ane functions. It also enables new deployment models where user-plane functionality is deployed closer to the access network while control-plane functionality remains centralized. As such CUPS is an important enabler for multi-access edge computing (MEC). While CUPS is already supported for EPS (3GPP TS 23.214,2018) the user-plane deployment scenarios that can be supported using EPS CUPS are limited as CUPS was added on top of the already exist- ing EPS architecture baseline that traces back to Release-8. In contrast to this, 5GC offers a higher degree of deployment flexibility for the user plane as separation of control and user plane was considered from the beginning during the 5GC architecture design phase. Common access-agnostic core network: 5GC has been defined as a converged core network capable of serving different types of access technologies. Unlike EPS, 5GS uses the same core network architecture and the same interface between access network (AN) and core network for both 3GPP accesses (e.g. NR or Evolved Universal Mobile Telecommunica- tions System Terrestrial Radio Access [E-UTRA]) and non-3GPP accesses (e.g. wireless local area network [WLAN2] or wireline access technologies). Furthermore, in difference to EPS, a common non-access stratum (NAS) protocol is used regardless of the underlying access technology. Concurrent and efficient access to localized and centralized services: besides centralized services (e.g. internet-based services or operator services like IP multimedia subsystem 2 The term WLAN is often used in 3GPP specifications to refer to IEEE 802.11, i.e. Wi-Fi. 3.2 5G Core Network [IMS] voice), 5GC has been designed to also support localized services in an efficient manner. In this context localized refers to hosting services closer to the UE, e.g. colo- cated with a centralized unit (CU) serving a UE (see Section 4.2 for more details on cen- tralized unit/distributed unit] CU/DU] split). Services that benefit from being deployed locally are, for example, Virtual Reality and Augmented Re