CUPS stands for control and user plane separation of the evolved packet core (EPC) nodes and provides the architecture enhancements for the separation of functionality in the EPC’s serving gateway node (SGW), packet data network gateway (PGW), and the traffic detection function (TDF). This enables flexible network deployment and operation, by distributed or centralized deployment and the independent scaling between control plane and user plane functions - while not affecting the functionality of the existing nodes subject to this split.