Introducing F5 BIG-IP Next CNF Solutions for Red Hat OpenShift
5G and Red Hat OpenShift
5G standards have embraced Cloud-Native Network Functions (CNFs) for implementing network services in software as containers. This is a big change from previous Virtual...
Updated Jun 06, 2023
Version 3.0Ulises_Alonso
Employee
Solutions architect in Business Development with focus in automation and integration with partner's technologies. Prior to this role I was consultant in Professional Services and escalations engineer in Technical Support. Outside F5, I worked in mobile and wired network operators as network engineer. I started my career in academic research. In all these years, no matter what I've been doing Linux has been always the best tool.
Not the one in the picture :-)Nikoolayy1
MVP
Oct 27, 2024Ulises_Alonso great article! Can I ask when CNF are used and when it is better to use BIG-IP Next SPK as I am still not clear on that part?
- Ulises_AlonsoFeb 20, 2025
Employee
Hi Nikolay
Sorry for the overlook, I was away when you posted this.
CNFs are meant mainly for 5G user plane traffic (pass through traffic) and SPK are meant for ingress/egress traffic to PODs hosted in the cluster. Both SPK and CNF are going to be re-branded/re-architected under the common BNK product (BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes)
I hope this clarifies it