How do we differentiate control plane and user plane in LTE?

Question

I just know CUPS stands for control and user plane separation but what is the advantage of it ? Has any network operator ever deployed CUPS solution in their network ?

Answer 1

User plane traffic is the traffic which is the actual voice/data and use the GTP-U as protocol and the path is
UE <-->ENB<-->SGW<-->PGW

Where is control plane is a signaling traffic which uses S1AP and GTP-C protocol.

Check the following image dotted line represent the control plane