ZTE Unveils vBRAS Managing Both Physical, Virtual Forwarding Planes

ZTE Corporation has released the vBRAS solution managing both physical and virtual forwarding planes, in which the unified control plane (vBRAS-C) can manage two types of vBRAS forwarding planes including high-performance vBRAS-U and X86-based vBRAS-U.

ZTE has completed the lab test at China Mobile Research Institute with the results fully meeting expectations and verifying that it’s ready for commercial deployments of the vBRAS solution.

The solution’s flexible transport capability can effectively protect the operators’ prior investments and vigorously promote the commercial deployments.

In this test, a unified control plane (vBRAS-C) is deployed at core Telecom Integration Cloud (TIC) to manage the two forwarding pools (vBRAS-U). The high-performance vBRAS-U is deployed at edge TIC to carry services with large bandwidth and high QoS such as HSI/IPTV. X86 vBRAS-U can be deployed at either core TIC or edge TIC to deliver services with small traffic and high sessions such as ITMS/VOIP. It allows differentiated access on demand and elastic transport based on service features. Unified management as well as O&M of the two vBRAS forwarding pools are implemented by one control plane. In addition, service configuration, unified policy control and address pool sharing are also supported.

The test proves that vBRAS based on C/U (Control/User) separation can manage multiple forwarding planes by a unified control plane, so that it can well adapt to various service scenarios. Meanwhile, the traditional BRAS in their existing network can act as high-performance vBRAS-U only by software upgrade, and X86 forwarding plane can be deployed to work as a supplement to carry services with low traffic and high sessions. Therefore, it will help operators protect their existing assets and push the evolution of the MAN architecture.

ZTE has been dedicated to joint innovations in vBRAS for a long time. The company worked with China Mobile to establish vBRAS standards in many international standard organizations such as CCSA and IETF. In 2017, they jointly won the Global Telecoms Business (GTB) Infrastructure Innovation award.

To date, ZTE has completed vBRAS pilot trials of China Mobile in many provinces and regions, carrying services in the existing network, and has accumulated valuable experience for future large-scale commercial deployments.