API’s are changing the world, ever since Roy Fielding’s REST dissertation the world of software communication has been riding in rolls royce, making app developer’s ecosystem flourishing thereby making customers life better. Inspite of all these things happening telecom networks were “under the rock at bottom of the ocean” by having their own custom protocols and strict communication pattern but all these were broken with 5G where critical components are already API and service driven , in this post let’s briefly look at a release-15,16 item which attempts to make north bound API much more simpler and an open source implementation of the CAPIF framework.

What is CAPIF:

Common API framework is a unified framework for all north bound API access of 3GPP system, you might ask well ram, what is this north bound API that you are talking about now? usually a north bound API’s are business/customer facing API calls that interacts with lower level API to get things done, for e.g you recharge to increase the speed of your mobile broadband, the recharge request is a like a north bound API which will then be processed by middle layers, and finally gets translated to lower level components(via a south bound API..duh) in the systems that eventually makes your cat videos faster.

You might think why is the need for such unification and framework in a 3GPP like system, the answer resides in the intro of the post, i.e API’s. As you know most of the 5G core components are API and service driven which makes business lifecycle easier and faster, but it’s still a problem (cough cough not NEF) when a external business needs these services, that’s where the unification helps, the below