Juniper Networks has announced the fifth generation of its MX routing platform.
The number of devices connected to the internet continues to explode – Gartner predicts that more than 20 billion devices will be connected to the internet by 2020 – and Juniper’s MX Series 5G Universal Routing Platform is looking to give partners and customers both software and hardware tools to make sure they can build a network that can handle the expected increase in traffic. The PTX and QFX Universal Chassis, announced last year to help companies build cloud networks easier, gains two new MX variants with Juniper’s latest announcement: The MX10008 and MX10016.
At the heart of the announcement lies the new Juniper Penta Silicon, a next-generation packet forwarding engine that delivers 50 per cent power efficiency gain, resulting in a bandwidth increase that’s triple in capacity for the MX960, MX480 and MX240.
A poll among Juniper service provider customers says 55 per cent of respondents ranked the cost of infrastructure build-out as the most, or second-most, challenging element they face when it comes to offering next generation services such as SD-WAN, IoT and 5G.
Nearly 40 per cent of respondents ranked the complexity of managing a distributed network as the greatest or second greatest challenge. Service providers are looking for answers, said Manoj Leelanivas, executive vice-president and chief product officer for Juniper Networks.
“Cloud is eating the world, 5G is ramping up, IoT is presenting a host of new challenges and security teams simply can’t keep up with the sheer volume of cyber attacks on today’s network. One thing service providers should not have to worry about among all this is the unknown of what lies ahead,” he said in a statement. “We are building on our heritage of eliminating the biggest barriers to routing that have emerged over the past decade and providing a platform that can grow whichever way the world does.”
Juniper says the MX10008 and MX100016 will be available during the second half of 2018. Juniper Penta Silicon-powered line cards for the MX960, MX480 and MX240 will be available in Q1 2019. New CUPS support will be available in the first half of 2019.
