Metro Ethernet

Understanding VPN Components

There are normally two types of VPNs: customer premises equipment-(CPE) based VPNs and network-based VPNs. With CPE-based VPNs, secure connections are created between the different customer premises equipment to form a closed user group/VPN. This normally creates scalability issues, because many CPE devices have to be interconnected in a full mesh or a partial mesh to allow point-to-multipoint connectivity. On the other hand, network-based VPNs create some level of hierarchy where connections from many CEs are aggregated into an edge switch or router offering the VPN service.

The definitions of the different elements of the network follow:

• Customer edge (CE)— The customer edge device resides at the edge of the enterprise. ...