Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Juniper unveils 5G-ready metro fabric

At OFC 2018 in San Diego, Juniper Networks unveiled its new Metro Fabric architecture for simplifying service delivery through automation.

Juniper’s Metro Fabric architecture leverages a disaggregated programmable photonic layer along with new versions of its ACX Series Universal Metro Routers and PTX Series Packet Transport Routers. The goal is to enable service providers to easily build and manage distributed clouds for new 5G and IoT services.


Some highlights of the announcement:

  • ACX5448 Universal Metro Router:  features 48 10GbE aggregation ports and four high-capacity 100GbE uplink ports, supporting full Metro Ethernet and IP/MPLS VPN services in a space- and cost-optimized platform. 
  • ACX6360 Universal Metro Router: Built to bridge between a secure packet-optical transport layer and IP/MPLS networking, the ACX6360 gives service providers the ability to collapse multiple layers into a single platform to simplify their metro networks. The ACX6360 combines industry compliant 256AES MACSec encryption for 10Gbps, 40Gbps, 100Gbps and 200Gbps CFP2-DCO coherent DWDM interfaces for mobile backhaul, DCI, cable distributed access architectures and various other transport applications. The ACX6360 provides the versatility to eliminate the two-box solution typically found with packet optical and IP deployed next to each other.
  • PTX10002 Packet Transport Router: Scale-out is a key design principle for many cloud providers as they distribute service delivery closer to subscribers for a consistent and high-quality user experience. The PTX10002 is purpose-built for scale-out exchange and cloud architectures with high-capacity, cost-optimized 100GbE interfaces to support growing network traffic demands.


Juniper’s Metro Fabric also incorporates the previously announced programmable photonic layer, including the Juniper Networks TCX1000 Series Programmable ROADM and proNX Optical Director to bring high levels of flexibility, cost control and multi-layer visibility to packet-optical transport.