Why Choose Enea 5G Service Engine?
- Dual-Mode Operation: Ensures service continuity and consistent QoE across 4G and 5G networks.
- Eliminates Vendor Lock-In: Fully interoperable with any UPF, PGW vendor, and 4G Control Plane elements.
- Horizontal Scalability: Enables MNOs and ISPs to scale 5G services efficiently, meeting growing network demands.
- VMware & Red Hat OpenShift Ready: Compatible with Telco Clouds Environments, ensuring smooth deployment
- Real-Time Service Insertion: Optimizes traffic flows and improves user experience with low-latency service orchestration.
Unified Traffic Management for 4G and 5G Mobile Networks
Delivering Seamless User Experience Across Access Technologies
Mobile users expect a fast, smooth experience as they switch between applications and network technologies. But today’s networks span a complex mix of access methods—from legacy 2G/3G to 4G and 5G Standalone (SA). The 5G Service Engine (5G-SE) from Enea enables Communication Service Providers (CSPs) to deliver a unified, high-quality experience across all access types.
Enea 5G Service Engine is a cloud-native, dual-mode packet flow inspection and orchestration framework. It integrates simultaneously with both the 4G EPC and 5G Core (5GC), enabling seamless service continuity even as users move between access technologies. The stateless architecture and shared data store provide consistent session awareness, so the network delivers a single experience regardless of connection type. Deployed directly in the user plane, 5G-SE sits in the data path for TCP, UDP, and QUIC traffic, enabling in-line services that span both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. This ensures real-time visibility and control of user-generated traffic at scale, across both 4G and 5G environments.
Built for the 5G Transition
While 5G rollout accelerates, 4G subscriptions remain strong. Enea 5G-SE supports a phased transition, allowing operators to maintain and evolve existing services. The solution interworks with any UPF or PGW vendor and standard 4G control plane elements—eliminating vendor lock-in and supporting service continuity. Its traffic classification and mediation capabilities allow CSPs to optimize data flows, enforce content policies, and act on unwanted traffic—all while maintaining low latency and a consistent user experience.
Stateless Design with Unified Subscriber Context
Using a shared, high-performance in-memory database (Enea ItemStore), 5G-SE caches subscriber and session data centrally. This unified subscriber context supports real-time decisions on service insertion and quality assurance. As users move between 4G and 5G access types, the system ensures seamless service continuity while enabling CSPs to feed valuable intelligence into analytics, capacity planning, and monetization efforts.
5G Service Engine in Network
Core Capabilities of the 5G Service Engine
Ultra-Efficient Packet Processing
Built on next-gen Vector Packet Processing (VPP), 5G-SE performs inspection, classification, and orchestration enforcement within a single fast function. It identifies traffic types in microseconds, applies contextual rules, and orchestrates inline services such as acceleration or filtering.
Machine Learning and Heuristics for Flow Detection
Unlike traditional loss/delay-based methods, Enea uses heuristic-driven flow classification, enabling precise adaptation to dynamic traffic patterns. Operators can increase throughput by up to 25%, reduce latency, and ensure optimal service under variable network conditions.
End-to-End Protocol Support
The platform manages TCP, UDP, QUIC, and ALL-IP traffic, supporting both IPv4 and IPv6 flows. It seamlessly handles encrypted traffic like HTTPS and QUIC by classifying based on metadata, context, and session history.
Key Use Cases and Value-Added Services
Encrypted Traffic Management
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Encrypted Video Optimization: Identify HD video on small screens and reduce bitrate to DVD quality, saving up to 25% bandwidth without degrading user experience.
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Encrypted Traffic Classification: Classify HTTPS/QUIC flows in real time, apply adaptive bit rate (ABR) control, and optimize encrypted video from sources like mvfst or HTTP-ABR.
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TLS Manager: Offers TLS termination for HTTPS enforcement and policy control using operator-owned certificates.
Selective Service Insertion and Enforcement
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Contextual Application Orchestration (CAO): Selectively apply inline services based on flow characteristics. CAO routes packets through acceleration, filtering, identity management, or congestion mitigation engines when needed.
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Zero Rate Quota and Agile Data Plans: Implement smart quota plans—video-only packages, group quotas, or MVNO custom offers—without sacrificing QoE.
