EnCoR: An end-to-end architecture for simplifying cellular networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Woo, Wesley, Wen, Zhuowei, Velmurugan, Monniiesh, Raad, Richard, Ratnasamy, Sylvia, Shenker, Scott, Hasan, Shaddi
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Woo, Wesley
Wen, Zhuowei
Velmurugan, Monniiesh
Raad, Richard
Ratnasamy, Sylvia
Shenker, Scott
Hasan, Shaddi
author_facet Woo, Wesley
Wen, Zhuowei
Velmurugan, Monniiesh
Raad, Richard
Ratnasamy, Sylvia
Shenker, Scott
Hasan, Shaddi
contents Since their creation, cellular networks have made in-network mobility support a key feature of their service model. While this approach provides seamless connectivity for legacy traffic, it has the side effects of inflating end-user latency and increasing complexity and operational overhead for operators. Yet modern applications and transport protocols are increasingly mobility tolerant, prompting us to revisit the assumption that mobility must be provided as an in-network service. In this paper, we propose EnCoR (End-to-End Core and RAN), a deployable cellular network architecture that removes mobility from the core entirely. Leveraging end-to-end mobility, EnCoR eliminates tunnel-based IP anchoring while preserving compatibility with existing authentication, charging, and QoS techniques. We demonstrate that EnCoR works with unmodified phones while providing equivalent performance as traditional LTE networks for real applications including video and voice calling and video streaming. We show that EnCoR not only allows network operators to reduce end to end latency, but can also reduce the capital cost of providing low latency service to users by more than 90% compared to 3GPP networks, based on cost estimates for cellular network core and border router infrastructure provided by the FCC. Finally, we demonstrate that these gains are achieved while reducing the amount of overall handover control messaging, allowing the EnCoR core network to handle a greater number of mobility handover events than an LTE core under identical hardware constraints, achieving a 2.6x lower handover latency under load.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_22524
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle EnCoR: An end-to-end architecture for simplifying cellular networks
Woo, Wesley
Wen, Zhuowei
Velmurugan, Monniiesh
Raad, Richard
Ratnasamy, Sylvia
Shenker, Scott
Hasan, Shaddi
Networking and Internet Architecture
Since their creation, cellular networks have made in-network mobility support a key feature of their service model. While this approach provides seamless connectivity for legacy traffic, it has the side effects of inflating end-user latency and increasing complexity and operational overhead for operators. Yet modern applications and transport protocols are increasingly mobility tolerant, prompting us to revisit the assumption that mobility must be provided as an in-network service. In this paper, we propose EnCoR (End-to-End Core and RAN), a deployable cellular network architecture that removes mobility from the core entirely. Leveraging end-to-end mobility, EnCoR eliminates tunnel-based IP anchoring while preserving compatibility with existing authentication, charging, and QoS techniques. We demonstrate that EnCoR works with unmodified phones while providing equivalent performance as traditional LTE networks for real applications including video and voice calling and video streaming. We show that EnCoR not only allows network operators to reduce end to end latency, but can also reduce the capital cost of providing low latency service to users by more than 90% compared to 3GPP networks, based on cost estimates for cellular network core and border router infrastructure provided by the FCC. Finally, we demonstrate that these gains are achieved while reducing the amount of overall handover control messaging, allowing the EnCoR core network to handle a greater number of mobility handover events than an LTE core under identical hardware constraints, achieving a 2.6x lower handover latency under load.
title EnCoR: An end-to-end architecture for simplifying cellular networks
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.22524