The router wars took on an interesting twist at the end of October when Juniper Networks announced that it was not only releasing more intelligent, optimized routers, but also opening the APIs of its router operating system Junos to third parties for easier application development and more intelligent service deployment.
At the heart of Juniper's new router strategy is its new "Trio" chipsets, which integrate traditional software processes such as packet forwarding or MPLS with other IP functionalities, and the Junos Space API. Juniper says the Trio chips will enable its MX series routers to scale flexibly enough to handle the coming onslaught of IP traffic, especially video, while Junos Space will allow third parties - particularly operators - to work more directly in the network's service architecture.
One of the key benefits of this approach, says Juniper, is that it makes for faster, denser and more flexible routers. To that end, Juniper announced several new router products, including the rack-based MX80 with 80-Gbps throughput (the only one shown at the launch), and three blade-based routers, one of which - the MX960 - touts throughput speeds of 2.6 Tbps.
However, with rivals like Cisco Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei Technologies and ZTE already competing fiercely on speed and port density, flexibility is increasingly becoming a key differentiator for the carrier router space as more and more IP-enabled devices and services lurk on the horizon, and different players and services migrate to the all-IP world.
"Data centers, mobile networks, IPTV and Carrier Ethernet services all have very different IP optimization needs," said Ovum analyst John Mazur in a research note. "Juniper's answer is '3D' universal routing, for which Juniper's products provide tunable optimization of the variables of bandwidth, subscribers, and services."
But the real eye-catcher is Juniper's open-API approach, which is intended to help operators monetize IP by driving networking applications.