Networking isn’t just about routers and switches anymore. In a series of announcements today made by Networking vendor Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR) made a series of announcements today that reflect a revamping of its business around new processing silicon, networking systems and software.
Juniper’s new efforts are designed around speeding up networking with a combination of silicon enhanced systems and expanded software. The announcements come on the same day Juniper is being listed on the NYSE, which itself is a Juniper customer. In addition to detailing the new releases during a morning press conference, Juniper execs also took aim at rivals Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) and Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) on the topic of who provides the best performance.
“We need to get past the thinking that’s networking is about a box,” Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said during the morning press conference.
In Johnson’s view the new networking equation is all about fostering an open ecosystem and not forcing single box point solutions on users. In order to power the vision of the new network, Johnson noted that it takes processing power in silicon.
To that end, Juniper today announced its new Junos Trio silicon which offers up to 604 Gbps of I/O capacity. Juniper’s founder and CTO, Pradeep Sindhu said that with a Junos Trio you could download the entire Library of Congress in one minute.
Sindhu said there are four key chipsets that make up the Junos Trio.
The first chipset is the lookup engine, which has a new instruction set for packet processing. Sindhu said the new engine was 20 times more efficient than the current generation of silicon and that Juniper has 30 patents that chipset.
The second chip in Trio is the memory engine, which has bandwidth capacity of 120 Gbps.
The third chip does fine grain queuing, dividing up bandwidth in a granular way enabling operators to have full quality of service control. The fourth chip on the Trio silicon is the interface engine which provides Ethernet capabilities.
“This quantum jump increase in performance also increases the scale of the systems we can build,” Sindhu said. “Packet forwarding is faster, power efficiency is better and latency is better.”
Tripling platform capacity
The first Juniper systems that will benefit from the Trio silicon are Juniper’s MX series routers. The MX 3D, is a new interface module powered by Junos Trio and triples the capacity of existing platforms. For example Juniper’s MX 960 router on its own can deliver 960 Gbps of bandwidth but with the MX 3D it can now deliver 2.6 Terabits per second.
In addition to tripling the power of its existing MX routers, Juniper is also announcing a new smaller router called the MX 80 which provides 80 Gbps in a three and a half inch chassis.
Kim Perdikou, executive vice president at Juniper, said that the new platforms offered more performance capacity than rivals Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent. Just yesterday, Alcatel-Lucent launched its own smaller router platforms while Cisco has been busy this year updating its portfolio as well.
Project Falcon
Juniper is also ramping up its mobile networking effort through its Project Falcon initiative. Perdikou explained that Falcon is all about building a mobile packet core for Juniper’s universal edge routers.
As part of it New Network initiative Juniper is also expanding its core Junos operating system. Junos is the core operating platform for nearly all of Juniper’s routing and switching gear and is updated ever quarter. Junos Space is a new network application platform and Junos Pulse is a new integrated network client for provisioning and management.
“We’re strongly confident that this next decade ahead, the industry must take a different approach,” Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson said. “And we challenge everyone in the networking industry to be thoughtful of what value they can bring to the table to help solve problems.”
