Juniper Networks Simplifies Distributed Mobile Cloud Solution with Affirmed Networks and Netronome

02/22/2018

Enhanced Joint Solution Simplifies Orchestration of Control and User Plane Separation for Mobile Operators to Deploy 5G and IoT Services Closer to Subscribers with Greater Agility

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Feb. 22, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Juniper Networks (NYSE:JNPR), an industry leader in automated, scalable and secure networks, today announced it has expanded its partnership with Affirmed Networks and Netronome to give mobile providers a simple-to-manage, high-performing distributed mobile cloud solution for rapid deployment of IoT and 5G services.

Mobile providers are looking to disaggregate the control and user planes within their networks through Affirmed Networks’ 5G virtualized Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) that provides Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS) to create highly distributed mobile clouds that achieve IoT- and 5G-friendly flexibility, scale, performance and low latency. While distributed clouds provide network operators with several benefits in terms of cost-savings, flexibility and increased service agility, operational complexity can also occur as compute clusters and data centers are so widely dispersed. As such, integrating Juniper’s recently updated Contrail Provider Cloud provides a simple software-defined and intent-driven solution for service providers to more effectively manage distributed, virtualized architectures with greater agility. Additionally, Agilio SmartNICs from Netronome increase the performance of server-based virtual networking functions to bring additional high-performance service delivery.

With this joint solution, mobile providers will be able to automate the provisioning of new low-latency services and applications, such as self-driving cars, smart cities or industrial IoT, much closer to end-users, greatly simplifying service delivery. Additionally, the distributed vEPC architecture provides unparalleled performance, supporting over 150Gpbs throughput on a single Xeon-based server, and unprecedented flexibility to deploy user plane nodes closer to the radio access network while centralizing the control plane for economy of scale. This joint solution will dramatically improve performance and reduce delay while also simplifying and enabling greater agility in service delivery.

Juniper will showcase this joint solution with Affirmed Networks and Netronome at Mobile World Congress – Hall 2 Stand 2I60, Hall 2 Stand 2J61. The joint solution is expected to be available in the second half of 2018.

The solution includes the following components:

  • Juniper’s Contrail Provider Cloud: Makes deploying the telco cloud far easier by simplifying the underlying Linux distribution with Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, seamlessly gleaning network insight with AppFormix, clearing the traditionally difficult task of validating VNFs by pre-qualifying, and adding end-to-end support services to smooth implementation. Mobile operators can use this integrated solution to easily navigate the complexities of cloud deployments and operations with improved performance, scale and service level agreements.
  • Affirmed Networks Mobile Cloud: Delivers a fully virtualized 5G Mobile Packet Core solution, natively supporting a CUPS architecture with distributed control and user plane. The solution offers advanced capabilities including network slicing, integrated virtual probe and analytics, a rich set of GiLAN services, multi-access support with WiFi (ePDG and TWAG) and service automation enabling operators to create customized services/slices, bringing these services to market faster and at a much lower cost.
  • Agilio SmartNIC Platform from Netronome: Agilio CX 10GbE, 25GbE and 40GbE SmartNIC platforms fully and transparently offload virtual switch and router data path processing for networking functions, such as overlays, security, load balancing and telemetry. This enables compute servers used for server-based networking and cloud computing to save critical CPU cores for application processing while delivering significantly higher performance. The Agilio CX platform features standard low-profile PCIe SmartNICs and software that is designed for general-purpose commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rack servers, providing needed operating system, power and form factor requirements.

Supporting quotes:

“The evolution of connected IoT services and ultra-fast 5G networks requires that the underlying infrastructure evolve in ways that yield low latency and flexibility to scale where needed – all while being simple to deploy and manage. By integrating Affirmed Networks’ CUPS with Juniper’s Contrail Provider Cloud and Netronome’s SmartNICs, we’re evolving our solutions to enable service providers to truly realize a distributed mobile cloud capable of faster service creation and time to revenue for the next generation of services and applications.”
– Sally Bament, vice president, service provider marketing, Juniper Networks

“5G represents a significant opportunity for service providers to deliver customized services tailored to the needs of specific enterprises and vertical markets. To capitalize on this major shift in delivery and revenue models, however, they require a flexible, high-performance solution capable of being deployed in an automated manner. By delivering a pre-tested and configured industry leading solution, together we are making it uniquely possible for operators to increase service agility and materially decrease time to revenue.”
-- Amit Tiwari, vice president, strategic alliances and systems engineering, Affirmed Networks

“5G and NFV infrastructures will evolve rapidly to meet the insatiable bandwidth and latency demands from new and innovative data services and applications. The Agilio SmartNIC Platform from Netronome, tightly and seamlessly integrated with Juniper’s Contrail Provider Cloud and Affirmed Mobile Cloud solutions, bring scale, latency and performance efficiencies to both the core data center and edge applications, enabling operators to deliver new services with significantly higher quality of experience.”
-- Sujal Das, chief marketing and strategy officer, Netronome

Additional Resources:

About Juniper Networks
Juniper Networks simplifies the complexities of networking with products, solutions and services in the cloud era to transform the way we connect, work and live. We remove the traditional constraints of networking to enable our customers and partners to deliver automated, scalable and secure networks that connect the world. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on Twitter and Facebook.

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Media Relations:
Michelle Zimmermann
Juniper Networks
(408) 936-9291
mzimmermann@juniper.net

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Source: Juniper Networks