Embodiments described herein relate to managing bearers in a radio access network (e.g., next generation RAN (NG-RAN), etc.). In one example, a central-unit control-plane (CU-CP) communicates with a distributed unit (DU) and a CU-UP to exchange transport network layer addresses (TNLAs) and tunnel endpoint identifiers (TEIDs) between the DU and the CU-UP. In this way, the DU becomes resistant to the CU-UP's rejection of a bearer setup request from the CU-CP during a bearer setup procedure. Furthermore, during virtual machine (VM) migration or local problems of the CU-UP, an E1 procedure known as “bearer relocate” can be defined to notify the DU of a new TNLA for one or more affected general packet radio service tunneling protocol (GTP) tunnels that are affected by the VM migration or local problems.