Enhanced Discovery of User Plane Function (UPF) with Network Address Translation (NAT) Functionality

Abstract

User plane function (UPF) discovery may be enhanced with improved network address translation that allows reuse of the same public IP address for different UEs. A UPF may register or update public internet protocol (IP) address information and corresponding port number information per each public IP address included in the public IP address information. An application function (AF) may invoke a network exposure function (NEF) to obtain an AF-specific UE ID corresponding to the IP address visible at the application server. Based on local configuration, the NEF may detect that the IP address provided by the AF is a public IP address that has been subject to network address translation, and may invoke a network repository function (NRF) discovery request to retrieve the UPF address that has translated the IP Address. UPFs may be provisioned with a range of public IP addresses and additionally with a range of port number(s) per each public IP Address. The NRF may perform the discovery of the UPF based on the pubic IP address and associated port number corresponding to a connection of the UE to the AF.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.