You’ve probably heard of overlay networks, and if you haven’t, you’re at least familiar with the most widely used one: the internet. But did you know that overlay networks are a critical technology that’s paving the way to widespread 5G adoption globally? In this blog post, we’ll walk through what overlay networks are and then talk about why they’re essential to 5G open radio access network (Open RAN) and the strategic placement of the user plane function (UPF). Finally, we’ll look at some exciting projects that are exploring the use of overlay networks for the next frontier of 5G networks. Overlay…

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