RAD, the industry pioneer of virtualization at the customer edge, today expanded its Service Assured Access (SAA) solutions with the launch of a unique carrier-grade virtual CPE (vCPE) platform with Distributed-NFV (D-NFV) capability.
“As the prime candidate for early commercial NFV deployments, vCPE gets industry-wide attention,” notes Ulik Broida, RAD’s Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. “In addition to hardware abstraction, vCPE enables shorter and more flexible deployment cycles for new services, with a lucrative cost structure,” he continues. “The ETX-2i is the ideal vCPE platform for service providers and private network operators wishing to take advantage of these benefits in their transition to programmable networks”
RAD’s ETX-2i is a powerful IP and Carrier Ethernet NID/NTU with a field pluggable x86 NFV module f or hosting virtual network functions (VNFs). Serving as a virtualization engine at the customer edge, it is specially designed for Layer 2 and Layer 3 business, mobile backhaul and wholesale services. The ETX-2i can be managed by RAD’s D-NFV Orchestrator or any third-party orchestrator using open standards, and supports various options for vCPE architecture and VNF placement to meet agility, performance, security and cost needs.
What makes ETX-2i unique is that it supports dynamic forwarding to enable chaining flexibility for embedded and virtualized functions. Moreover, it features a high-scale built-in router and modular network interfaces for any access infrastructure – fiber, PDH, SDH/SONET, SHDSL, or VDSL.
“Service providers in our global carrier research clearly indicate that vE-CPE ? the virtualization of enterprise CPE for business customers ? is the #1 NFV use case they are investing in,” states Michael Howard, principal analyst for carrier networks at IHS-Infonetics Research. “Further, the providers voted vE-CPE the #1 use case for producing new revenue, the #1 use case for CapEx savings, and the #1 use case for reducing operational expenses. RAD has been an early proponent of D-NFV, and operators are interested in RAD’s innovative and pragmatic approach to vE-CPE deployment."
