Juniper Networks Aims to Catch 400G Wave

Juniper Networks is betting that a forthcoming transition to 400G Ethernet switches and routers will enable it to gain ground among cloud service providers, carriers, and large enterprise at the expense of rivals.

Juniper today announced a broad refresh of it PTX and QFX series networking equipment that leverages the Juniper Penta Silicon processor technologies the company previously unveiled. Juniper late last year also unveiled an MX series of routers based on the same processor technology.

These offerings are collectively designed to meet 5G network bandwidth requirements that are about to significantly increase, thanks to, for example, the rise of 4K video and augmented/virtual reality applications, says Sally Bament, vice president of service provider marketing at Juniper Networks.

“We’re at the very beginning of a 400G Ethernet wave,” says Bament.

That wave doesn’t necessarily mean organizations will bypass 40 and 100G Ethernet technologies, says Bament. Rather, organizations will leverage multiple classes of networking equipment to aggregate equipment as part of a larger effort to flatten existing large-scale networks, says Bament.

To increase the appeal of the Juniper Network approach to achieving that goal, Bament notes the Juniper Penta Silicon also embeds encryption technologies directly within the processor, thereby eliminating the need to deploy additional security appliances.

Other capabilities embedded within the Juniper Penta Silicon include support for telemetry, VXLAN EVPN, and the latest version of Source Packet Routing in Networking (SPRING).

The Juniper routers and switches are scheduled to become available at the start of second half of this year with rollouts continuing into the second half of 2019.

Obviously, organizations that would need 400G networking equipment are not going to be making that transition overnight. But Juniper Networks is clearly in a race against time as entrenched rivals gear up to pursue the same 400G opportunity.