed how F5's solutions can increase workload density and reduce infrastructure needs. In DNS and CGNAT scenarios, they demonstrated substantially higher efficiency and performance compared to virtualised network function deployments.
Pathway to modernised infrastructure
The transition to cloud-native solutions is crucial as service providers continue to adopt Kubernetes in their architectures.
F5 extends its established BIG-IP capabilities to meet these evolving needs, ensuring service providers can maintain familiar operational models while embracing new technologies. The BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition, alongside features such as BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes and BIG-IP eBPF Observability, is currently available for service provider deployment.
F5, the global pioneer in delivering and securing every app and API, announces enhanced cloud-native network functions and new observability capabilities that help service providers modernise critical network services as they move from virtualised infrastructure to Kubernetes and cloud-native architectures.
Service providers are under pressure to support growing 5G, edge, IT, and emerging AI workloads, boost efficiency, and maintain the performance, security, and operational control required for carrier-grade services. Moving network functions to Kubernetes lets operators use infrastructure more flexibly but also introduces additional requirements for traffic management, security, lifecycle operations, and visibility across increasingly distributed environments. F5 now accelerates this transition.
Increasingly distributed environments
“Service providers should not have to choose between cloud-native agility and the performance, security, and control required for critical network infrastructure,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer at F5. “BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition brings proven F5 BIG-IP capabilities into Kubernetes, giving network and cloud operations teams a more consistent way to deploy, secure, observe, and operate 5G, edge, and AI infrastructure at scale.”
Independent testing by The Tolly Group of selected BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions within BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition demonstrated substantial infrastructure-efficiency gains in Kubernetes-based DNS and CGNAT workloads compared with virtualised network function deployments. In a DNS scenario, F5 processed 1.9x more queries per second while using 91.5% less CPU. In a CGNAT scenario, F5 delivered comparable throughput while using 79.7% less CPU and 98.5% less memory.
Infrastructure-efficiency gains
F5 BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition extends capabilities from the F5 Application Delivery and Security Platform within Kubernetes-based service provider environments, bringing together complementary capabilities across cloud-native networking, application delivery, security, and observability.
BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions extend core BIG-IP network and security services into Kubernetes-native environments, including DNS, CGNAT, network security, subscriber policy enforcement, and traffic management. BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes operates at the Kubernetes network layer, providing networking, application delivery, security, and manageability. BIG-IP eBPF Observability provides kernel-level application and network visibility for troubleshooting distributed environments.
Kernel-level application
Enhanced F5 BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions provide Kubernetes-native traffic management and security capabilities designed for service provider environments.
- Expanded traffic management: Broad Layer 4–7 support, including ingress and egress networking and support for TCP, UDP, HTTP/2, Diameter, SCTP, GTP, and SIP, helps operators move a wider range of network services into Kubernetes rather than limiting modernisation to HTTP-based applications.
- Subscriber-aware policy enforcement: Operators can dynamically apply quality-of-service (QoS), traffic-shaping, and content-filtering policies based on subscriber and service requirements, supporting differentiated services while maintaining consistent policy enforcement.
- Cloud-native lifecycle management: Kubernetes-native deployment and management workflows let teams automate common configuration and lifecycle tasks as network functions move from VM-based to containerised infrastructure.
Kubernetes-native deployments
By moving these services into Kubernetes-native deployments, operators can make more flexible use of compute and memory resources, more efficiently using infrastructure as network traffic and service demands grow.
Network, security, application, and platform teams often rely on different tools when troubleshooting the same problem. New F5 BIG-IP eBPF Observability provides a consistent source of application and network telemetry across distributed Kubernetes clusters, enabling teams to examine app behaviour, container activity, and network flows together when investigating performance or connectivity issues.
- Real-time, low-overhead telemetry: Operations teams gain granular network and app insights across Kubernetes environments without requiring application-by-application instrumentation.
- Scalable visibility: Kubernetes-native deployment models and a resource-efficient architecture support visibility across distributed environments, helping teams investigate issues without adding another heavy monitoring layer.
- Shared operational context: BIG-IP eBPF Observability provides correlated application and network context to determine whether an issue originates in the application, container, or network to reduce investigation time.
Virtualised network function deployments
The Tolly Group tested BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions against virtualised network function deployments in the same Kubernetes environment across two essential service provider workloads.
- DNS: F5 processed 1.9x more queries per second with 91.5% less CPU demand and 48% lower average latency than the tested VNF configuration.
- CGNAT: F5 delivered comparable throughput with 79.7% less CPU demand, 98.5% less memory consumption, and 82% lower p95 latency than the tested VNF configuration.
These results demonstrate how Kubernetes-native network functions can help operators increase workload density and reduce infrastructure requirements for the workloads tested.
Critical networking and security services
Service providers have relied on BIG-IP across physical and virtual infrastructure for critical networking and security services. As those environments increasingly incorporate Kubernetes, F5 is extending those capabilities into the architectures operators are adopting while providing a path to maintain familiar operational models and policies.
BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition gives service providers a broader cloud-native solution across traffic management, networking, security, and observability. It also creates opportunities for operators to adopt additional F5 capabilities as their infrastructure evolves across 5G core, edge, IT, and newer workload environments. BIG-IP Cloud-Native Network Functions, BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes, and BIG-IP eBPF Observability address different layers of that transition while helping customers maintain familiar networking, security, and operational models. BIG-IP Cloud-Native Edition and the capabilities highlighted in this announcement are available now for service provider environments.
