Overview
The Session Management Function (SMF) is the control-plane function responsible for establishing, modifying, and releasing PDU sessions. In practical terms, it decides how a user’s data session should be set up and which user-plane resources should be used.
The SMF is commonly associated with:
- session establishment and release
- IP address allocation and session context management
- policy enforcement coordination
- selecting and controlling the UPF through control-plane signaling