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Technical Overview—Network and Service Convergence in the Universal Edge Platform

 

The Juniper Networks Broadband Edge solution enables providers to maintain traditional multiplay services with a simpler, collapsed service model that consolidates management and service activation points. The benefits of this approach include faster rollouts of differentiated service offerings and greater operational efficiency, which contribute to higher margins.

This Network Configuration Example document focuses specifically on the use case in which the MX Series Broadband Network Gateway (BNG) is deployed in a distributed fashion and consolidates a number of broadband architecture elements including residential, business, and multicast video edge routers in addition to Ethernet aggregation routers. Converging these functions onto a single MX Series Universal Edge platform delivers many CapEx and OpEx savings, discussed in more detail later in this document. The following sections provide an overview of this broadband edge solution:

The Challenges Faced by Service Providers in Today’s Market

The telecommunications market is increasingly dominated by IP packet services. The developments in this area are occurring so fast, it is difficult for service providers to keep up while staying profitable. Their business and operational models are challenged as they struggle to keep pace with exponential consumer bandwidth growth driven in large part by video consumption (OTT streaming, VOD, IP Multicast). Additionally, broadband access technology developments such as FTTH, DSL Vectoring, and 4G/LTE access offer much higher bandwidths to end users and are quickly becoming key drivers for new service developments and network designs. Future bandwidth requirements and service mix uncertainties make the choice of network and service architecture even more complicated.

Network and operational complexity do not lend themselves easily to change, yet the ability to change rapidly is critical to service provider success, and it represents a significant competitive advantage. A streamlined network architecture is needed–one that reduces both CapEx (by eliminating multiple service-specific elements) and OpEx (by significantly reducing the number of service provisioning points). A streamlined network architecture that converges residential, business, and mobile network infrastructures, and provides the agility to adapt to changing requirements is underway.

Service providers need a broadband solution, including an edge platform, that offers efficient operational scale and a broad range of business and residential services that can be dynamically activated by way of RADIUS interaction. This flexible and automated service activation model is critical for mass market broadband deployments. The MX Series edge platform maintains deep insight into network policies, customer privileges, and application requirements in order to intelligently allocate resources where and when they are needed.

Moving Toward Network Convergence

It is not feasible or financially advantageous to deploy service-specific (video, residential, business, mobile backhaul) edge networks, as this approach adds significant cost and creates layers of operational inefficiency. Next-generation edge platforms like the MX Series can concurrently support edge, aggregation, residential, and business services, as well as mobile service core applications. This much more efficient approach leverages service convergence at greater scale for improved economics and experience. Figure 1 illustrates how the MX Series Universal Router facilitates convergence.

Figure 1: Network Convergence
Network Convergence

MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router

The Universal Edge capabilities of the MX Series portfolio bring service providers closer to achieving true convergence and unification across their service delivery networks. This is critical for rapid and efficient rollout of next-generation services. The SDN-ready MX Series 3D Universal Edge Router transforms economics at the network edge.

The MX Series is a family of routers (shown in Figure 2) whose superior scale and performance enable the convergence of services on a single platform.

Figure 2: MX Series BNG Portfolio
MX Series BNG Portfolio