Supported Platforms
Understanding How MX Series Router Cloud CPE Services Virtualize Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) Services
Juniper Networks cloud CPE (cCPE) services enable service providers to offer their business enterprise customers virtual customer premises equipment (CPE) services. When you transition your customers to cCPE services, you can replace their complex and expensive Layer 3 CPEs with simple, low-cost Layer 2 CPE devices. Layer 3 CPE functions are provided by the MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router in the service provider cloud. cCPE uses existing Junos OS features to provide virtual or cloud CPE services.
Figure 1 shows the cCPE services solution versus today’s full-featured CPE.
Figure 1: MX Series Router Cloud CPE Services Versus Full Featured CPE
cCPE services redistribute traditional CPE features, reducing onsite CPE requirements like role, value, complexity, and cost, to a minimum and moves these features into the cloud, under service provider control. With cCPE services, the CPE evolves from a physical, hardware, static, and feature paradigm to a logical, software, dynamic, and service paradigm.
cCPE services are most beneficial at enterprise business sites. The definition of a CPE is broad; however, in general, CPE is the demarcation device that attaches a customer site to the service provider (for example, a branch router). Some functions that are delivered today by other types of CPE devices (for example, security appliances, storage servers, WiFi hotspots, and so forth) may also shift partially or totally to the cloud CPE architecture.
The interfaces on the MX Series routers providing cCPE services must either be MultiServices PICs or MultiServices Dense Port Concentrators (MS-DPCs). These muiltiservice cards provide adaptive services interfaces, which allow you to coordinate multiple services on a single PIC by configuring a set of services and applications. MultiServices PICs and MS-DPCs offer a special range of services you configure in one or more service sets.
The MultiServices DPC is available for MX Series routers; it includes a subset of the functionality supported on the MultiServices PIC. Currently the MultiServices DPC supports the following Layer 3 services: stateful firewall, NAT, IDS, IPsec, active flow monitoring, RPM, and generic routing encapsulation (GRE) tunnels.
 | Note: Not all Layer 3 services can be configured using the cCPE Selfcare application. |
Service providers can provision and manage cCPE services through the Junos OS CLI on the MX Series router, or the cCPE Selfcare application, which runs on the Junos Space Network Management Platform. In addition, APIs are provided for integrating the cCPE Selfcare application with your operations support systems (OSS). The cCPE Selfcare application also includes web portal that enables subscribers to monitor their cloud services and perform certain, secure configuration changes.
Basic Architecture of MX Series Router Cloud CPE Services
By using cCPE services, features typically provided by a Layer 2 or Layer 3 CPE, are moved out to the network cloud resulting in a simplified and more profitable services architecture. The cCPE Selfcare application is an open platform focused on networking and security services including:
- Routing
- DHCP
- NAT & firewall
- Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP)
- Unified Threat Management (UTM)
- WLAN controller (the hotspot is located at the subscriber site)
- Centralized management and provisioning
- Reporting
As an open platform, the cCPE Selfcare application is easily extensible to include new and adjacent services that can be provided by Juniper Networks or through other partnerships, including:
- Network-based storage
- Virtual desktop infrastructure
- Remote maintenance
- Physical site security and automation
Components of MX Series Router Cloud CPE Services
cCPE services use existing Juniper Networks products like the MX Series router, Junos OS, and Junos Space Network Management Platform to move features from the physical CPE out to the network cloud by using the following components:
- An onsite, Layer 2 CPE.
- A cCPE routing context, residing in the provider edge (PE) MX Series router, providing aggregation, isolation, and service binding.
- A service complex, which can include Layer 3 and above services.
- A provisioning and monitoring system. cCPE services can be provisioned and monitored with the Junos OS CLI or the cCPE Selfcare application, which runs on the Junos Space Network Management Platform. APIs are available for the cCPE Selfcare application that enable you to provision and monitor cCPE services using your operations support systems (OSS).
