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Test Objectives
Juniper Validated Design (JVD) is a cross-functional collaboration between Juniper solution architects and test teams to develop coherent multidimensional solutions for domain-specific use cases. The JVD team comprises technical leaders in the industry with a wealth of experience supporting complex customer use cases. The scenarios selected for validation are based on industry standards to solve critical business needs with practical network and solution designs.
The key goals of the JVD initiative include:
- Test iterative multidimensional use cases
- Optimize best practices and address solution gaps
- Validate overall solution integrity and resilience
- Support configuration and design guidance
- Deliver practical, validated, and deployable solutions
A reference architecture is selected after consultation with Juniper Networks global theaters and a deep analysis of customer use cases. The deployed design concepts use best practices and leverage relevant technologies to deliver the solution scope. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are identified as part of an extensive test plan that focuses on functionality, performance integrity, and service delivery.
Once the physical infrastructure that is required to support the validation is built, the design is sanity-checked and optimized. Our test teams conduct a series of rigorous validations to prove solution viability, capturing and recording results. Throughout the validation process, our engineers engage with software developers to quickly address any issues found.
The Metro Ethernet Business Services solution validates a comprehensive multidimensional architecture that includes best practices for designing and implementing a dense services L2/L3 portfolio across intra-domain and inter-AS regions.
The solution architecture is extended to validate MEF 3.0 compliance, ensuring all featured L2 services meet or exceed MEF standards for high performance, reliability, interoperability, and QoS. With adherence to MEF standards, operators can ensure that customers experience consistent, high-quality Ethernet connectivity across different networks and providers. The rigorous MEF 3.0 test cases provide assurance that Carrier Ethernet services are reliable and capable of delivering on Service Level Agreements (SLA).
The areas of focus are:
- Service Performance: Validates bandwidth (using MEF bandwidth profile service attributes), latency, jitter (delay variation), frame loss, and QoS compliance with the capability to differentiate between traffic types. Ensures consistent and predictable network performance to meet SLAs.
- Service Activation: Ensures accurate service setup, provisioning, multiplexing, and bundling. Validation of service multiplexing and bundling capabilities that ensure EVCs and CE-VLANs can be managed over a single UNI, as required.
- Standards Conformance: Ensures Carrier Ethernet services deliver all defined EVC types, including E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, and Access E-Line, enabling compatibility and seamless operation in multi-vendor and multi-provider environments.
- Reliability and Resiliency: Tests for service continuity, protection, and rapid failover. Ensuring services remain stable during network outages and able to meet uptime requirements. Protection mechanisms are built into both underlay and overlay network design.
- Service Assurance: Verifies monitoring, fault detection, and Service OAM (Operations, Administration, and Maintenance) capabilities.
The underlying infrastructure described in this document provides a resilient and high-performance Segment Routing (SR) architecture but is not a requirement of the solutions presented. Other underlay technologies can be leveraged, for example MPLS RSVP-TE.
The validation focuses on qualifying MEF 3.0 mandatory test cases across Metro Ethernet Business Services solution architecture featuring E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, and E-Access solutions for supporting crucial Carrier Ethernet use cases.
Table 1 explains the services included in the JVD.
- Service Type is one of the four MEF options for E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, or Access E-Line.
- VPN Type is the implementation mechanism used in the JVD to deliver the solution.
- High Availability represents each service, which may include variations of single-homing and/or multi-homing.
- Service Instantiation and Endpoints identify where each service type exists in the network. Figure 1 can be referenced for identification with defined endpoints and device types.
