Bringing 5G Research to Practice: TU Berlin Workshop on SLICES-RI and Post-5G Services

Our partner TU Berlin has been hosting a hands-on workshop on SLICES Research Infrastructure (RI) and Post-5G services as part of the Open Source Mobile Network Technologies (OSMNT) Workshop Series at the Technical University Berlin since 2023.

The workshop provided participants with practical experience experimenting with advanced mobile network technologies using open-source tools, offering valuable insights into 5G technologies.

Workshop Overview

The session began with an introductory presentation covering:

  • The SLICES Research Infrastructure and Post-5G services and their roles,

  • Account creation and access to SLICES RI,

  • How to join projects and set up experiments within the platform

Participants were then introduced to the two main ways of interacting with SLICES RI and Post-5G services:

  • via the Webshell interface,

  • by connecting from a local machine using the SLICES-CLI command-line interface tool.

The Webshell-based “first_experiment” tutorial from the Post-5G documentation was then introduced and explained step by step, enabling participants to continue experimenting with the platform after the session.

Practical Session

During the hands-on part of the workshop, participants followed the “LATINCOM” tutorial using on own notebooks the slices-cli tool to connect to SLICES infrastructure and use the Post5G services. As a result, they successfully:

  • Created a virtual machine within the SLICES RI cloud,

  • Deployed, using Docker, a complete experimental setup including:

    • A 5G Core Network,

    • A simulated 5G Radio Access Network (RAN),

    • Simulated 5G User Equipments (UEs),

    • Inspected the captured control-plane traffic in Wireshark,
    • Viewed the achieved performance results.

This workshop contributes to DIGITAfrica’s mission of developing a comprehensive 5G Blueprint and offers a valuable model for hands-on training. It can be easily replicated at partner universities in Africa, supporting capacity building and the dissemination of best practices across the network.