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Cisco IP Solution Center, 3.0: MPLS VPN Management User Guide, 3.0
OL-4344-01
Chapter1 About Cisco IP Solution Center
The Customer’s and Provider’s View of the Network
The Customer’s and Provider’s View of the Network
From the customer’s point of view, they see their internal routers communicating with their customer
edge routers (CEs) from one site to another through a VPN managed by the service provider (see
Figure 1-5).
Figure 1-5 The Customer’s View of the Network
This simple view of the customer’s network is the advantage of employing VPNs: the customer
experiences direct communication to their sites as though they had their own private network, even
though their traffic is traversing a public network infrastructure and they are sharing that infrastructure
with other businesses.
The service provider’s view of the network is naturally very different, as shown in Figure 1-6. This
illustration shows two different customers, with each customer having a single VPN. A customer can,
however, have multiple VPNs.
Service provider
network
Gadgets, Inc's VPN
Gadgets, Inc.
Seattle
CE
Gadgets, Inc.
New York City
28554
Gadgets, Inc.
Chicago
CE
CE