• HOME
• COVER STORY
• CASE STUDY
• TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

Redback Enables Innovative Business VPN and Broadband Services for Leading European Provider

The SmartEdge Multi-Service Edge Router enables this alternative fixed-line operator to attain its stringent network performance goals with the scalability to support rapid subscriber growth and flexibility to provide value-added broadband services for both residential and business customers.The advanced service creation capabilities of the SmartEdge platform helps to reduce the time to market for new business services while leveraging existing infrastructure.

As one of the leading providers in the European telecom market, this alternative fixed-line operator offers a full suite of communications services to its residential and business customers including IPTV, VoIP, MPLS-based VPNs, and broadband Internet access. Recent regulatory initiatives mandating incumbent local-loop unbundling has driven intense competition in this provider’s local market. By leveraging the regulated environment along with significant fiber facilities of its own, this provider has been successful in establishing a considerable nationwide network presence. As a proven innovator in telecom services, this provider was looking to further expand its network coverage and advance its business service offering to enterprises of all sizes. The SmartEdge® Multi-Service Edge Router (MSER) enabled this provider to rapidly evolve its existing infrastructure to meet new service requirements with exceptional flexibility and unique service creation capabilities.

Situation
As an alternative carrier with an established background in business services and notable success as one of the earliest providers to offer residential triple-play services in its home market, this company has been one of the most innovative operators in its region. With over two million broadband subscribers and a comprehensive portfolio of residential and business services including IPTV, VoIP, MPLS VPN, Internet services, and wholesale broadband access, this operator caters to the needs of a diverse customer base.

While increasing regulatory emphasis on local-loop unbundling (LLU) has created new expansion opportunities in this operator’s local market, an intensifying competitive environment has called for constant innovation in order to improve customer retention and sustain overall growth.

Emerging new requirements from enterprise customers offered a lucrative opportunity to provide advanced business services to organizations of all sizes. With a 45,000km national fiber network and more than 70% of customers connected via the operator’s own infrastructure, the operator had both the reach to provide extended geographic coverage and the facilities to offer granular traffic control.

With an increasingly sophisticated customer base, the provider needed a next-generation router that could not only support their immediate requirements for advanced business services, but also accommodate emerging new access methods such as high-speed optical Ethernet.

Solution
The SmartEdge Multi-Service Edge Router enabled this provider to expand geographic coverage and increase network access speeds. In addition, the sophisticated service creation capabilities and extensive protocol support on the SmartEdge platform were key factors in allowing the provider to rapidly deploy new business services without the need to introduce a completely new architecture.

Service Enablement
The provider’s initial network upgrade leveraged the SmartEdge 100 MSER at the network edge using an overlay model whereby the platform was deployed in conjunction with existing infrastructure at central office locations. The operator avoided having to redesign the network to accommodate new service requirements. This enabled new Layer 2 business services to be deployed rapidly and cost-effectively over an existing Layer 3 network without disrupting services for existing customers.   

The extensive service creation capabilities of the SmartEdge MSER were essential to this deployment. By utilizing advanced tunneling technologies to overcome existing transport limitations, innovative business services could be extended to both new and existing customers. The SmartEdge MSER accomplished this while maintaining high performance routing and providing wholesale broadband access connectivity.

At the provider’s Point of Presence (PoP) locations, SmartEdge MSERs are deployed in three different edge routing configurations to provide the following services:

• Residential DSL aggregation with multi-play services
• Enterprise Layer 3 MPLS VPNs for both DSL-based and Ethernet fiber access customers
• Enterprise Layer 2 MPLS VPNs: point-to-point Virtual Private Wire Services (VPWS) or multi-point Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS)

For MPLS VPNs, the provider utilized the SmartEdge platform’s virtual context technology. This enables the creation of thousands of logically separate domains within a single platform, with each functioning as an independent full featured virtual router. VPN traffic is isolated in this manner with each virtual router having its own route tables, IP address space, and routing protocol instances. Traditional issues regarding overlapping IP address space or routing instability caused by one customer impacting another customer are eliminated with this functionality. Each customer is also able to monitor and manage their individual virtual router instance as if it were a private physical router.

As a unified service creation platform the SmartEdge MSER offers centralized subscriber control and provides a scalable and flexible approach for consistently managing user profiles, especially important with emerging mobility applications. Regardless of the access method, the SmartEdge MSER ensures that the correct network and QoS policies are applied to all users.

Identical system software across the entire SmartEdge MSER product family optimizes network operations with reduced training and simplified provisioning. This consistency reduces time to market for new services as this provider expands into new service areas.

Benefits
The SmartEdge MSER enabled this alternative carrier to create an efficient and flexible broadband network to provide advanced new MPLS VPN services for business customers while leveraging their existing consumer service delivery infrastructure. 

By taking an evolutionary approach made possible by the advanced service creation features of the SmartEdge MSER, the provider was able to reduce time to market for the new service while accommodating future network upgrade plans.

Rapid subscriber growth across an expanding geographic coverage area was handled gracefully with the scalability and efficiency of the SmartEdge MSER. With the ability to support tens of thousands of users per platform, the SmartEdge MSER offered the ability to address the provider’s current and future needs.

With the adoption of increasingly sophisticated broadband services by both residential and business customers in this provider’s market, the provider is well positioned to further enhance its service portfolio and carry its success into emerging new areas.