Virtual CPE

B4N Service Platform for vCPE

B4N vCPE is an end-to-end solution for Communications Service Providers that helps them to extend product offerings portfolio built around Carrier Ethernet (CE) services with value-added virtual network services. The solution based on Brain4Net’s primary product – B4N Service Platform. Brain4Net’s approach assumes that vCPE is not just VNF in the Cloud or On-Premise device. It’s the comprehensive CSP service that engages connectivity in Metro Network, physical and virtual network infrastructure within Data Center, Cloud environment, and Lifecycle Service Orchestration.

Leveraging both SDN and NFV technologies, Brain4Net’s solution enables CSP to implement the agile and fully abstracted network and virtualization environment (named Network-as-a-Platform) for quick deployment of any vendor vCPE VNFs or Open Source solutions.

Features & Capabilities

CSPs need options to choose vCPE service location on per-Customer basis to provide the best-fit solution. In the case of vCPE service placement at Telco Cloud or PoP location, B4N vCPE solution provides service provisioning & management functionality by interaction of B4N Service Platform components with supported VIMs (VMware and OpenStack). To give control of remote nodes at the Customer side (in the case of Residential placement of network functions) B4N Service Platform leverages built-in Brain4Net VIM capabilities.
B4N Service Platform provides resilient and fault-tolerant Unified Network Fabric comprised of physical network elements [e.g. bare-metal switches in Metro Access/Aggregation Network and DC network fabric] and virtual switches in Telco Cloud environment. It enables CSP to provide the connectivity between vCPE in the Cloud and Customer NIDs and create end-to-end “SDN fabric” spreading from CSP’s Access Network to the “egress ports” of Telco Data Center. This approach provides the assured Customer network traffic delivery from Access network to NFV environment and tightly integrate Metro-services with value added NFVs while providing granular control of the traffic all along the path.
For integration with existent CSP network infrastructure, B4N Service Platform provides the Overlay functionality (e.g. VxLAN).
To maximize packet throughput on Intel x86 servers, Brain4Net has implemented the following Intel enhancements into B4N Service Platform: DPDK, SR-IOV, poll-mode drivers, ring buffers and huge page memory functionality. Virtual OpenFlow-switch component in B4N Service Platform also leverages Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT), a hardware acceleration capability that provides faster processing of encryption and security workloads. In SDN and NFV applications, QAT delivers greater flexibility and agility when compared to fixed-function compute environments.
B4N Service Platform supports VMware and OpenStack virtualized infrastructure managers (VIM) for vCPE placement in Telco Cloud. CSPs have variants to run vCPE functionality in Virtual Machines or Containers. The Container is the ideal choice for vCPE placement in Telco Cloud that increases the service allocation density within one compute host. At the moment, B4N Service Platform supports Docker Containers.
B4N vCPE solution provides the isolated tenant of virtual and networking resources to Customer and helps to create and deploy the service through Self-Service Portal. All of the deployment processes are performed automatically in real time without any involvement of Administrator.
B4N Service Platform provides lifecycle service orchestration & resource management while providing the freedom of service placement options (e.g. in Telco Cloud, Telco PoP or Residential). The Platform leverages embedded Service Configurator functionality to create customer network topology and services user-friendly manner. Service Configurator provides the graphical UI for creation of service chains that consists of connectivity services (like E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree circuits) and value-added NFV services. Any Customer has an ability to create Service Template with the given service chain and deploys it by one click.
B4N vCPE solution supports RESTful API to OSS/BSS systems and 3rd party Orchestrators.
Another important feature of B4N Service Platform is the opportunity of fast on-boarding of 3rd party VNFs by using ETSI compatible VNF descriptors. It enables CSP to provide the broad number of commercial or open source vCPE VNFs to the Customer.
The synergy of these capabilities provide assured and orchestrated virtual network service delivery, reduce Customer on-boarding times, improve time-to-market for new services while avoiding vendor lock-in.