Juniper Networks’ routing and switching portfolio is getting a 400 gigabit ethernet (GbE) injection, the network company announced this morning.
Its PTX IP transport, MX wide-area network and QFX data centre series are all getting the 400 GbE upgrade. Juniper says this will allow enterprise and service provider customers to control costs as they face increasing bandwidth demands from augmented and virtual reality, cloud and 4K video, in addition to the incoming 5G era. The updates are expected to roll out in the second half of 2018 and the first half of 2019.
Keeping up with exploding traffic growth and simultaneously keeping the cost-per-bit down is what customers are asking for, according to Bikash Koley, chief technology officer for Juniper Networks.
“The impending wave of network traffic is coming from all angles and affecting all industries. Success will be about not only equipping the network with the right technology to handle the traffic in a secure way but also fine-tuning the economics so it makes good business sense,” he said in a statement.
Despite the fact that 100 GbE is still being rolled out, Juniper’s decision to rev up internet speeds for customers makes sense, said Matthias Machowinsksi, a senior research director at IHS Markit, suggesting future spending on 400 GbE technologies will hit $10 billion in the next five years.
“This year marks the start of the commercial 400 GbE market, with volumes ramping up in 2019 as 400 GbE trials across WDM, service provider routing, and data center switching applications convert into production deployments,” he explained in a statement. “Operators, cloud service providers and enterprises are under constant pressure to efficiently address unrelenting traffic growth, and they are looking at 400G as a key enabler to do so.”