Identity and Session Management
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Deep Subscriber Awareness: Extract identity via control plane, traffic data, RADIUS, LDAP, or PCRF queries.
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Dual-Mode Session Storage: Use a unified store across 4G and 5G to maintain subscriber context for dynamic policy enforcement and seamless service.
Content Categorization and Filtering
Enforce family, enterprise, and regulator policies via DPI and categorization.
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Malware, phishing, and site blocking
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App-specific, time-based, or zero-rated content rules
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Enterprise BYOD enforcement
TCP/UDP Optimization and Congestion Management
- Smart Throughput Boost: Accelerate low-level protocols to increase user throughput by 30% under congested or lossy conditions.
- Network Congestion Mitigation: Detect session- or cell-level congestion and apply targeted shaping to preserve QoE.
Deployment and Integration Flexibility
Cloud-Native & Kubernetes-Ready
5G-SE is certified for Kubernetes v1.19 and supports containerized microservices for easy integration with 5GC network functions. It registers services dynamically using a Consul cluster and integrates with Prometheus and Grafana for observability.
Telecom-Grade Scalability & Availability
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Stateless Components for Horizontal Scale
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Store High-Availability In-Memory DB: Replicates data across slices and geographies for resilience and fast access
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Monitoring & Reporting: Real-time dashboards for every service and cluster resource via Kubernetes-native observability tools
Seamless Interworking Across the Network
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Supports 4G, 5G, and Hybrid Architectures
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Interoperable with Any PGW, UPF, SMF, PCRF, PCF, or BSS Vendor
- Supports N6 Interface for Transparent Data Plane Insertion
Business Benefits for CSPs
Maximize QoE While Reducing TCO
5G-SE ensures that end-user quality of experience remains high—whether they’re watching video, gaming, or browsing—across any network environment. At the same time, selective optimization and smarter quota management reduce overall data usage and transit costs.
Eliminate Vendor Lock-In
5G-SE is fully standards-based and interoperable with third-party 4G and 5G vendors, allowing CSPs to retain strategic flexibility and negotiate better vendor terms.
Speed Up 5G Service Deployment
By using 5G-SE to rapidly insert value-added services into the 5G core, operators accelerate time-to-market for new plans, optimizations, and policy use cases—without the need to rebuild platforms.
Monetize Existing Network Investments
With a dual-mode engine and support for multiple generations of packet core technology, 5G-SE lets CSPs make the most of their 4G infrastructure while preparing for full 5G Standalone service delivery.
Contact Us to Take Control of 5G
Enea 5G Service Engine is your path to scalable, intelligent, and future-ready traffic management. Contact us to discuss how you can streamline 4G/5G service delivery and elevate the mobile experience.
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Enea’s traffic management capabilities provide the technological foundation needed to fulfill our ‘subscribe once, source from many, pay for what you use’ model, which is radically transforming how consumers experience mobile services across our LATAM operations.
Naorus Abdulghani
Group Chief Technology Officer
Beyond ONE -
Enea’s technology allows us to effectively manage all our streaming data, including encrypted video, resulting in a very positive impact on subscriber QoE
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TELUS is proud to partner with Enea and give our customers a better experience while watching videos
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The innovative solution from Enea has been impressive. They have demonstrated their expertise and backed it up with excellent levels of service
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Secure Traffic Manager and RAN Congestion Manager effectively manage encrypted and non-encrypted traffic, reduce RAN congestion and improve subscribers’ quality of experience.
VMWare Ready
5G-SE eliminates vendor lock-in with interoperable traffic management, MSP, and optimization services for any UPF, PGW vendor, and 4G Control Plane elements. Being VMware Ready (Telco Cloud) and cloud-native, 5G-SE complements Enea’s Enea virtual load balancer (vLB), providing horizontal scalability for MNOs and ISPs to meet growing 5G network demands.
Enea Network Traffic Management Portfolio
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Solution Brief
Accelerate your dual mode service deployment – reducing costs and complexity
Contact Our Experts
Would you like to know more about Enea’s software solutions for Network Traffic Management? Interested in discovering how our features could improve your specific use cases? Contact us to arrange a meeting with our network performance experts!