F5 Aspen Mesh

F5 Aspen Mesh is an Istio-based service mesh solution designed for service providers deploying microservices infrastructure, particularly for 5G service-based architecture (SBA) deployments. The product enables service providers to transition from 4G virtualized network functions (VNF) to 5G cloud-native network functions (CNF) using a microservices infrastructure. The solution provides traffic control and policy enforcement through open source Istio capabilities while adding enterprise features including 24/7 support and security-by-default configurations. It supports IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack networking across the service mesh and includes DNS Subject Alternative Name (SAN) certificates with FQDN and SPIFFE support to facilitate 4G VNF to 5G CNF migration. Aspen Mesh includes a Packet Inspector feature that enables traffic capture and visibility within the service mesh, providing per-user, per-service, per-tenant, and per-subscriber traffic visibility for compliance tracking, troubleshooting, and billing purposes. The product includes a certificate orchestrator for granular certificate management across the service mesh and integrated products. The platform supports multiple deployment models including on-premises, private cloud, hybrid cloud, multi-cluster, multi-cloud, and multi-tenant configurations. It can be deployed on Kubernetes cloud-native infrastructure and integrates with Helm 3 for simplified installations and upgrades. The solution can work in conjunction with F5 BIG-IP Next Service Proxy for Kubernetes (SPK) for legacy 4G or 5G non-standalone (NSA) deployments transitioning to standalone 5G.