Carrier-Grade vBRAS: Key to the Cloud MAN

A vBRAS instance can support the access of millions of users. The dial-up Internet access rate can be higher than 10 kb/s.

The forwarding plane meets the high-bandwidth requirements for the large-scale deployment of MAN FE/GE optical bandwidth services and 4K-dominated IPTV services.

With the fully distributed architecture, dynamic scale-in and scale-out can be achieved automatically in accordance with the defined scaling policy.

At present, if the VM corresponding to the vBRAS fails and the VM live migration technology is adopted, the switching rate cannot guarantee the continuity of services or meet the carrier-grade reliability requirement. Therefore, the reliability of the vBRAS is mainly guaranteed through the redundancy of NEs. You can split the control plane functions of the vBRAS into different components deployed on different VMs to achieve the redundancy of all the functional components in a vBRAS instance. In addition, multi-instance inter-site vBRAS backup is supported to maximize service-level reliability.

When a MAN carries a variety of services, the services can still operate stably, and the packet loss rate can reach the carrier-grade standard (10^(-6)) defined by operators.

Provides PPPoE, IPoE, and IPTV multicast, covering the home triple-play service and personal Wi-Fi service.

Provides IP Host, L2/L3 VPN, and L2TP access, covering the government and enterprise dedicated Internet access and VPN services.

Powerful CGN function and perfect CGN protection solution, ensuring the development and reliability of the private network IPv4 service.

High-performance QoS/H-QoS capability, assisting in the elaborate operation and traffic operation of fixed network broadband services.

Most operators have completed MAN flattening. The level-2 network architecture significantly enhances network efficiency. The vBRAS should be deployed based on the existing MAN architecture, and should be able to seamlessly evolve into the future network after CO re-architecting.

The traditional BRAS equipment in the existing networks achieves high-performance forwarding based on hardware NP. Pure X86 forwarding cannot reach this forwarding performance at the current stage. For operators’ investment, the existing network equipment must be fully used to introduce the new vBRAS technology to protect existing assets.

In most cases, a carrier network involves multiple vendors and multiple domains. The provisioning and management of end-to-end services requires the collaboration of multi-vendor NEs. The vBRAS should be able to provide standardized and open northbound interfaces to achieve the orchestration, collaboration, and control of end-to-end network resources and services.

Through open network capabilities and based on the cooperation with third-party application platforms, functions can be used flexibly and users can customize networks and services as required. This propels broadband service innovation.

ZTE is the industry’s first manufacturer who has completed the vBRAS technical verification test of the C/U separation architecture in the laboratories of China Mobile and China Telecom, and then ZTE has completed pilot verification in China Mobile’s and China Telecom’s existing networks in a number of provinces.

ZTE, together with China Mobile Research Institute and other manufacturers in the industry, developed CCSA industry standards for the forwarding-control separation vBRAS technology, and specified detailed technical specifications and test specifications for equipment, promoting the industry standardization of the vBRAS

In the first global open source project Open-O led by China, ZTE’s vBRAS and vCPE products provide home scenario solutions based on third-party platforms, helping complete the first release of the “SUN”.