Capacity Planning

Capacity planning is the discipline of forecasting traffic demand and ensuring that compute, storage, transport, and radio resources are provisioned to meet it within agreed performance and availability targets. In mobile networks it spans radio (sites and spectrum), transport (backhaul and fronthaul), and core (signalling and user plane), and is increasingly automated with ML.

Categories: Radio Access NetworkCore NetworkSignaling

Capacity Planning in context

The radio access network is where mobile devices attach to the operator's infrastructure. Attacks in this layer include IMSI catching, rogue base stations and downgrade attacks; defenses rest on mutual authentication, integrity-protected signaling and Open RAN supply-chain hygiene.

The mobile core carries subscriber sessions, mobility and policy. In 4G it is the EPC (MME, HSS, S/PGW); in 5G it is the Service-Based Architecture with AMF, SMF, UPF, AUSF, UDM and the NRF.

To place Capacity Planning in the wider telecom-security picture, review 5G SA, AMF, Base Station (BS), CAPEX, CSCF and Diameter — each entry cross-references back to this page so you can walk the topic in either direction.

Related terms

More from the TelcoSec Glossary

Browse the full TelcoSec Glossary, the Ultimate Guide to Mobile Network Security, or the P1 Arsenal of telecom-security tools.