Juniper fortifies network edge with new routers

Juniper Networks this week has rolled out edge routers designed to enable service providers to rapidly deploy new service applications.

Juniper's MX2020 and 2010 3D Universal Edge Routers run software called JunosV App Engine that's intended to allow service providers to quickly turn up new services and revenue opportunities. JunosV App Engine includes a Linux operating system and KVM hypervisor with APIs to Juniper and third-party applications that run on an x86-based server module in the router.

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The announcements follow last week's rollout of a video caching module for the MX edge router that stores 80,000 movies and streams them on demand to multiple devices. At that time, Juniper also announced a host of consumer and business service extensions to the MX line, including parental control services and targeted advertising; managed services, such as virtualized firewall; combining MX routers and Juniper top-of rack switches into a single virtualized element to simplify management of multiple nodes; monitoring and Layer 2/3 routing intelligence offloaded from the customer premises and onto a service provider's MX router.

Those services will also run on the MX 2020 and 2010. The 2020 supports 80Tbps of capacity, Juniper says, enough to deliver HD video to the equivalent of every household in New York and New Jersey. The 2010 supports 40Tbps of capacity.

The routers use Juniper's Junos Trio chipset, which was unveiled three years ago for scaling bandwidth, subscribers and services for mobile Internet, cloud and video services. Existing Trio-based line cards can be used interchangeably in this new chassis, Juniper says.

The JunosV App Engine software allows service providers to drag and drop existing applications, such as load balancing, security services, online gaming and advertising, while simultaneously operating other revenue-generating service applications from any vendor, Juniper says.

Juniper has also added Virtual Chassis capabilities to the MX line, as expected, which allows multiple chassis to operate as a single logical router to scale subscribers and services. And the company has also added a path computational element to the MX that allows IT managers to program the routers to find the most efficient paths to optimize on-demand bandwidth requirements.

The path computational element was expected.

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 25 years, 21 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.

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