This new NFV product developed by ZTE is an x86-based software router that employs a modular, distributed, and separate control plane/forwarding architecture. The control plane is configured with 1:1 redundancy, and the forwarding plane supports dynamic scaling up/down to meet network demands. It supports expansion to 254 virtual machines to meet performance requirements in various scenarios. Meanwhile, it provides a service chain expansion function for flexible service orchestration alongside the NFV management platform and system, creating flexible and diversified value-added network platforms. Based on the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the NFV architecture can run on ZTE's Tulip Elastic Cloud System (TECS) platform or other virtual platforms such as VMware and KVM, meeting customer requirements for decoupling the three layers of server, cloud, and applications.
The ZXR10 V6000 virtual router plays a crucial role in the access layer, metro area network (MAN), edge data center (DC), and IP core of the transport network. For example, running on the x86 platform, the V6000 can implement control plane functions for transport network elements such as the reflector router (RR), path computation element (PCE), and virtual broadband remote access server (vBRAS). It supports the evolution of software-defined networking (SDN) in terms of control plane separation. It also enables the evolution of NFV for transport network functions, such as vRouter, vFirewall, and vLoadBalancer, implemented in software on x86. Furthermore, it can replace various hardware routers, including virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE), virtual customer edge (vCE), virtual provider edge (vPE), and virtual data center gateway (vDC-GW). The ZXR10 V6000, when deployed in appropriate scenarios, not only develops service functions and improves network elasticity, but can also reduce operators' hardware investment and improve their ROI.
