Implementation for a Resilient Cloud-native Core Network with an eBPF-based SCTP

As 5G networks continue to evolve and expand, ensuring high availability, fault tolerance, and efficient traffic management in telco cloud-native environments is critical. Traditional load balancers, designed for conventional protocols like TCP/IP and UDP, struggle to meet the stringent demands of modern Telco networks, particularly when handling protocols such as the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) for reliable, multi-homed connections. To address these challenges, we introduce eMTLB (eBPF-based Multi-homing for Telco Load Balancer), an innovative L4 load balancer tailored for Telco environments. eMTLB leverages the SCTP multi-homing with eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) technology to provide robust, scalable, and high-performance load balancing. Through its seamless integration with Kubernetes, it ensures reliable connections, even in failure-prone network conditions, by dynamically managing multiple network paths. Our implementation and evaluation have demonstrated eMTLB's capability to minimize service downtime and overhead, making it an ideal solution for modern Telco network.