Customer Edge Ports

Each CEP supports the configuration of connections or mappings between individual CVLANs and multiple VMANs.

This provides the following benefits:

Each physical port supports multiple customers (each connecting to a separate VMAN).
Each switch supports many more customer VMANs using CEPs instead of CNPs.

To define the connections between CVLANs and SVLANs, each CEP uses a dedicated CVID map, which defines the supported CVIDs on the CEP and the destination VMAN for each CVID. For example, you can configure a CEP to forward traffic from five specific CVLANs to VMAN A and from ten other specific CVLANs to VMAN B. During VMAN configuration, certain ports are added to the VMAN as CEPs, and certain CVIDs on those ports are mapped to the VMAN. To enable customer use of a VMAN, service providers must communicate the enabled CVIDs to their customers. The customers must use those CVIDs to access the VMAN.

Note

The CEPterm is defined in the IEEE 802.1ad standard and is also called a C-tagged service interface. The CEP operation is similar to a MEF 13 UNI Type 1.1.