H3C Technologies H3C S7500E Series Switches - Manual (Page 13)

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MCE Overview
The term “router” in this document refers to a router in a generic sense or a Layer 3 switch running
routing protocols.
MCE Overview
Multi-CE (MCE) enables a switch to function as the CEs of multiple VPN instances in a BGP/MPLS
VPN network, thus reducing the investment on network equipment.
Introduction to BGP/MPLS VPN
BGP/MPLS VPN is a kind of PE-based L3VPN technology for service provider VPN solutions. It
uses BGP to advertise VPN routes and uses MPLS to forward VPN packets on the service provider
backbone.
BGP/MPLS VPN provides flexible networking modes, excellent scalability, and convenient support
for MPLS QoS and MPLS TE. Hence, it is widely used.
The BGP/MPLS VPN model consists of three kinds of devices:
z
Customer edge device (CE): A CE resides on a customer network and has one or more
interfaces directly connected with service provider networks. It can be a router, a switch, or a
host. It neither can "sense" the existence of any VPN nor needs to support MPLS.
z
Provider edge router (PE): A PE resides on a service provider network and connects one or
more CEs to the network. On an MPLS network, all VPN processing occurs on the PEs.
z
Provider (P) router: A P router is a backbone router on a service provider network. It is not
directly connected with any CE. It only needs to be equipped with basic MPLS forwarding
capability.
Figure 1-1 illustrates a BGP/MPLS VPN implementation.