# Effects of Transport Network Slicing on 5G Applications
## 7 Conclusions  
This article demonstrates that network slicing is an effective mechanism for seamlessly integrating 5G MBB, MIoT, and CIoT applications, making it the key technology to fulfilling the diverse requirements of 5G applications. We utilize SimTalk to emulate the traffic patterns of actual applications running on NCTU campus and direct large-scale emulated traffic into a P4-based testbed to study network slicing impact on these applications. The performances are measured in terms of throughput, packet loss, and latency. According to the findings in [13], the P4 meters in commodity P4 switches can reach only 10% of the target rate for TCP streams. In contrast, the proposed slice and bandwidth management mechanism can enforce the committed rates for designated application flows in both TCP and UDP effectively and meet the 5G latency and reliability requirements for MIoT, CIoT, and MBB applications.  
The proper CIR ratio for an application depends on the traffic characteristics. When the total demand is higher than the link capacity, a CIR ratio much higher than 100% is necessary for the applications with TCP or UDP elephant flows. On the other hand, a 100% CIR ratio is sufficient for the applications with TCP mice flows. Notably, the sensor fusion needs a 140% CIR ratio to achieve an approximate 100% throughput percentage with a 0.0035% loss rate. The video requires a 140% CIR ratio to achieve an approximate 100% throughput percentage with a 0.0017% loss rate. The smart switch and the MapTalk demand a CIR ratio of 120% and 100%, respectively, to achieve a 100% throughput percentage without any packet loss.  
We are developing the NCTU testbed based on free5 GCTM and investigating the possibility of building Aether [25], the first open-source Enterprise 5G/LTE Edge-Cloud-as-a-Service platform developed by Open Networking Foundation (ONF). In the future, we will integrate the current NCTU testbed with the Aether Connected Edge (ACE) and develop a 5G MEC architecture supported by network slicing, where a slicing network for URLLC will operate in the NCTU testbed with other smart applications mentioned in Section 3. Also, we will direct all traffic through the 5G new radio and conduct further empirical experiments to investigate how network slicing can support URLLC, eMBB, CloT, and MIoT applications. Last but not least, the effects of the four user-configurable parameters of trTCM meters on these applications with different traffic characteristics are also worthy of more study to provide a guideline for practical usage scenarios.  
Conceptualization, M.-H.W.; Software, M.-H.W.; Supervision, Y.-B.L. and C.-C.T.; Validation, M.-H.W.; Writing--original draft, Y.-B.L., C.-C.T. and M.-H.W.; Writing--review & editing, Y.-B.L., C.-C.T. and M.-H.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work was supported in part by the Center for Open Intelligent Connectivity from The Featured Areas Research Center Program within the Framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan; in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology under Grant 108-2221-E-009-047, Grant 107-2221-E-197-006-MY3, Grant 108-2321-B-197-003 and Grant 109-2221-E-009-07; and in part by the Ministry of Economic Affairs under Grant 107-EC-17-A-02-S5-007.  
Not applicable.  
The datasets used to support the findings of this study are available-from the corresponding author upon request.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.