Juniper Networks Thursday announced a new suite of products and services under the company's new Converged Supercore brand for service and content providers, including what the company claims is industry's the first converged packet transport switch.
Juniper's Converged Supercore architecture consists of the new Junos Express chipset, the Junos operating system, and the new PTX Series of switches, which feature native MPLS (multi-protocol label switching) and optical integration switching. As a result, the networking company claims the PTX Series Packet Transport Switch can drastically reduce complexity for service providers while also offering cost savings of up to 65 percent compared to legacy networking gear.
According to Juniper, combining MPLS and optical switching will create a more effective way to handle unpredictable peak network demand than traditional IP routing. The PTX Series supports scalability of up to 3,800 Tbps, which Juniper said is 10 times the system scale of any competing platform. The company also says the new Converged Supercore switch offers five times the packet processing capability per slot and one third of the total power consumption (1W/Gbps) of the competition.
Juniper also said that by merging the core packet and optical network layers, the PTX Series will allow service providers to collapse their network layers and save money on network management costs, as well as actual infrastructure, while also more effectively managing sudden spikes in bandwith demand. With network traffic growing rapidly, thanks to the increase in content like HD video and the propagation of mobile devices, Juniper is banking on its Converged Supercore suite to be a cheaper solution than high-end routers and a more flexible solution than circuit networks.
"Success for service providers hinges on finding a more economical and effective model for building and maintaining their core transport networks and that's the foundation of our new Converged Supercore architecture and solution set," said Stefan Dyckerhoff, executive vice president and general manager of Juniper's Platform Systems Group, in a statement. "The Converged Supercore will collapse the multilayered networks service providers are running today, giving them more scalability and simplicity."
In addition to the new PTX Series, Juniper also introduced new professional services designed specifically to migrate service provider customers from existing legacy network infrastructure to a Converged Supercore solution. The services include network design, optimization, simulation and a third-party total cost of ownership analysis.
The PTX Series will be available for beta trials in the third quarter of this year.
