Network slicing enables instantiation of logical or virtual sections or partitions of a 5G network. All these logical sections or partitions run on a shared physical infrastructure. Each partition or section is referred to as a ‘slice’. A sliced network is a customized version of a 5G network. It is as if you are a customer who goes to a network provider or network slicer provider, and ask the provider a 5G network with capabilities that you desire to have. Some of the capabilities that you ask for may not be present in the traditional 5G public network directly.
So, purchasing a 5G network that has specific capabilities that you ask for, makes you a network slice customer (NSC). You are not buying the entire 5G network with its entire bandwidth. You are just asking for a portion/slice of it to be provided to you. Whatever features embedded on the network that you’ve asked for, are commonly referred to as a template. With the feature template, the network provider provides you the specific slice. The template is known as Network Slice Template (NEST).
Remember that it is still a virtual instance of a 5G network wherein the core network entities such as AMF, SMF, NRF, NWDAF etc. are running as microservices in Linux container, managed by Kubernetes. A network slice absolutely requires a RAN, and core network to operate.
The previous ‘cake’ example explained by an author, serves as a good starting point!