News

Juniper's New Cloud-Grade Networking Features Software-Defined Secure Network

Company says it unifies defense across multivendor environments that can span private and public clouds.

• By David Ramel
• 06/20/2017

Juniper Networks today announced a new networking initiative, featuring its Software-Defined Secure Network (SDSN) and several other components.

The company positioned its new Cloud-Grade Networking as a means for enterprises to meet the demand for new applications and personalized cloud services in an era of digitization that's causing an exponential growth in network traffic.

Cloud-Grade Networking includes several components of Juniper's product and service portfolio that reflect the new initiative's four principles of: a platform-first approach; disaggregation; a Self-Driving Network; and pervasive software-defined security. Providing the security component is Juniper's SDNS, which leverages some of the tenets associated with the growing software-defined networking (SDN) movement.

"Through new orchestration and automation capabilities, this approach marries carrier-grade reach and reliability with enterprise-grade control and usability to deliver traditional and personalized services, while reducing costs and complexity in a secure manner," the company said in a news release today.

Central to meeting those goals is the SDSN, which the company enhanced last year with the introduction of virtual firewalls. Juniper says SDSN unifies defense across multivendor environments that can span private and public clouds.

Besides the SDSN component, other aspects of Cloud-Grade Networking include:

• An updated Junos OS, now supporting the convergence of multiple concurrent network functions on one physical routing infrastructure.
• Universal chassis, which decouples line cards from a physical chassis, reportedly letting customers standardize on a hardware platform across the datacenter, core and network edge.
• Two new automation Professional Services (PS) engagements, providing continuous network infrastructure integration and making network automation human-driven instead of event-driven.
• Enhancements to the company's NorthStar SDN controller.

Regarding the NorthStar enhancements, the company said: "Juniper's wide-area network SDN extends support for Source Packet Routing in Networking (SPRING) capabilities for more precise traffic engineering control and programmability across the network. In addition, NorthStar Controller supports real-time stream telemetry via the Junos Telemetry Interface (JTI) and offer real-time traffic visualization, trending and optimizing at the click of a button."

All components of Cloud-Grade Networking are available now, Juniper said.