Virtual CPE: Enhancing CPE´s deployment and operations through virtualization

The arising opportunity exposed in this paper is leveraging the capabilities of network virtualization to provide a whole IP Network as a Service (NaaS). Users are offered the capability to customize the policies, the configuration and the management on their allocated virtual network to meet their own requirements. Following the NaaS paradigm, the European Community funded project Mantychore is developing and providing an IP NaaS framework to enhance the service portfolio of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and other e-Infrastructure providers. This paper, as a particular use case of the project, describes how NaaS could benefit Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) deployment. Two CPE scenarios discussed are: the Aggregated Virtual CPE and the Multiple Networks Virtual CPE. The benefits of these scenarios go from equipment purchasing cost to operations expenses and efficiencies.