| Index | Service Type | VPN Type | High Availability | Service Instantiation | Endpoints |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E-Line | EVPN-VPWS Port Based | Single-Homed | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN3, MA1.1 |
| 2 | E-Line | EVPN-VPWS VLAN-based | Active-Active Multihoming | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN1, AN2, AN3, MA1.1, MA1.2 |
| 3 | E-Line | EVPN-VPWS VLAN-based | Single-Homed | Intra-Fabric | AN3, AN4 |
| 4 | E-Line | EVPN-VPWS VLAN-based | Active-Active Multihoming | Metro Fabric | AN3, MEG1, MEG2 |
| 5 | E-Line | EVPN Flexible Cross-Connect VLAN Aware | Active-Active Multihoming | Inter-AS MEG to Ring | MEG1. MEG2, MA1.1, MA1.2 |
| 6 | E-Line | EVPN Flexible Cross-Connect VLAN Unaware | Single-Homed | Inter-AS Fabric to MSE | AN3, MSE1 |
| 7 | E-Line | Layer 2 Circuit | Hot-Standby | Metro Fabric | AN3, MEG1, MEG2 |
| 8 | E-Line | L2VPN Port Based | Single-Homed | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN3, MA5 |
| 9 | E-Line | L2VPN VLAN-based | Single-Homed | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN3. MA5 |
| 10 | E-Line | BGP-VPLS VPWS | Single-Homed | Inter-Rings | MA5, MA1.2 |
| 11 | E-Line | EVPN Floating Pseudowire | Anycast | Metro Ring | MSE1, MSE2, MA1.2 |
| 12 | E-LAN | EVPN-ELAN Port Based | Active-Active Multihoming | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN3, MA1.2 |
| 13 | E-LAN | EVPN-ELAN VLAN-based | Active-Active Multihoming | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN1, AN2, AN3, MEG1. MEG2, MA1.1, MA1.3 |
| 14 | E-LAN | EVPN-ELAN VLAN Bundle | Active-Active Multihoming | Metro Fabric | AN3, MEG1. MEG2 |
| 15 | E-LAN | EVPN-ELAN Type 5 | Active-Active Multihoming | Inter-AS Fabric to MSE | AN3, MEG1, MEG2, MSE1, MSE2 |
| 16 | E-LAN | BGP-VPLS | Single-Homed | Inter-AS Fabric to Ring | AN3, MEG2, MA1.2 |
| 17 | E-Tree | EVPN-ETREE | Active-Active Roots | Metro Ring | MSE1, MSE2, MA4, MA5 |
| 18 | Access E-Line | EVPN-VPWS Local-Switching | Single-Homed | Metro Ring | MA5, MA3 |
| 19 | Access E-Line | Layer 2 Circuit (L2CCC) Local-Switching | Single-Homed | Metro Ring | MA5, MA3 |
Test Goals
Test cases executed based on MEF 3.0 certification fall into four distinct categories. These test cases are qualified in the JVD across the presented transport and services architectures and include the following major topics.
- Functional Service Attributes and Parameters:
- This category covers the testing of service functionalities and attributes defined for service types, including E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, and Access E-Line. It validates that services meet the necessary operational characteristics and behaviors, such as Ethernet Virtual Connections (EVCs), VLAN handling, and service multiplexing.
- Tests include verifying the correct mapping of service attributes (for example, CE-VLAN ID, CoS, EVC Service Attributes) and ensuring that services operate as intended.
- Layer 2 Control Protocol (L2CP) and Service OAM (SOAM) Frame
Behavior:
- This category tests the handling of L2CP and SOAM frames, ensuring they are properly processed and managed by the system. It involves testing the correct tunneling and forwarding of control and management frames, for example, Continuity Check Message (CCM), Loopback Message (LBM), Link Trace Message (LTM), and Link Trace Reply (LTR).
- This also includes validating whether frames are correctly identified and handled according to MEF network operation and maintenance standards.
- Bandwidth Profile Attributes and Parameters:
- This category focuses on verifying that bandwidth profiles are implemented correctly. It tests attributes such as Committed Information Rate (CIR), Excess Information Rate (EIR), and traffic shaping to ensure that the service adheres to the agreed-upon bandwidth allocations.
- Performance metrics like traffic policing are validated to ensure proper traffic flow management in different service conditions.
- Service Performance Attributes and Parameters:
- This category tests performance characteristics like latency, jitter, Frame Loss Ratio (FLR), and availability in compliance with the specified SLAs.
- It ensures that the service can meet the agreed-upon performance parameters for various traffic types (for example, unicast, multicast, broadcast) under real-world conditions, validating that service performance aligns with your requirements.
These categories ensure that the services and equipment meet MEF 3.0 standards for functionality, performance, interoperability, and service assurance required to deliver the expected quality and reliability.
Test Non-Goals
Non-goals include elements that make sense for the JVD but are excluded for various reasons, for example, outside the scope, feature/product limitation, and so on. The MaaS validation covers service types included in the Metro EBS JVD. Additional service types are possible and supported.
- Formal MEF 3.0 certification: While the majority of Juniper products featured in this JVD are MEF 3.0 certified and appear on the public registry, the constraints of MEF limit suppliers from achieving a certification intended for Service Providers. The validation demonstrates MEF 3.0 compliance across all featured services and devices.
- Transit E-Line (fka, E-Transit): This service type is supported but not explicitly covered. An instance of Transit E-Line (MEF 65) service type is included, but test cases are designed to deliver I/ENNI-to-UNI O-Line services.
- Attributes outside the scope of MEF 3.0 certification: MEF 3.0 includes important sections across numerous technical specifications but may not cover the entire specification. For consistency, this JVD focuses primarily on MEF 3.0 requirements.
- Features and functionality outside the scope of this JVD: The solution architecture, including convergence, design concepts, and extensive configurations, are covered previously (see Metro EBS Test Objectives). Some overlapping validation may exist where it is applicable to MEF 3.0.
- The validation does not include multi-vendor test scenarios.
- Layer 3 IPVC: These solutions are included in the JVD with L3VPN and EVPN Type-5 but are not a requirement of MEF 3.0 CE certification. EVPN Type-5 is validated as an E-LAN service. Several MEF technical specifications cover IP service definitions and attributes, including MEF 61.1, MEF 60, MEF 57, and so forth.
- Devices not listed as DUTs: Test cases are curated for the validation of the primary DUTs. Helper nodes are verified to provide expected support functionalities.
