What is CPE?
A guide to
customer premises
equipment

Even if your organization is fully invested in the latest cloud offerings, you still need to communicate with them. Aging equipment can limit your network's ability to keep up with the advancing digital requirements of tomorrow. To take full advantage of advances in communications technology, Keeping customer premises equipment (CPE) up to date is critical for your network to operate efficiently.

As technology progresses, your organization may also want to consider new options for more efficient management and maintenance, including virtual CPE (vCPE) services, which can reduce costs and simplify operations.

CPE is an umbrella term for hardware that includes any telecommunications or IT equipment that's physically located on a customer's property. Customer premises equipment differs from equipment that located at a vendor’s or service provider’s location or anywhere else on the network.

CPE connectivity is also handled through a carrier's communication circuit, known as a "demarcation point" or "demarc," which is generally located in a central office (also commonly referred to as a Point of Presence or POP) that the service provider operates. The provider can include networking and communications vendors or telecommunications companies. Service providers can also include cybersecurity providers who work with intrusion prevention and detection, as well as hardware-based firewalls.

CPE covers a wide range of devices, including:

• Telephone-related devices, such as phones and phone handsets
• IoT devices
• Security appliances
• Adapters for network services
• Devices that terminate local-area network (LAN) or wide-area network (WAN) circuits, such as DSL, metro ethernet, ISDN, network switches, modems and firewalls

The world of CPE hardware is often sorted into three categories. "Black boxes" which describe the traditional consumer premise systems that combine the hardware and software into a single “appliance.” In recent years the more advanced construct where the software and hardware are disaggregated has become common. Both the so-called SDN/NFV gray box and white box CPE offer flexibility for you to choose the hardware and software to a certain extent independently.

Built on top of general purpose x86 hardware, white box CPE uses programmable network interface cards, allowing deployment flexibility and support for fully programmable SDN. The gray box is between white and black, making use of ASICs to access cost-effective network acceleration. They aren't as flexible as their white box counterparts, but still provide extended functionality.

Virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) delivers network services to organizations through software instead of dedicated hardware devices. Also known as Universal CPE (uCPE), vCPE involves consolidating specialized individual devices into one general-purpose box.

vCPE works by detaching traditional hardware intelligence and moves the management of software functions to a centralized platform or remote service provider. Instead of running on proprietary ASICs that execute a particular network function, the vCPE runs Virtualized Network Functions (VNF) on commodity hardware.

Customer premises equipment connects to the network with hardware-based functionality, while vCPE connects virtually using software.

The benefits of vCPE, also known as uCPE include: 

vCPE enables virtualized network function (VNF) providers to quickly add new services and algorithms, something that is impossible with traditional CPE.

vCPE enables the roll-out of services faster and more easily, reducing time-to-service while cutting back on the need for site visits.

vCPE allows service providers to tap into shared storage, memory and computational power. Additionally, if a virtual router is over burdened or underutilized. A centralized user interface also consolidates monitoring and management under a unified and consistent interface, cutting back on the number of devices that have to be logged into.

Whether the equipment is vCPE or a CPE appliance, it still needs to be managed. A comprehensive approach to CPE hardware, software, deployment services and maintenance can keep your equipment up to date and your network ready for digital innovation.

CPE is a great example of where it makes sense for your organization to focus on its own areas of expertise and leave the management of the hardware equipment technology to the experts. Experts can prepare, deploy and manage more complex solutions while adding valuable resources that allow you to focus on your own company strategic initiatives.