Juniper has “re-imagined” the metro network, aiming to move beyond the current siloes to deliver a platform optimized for the expected sharp rise in traffic driven by 5G, edge compute and IoT.
The metro network, and its associated routers, are an increasingly important part of the carrier network as more and more data processing and traffic moves out from the central core. The same process will also place new demands on the edge routers, but in the coming few years, the metro area will see the biggest expansion.
The metro network is the point where all the access networks and their traffic converges and aggregates. Juniper says metro traffic will grow four times more quickly than in any other part of the network over the next few years. A great deal of traffic will stop at the metro level rather than proceeding to the core, as more IoT data, in particular, is processed and stored more locally. The growth of distributed 5G/edge services will increasingly push existing and new cloud workloads to the edge cloud. On the connectivity front, different wireless and wireline access networks will increasingly be used in a converged, interchangeable way, and they will often support non-access functions, such as xHaul, too.
Amid all this change, it is inefficient for everything to go to the central core, but if traffic is to stop at the metro level, metro networks need to be far more integrated. Currently, they are often siloed, point-to-point networks that exist to funnel traffic to the central core. Juniper claims its Cloud Metro will provide a single IP services fabric that can allocated resources according to the requirements of a particular service or desired outcome. It will take lessons from the hyperscale networks and support resource pooling, dynamic slicing and automated operations.
There are three main elements in Cloud Metro:
- A scalable IP services fabric that supports different topologies, as well as 400G interface speeds and optical options. Juniper has added two models to its ACX family of routers to support this platform – the ACX7100-48L, a high density aggregation router; and the ACX7100032C, a high capacity router that supports high fan-out density for flexible 100/400GbE use cases.
- Service-aware intelligent traffic steering to support any-to-any steering across distributed services and enable network slicing.
- End-to-end automation using the recently announced Paragon Automation portfolio for zero-touch deployment and provisioning.