Juniper unveils AI enhancements for advanced WAN routing

Juniper Networks has announced enhancements to its routing solutions, introducing new capabilities to streamline deployment and enhance large-scale routing management.

The company has integrated the capabilities of Mist AI into its WAN routing solution to provide more comprehensive automation and insights, focusing on end-to-end routing observability and control. These advancements also feature in the newly launched Juniper Networks ACX7020 Access Edge Router, which further extends automation capabilities to metro and customer premises.

These developments arrive at a time when network traffic is escalating, driven by factors such as Generative AI workloads. Enterprises and service providers are seeking reliable and high-performance WAN connectivity to handle increasing complexity. Juniper's AI-Native Routing portfolio aims to address these challenges with advanced automation suitable for large enterprise, cloud, and service provider networks.

The Juniper Paragon portfolio, a key solution within the AI-Native Networking Platform, aims to simplify WAN automation from initial deployment phases onwards. Enhancements to Paragon include improved AI-native routing observability with Mist AI, which offers extensive visibility and AI-driven operational control. This technology is set to detect complex routing issues, reducing associated expenditures by up to 85% in some cases.

The company has introduced a new component, the LLM Connector, which complements Juniper's Virtual Network Assistant, Marvis. This feature provides customers with the option to leverage their own large language model deployments for advanced technical interactions, facilitating faster resolution of intricate routing problems.

Additionally, Juniper has introduced intent-based network optimisation to support intent-driven traffic engineering policies. This function simplifies routing optimisation to meet application performance requirements, grounded in Juniper's extensive experience with numerous traffic and optimisation scenarios.

The new solutions also focus on enhancing performance and sustainability. Juniper highlights an energy-efficient automation use case featuring port and line card sleep capabilities to identify and reduce unnecessary energy consumption.

The ACX7020 Access Edge Router represents a further expansion in Juniper's portfolio, suitable for indoor and outdoor installation. This compact router supports AI-Native Routing and facilitates direct connection of endpoints to WANs, thus enabling plug-and-play edge integration.

Grant Lenahan, Partner & Principal Analyst at Appledore Research, commented, "Operators and enterprises urgently need to plan for future traffic complexity and control spiralling costs and complexity. With AI-Native Networking Juniper addresses both. By combining Juniper's proven Mist AI experience with its strong Paragon WAN automation portfolio—and by integrating both with the Juniper routing and switching portfolio—Juniper addresses two of the most pressing industry challenges: 1) how to efficiently manage huge (often AI-driven) data flows across WANs and 2) how to gain both higher productivity and better WAN outcomes, simultaneously."

AE Natarajan, Executive Vice President & Chief Development Officer at Juniper Networks, further noted, "Technical leaders of enterprise, cloud and service provider organizations alike face multi-faceted challenges to deliver the best possible business results from the WAN in the AI era. Reliability, performance and empowered users must be balanced against CapEx/OpEx and capacity pressures, operational complexity and sustainability goals. In response, Juniper is delivering the industry's first converged, comprehensive AI-Native routing solution, taking another step toward the fully Self-Driving Network."