Modern data center networks face an unprecedented array of challenges, including cost effective scaling, support for new applications such as highly virtualized data centers, more reliable delivery of Ethernet data frames, and much more.  This week at Interop in Las Vegas, IBM released a series of technical briefs that present a vision for the creation of an open data center with an interoperable network.
 

Next week at Interop, there will be a good amount of reality and hype surrounding BYOD, Big Data, fabrics, software defined networking, and of course, THE CLOUD. My fellow Juniper representatives and I are looking forward to talking about those issues and architectural strategies for your IT infrastructure. However, there is a more mundane, but also important decision to be made when it comes to thinking about economics and future proofing your infrastructure: when, where, and why should you use 1G vs 10G switches?

Not too long ago, enterprises eagerly purchased best of breed IT components and self-integrated the pieces to create their own solution.  Software and hardware from various suppliers implemented by internal IT staff members to meet what seemed like unique requirements.   It was complex, expensive, and time consuming to complete.  Often, major IT projects came in late and over budget.  Times have changed and now enterprises must control cost, reduce time to benefit, maximize efficiency, and build agility in their IT environments. IBM’s new family of Expert Integrated Systems is the latest step forward in advanced computing for IT customers.

We often take technology for granted.  Every day, we simply flip a switch to turn the lights in a room or press one button on the microwave to make a quick meal without a thought. We don’t think about the complexity of starting a car. Gasoline automatically mixes with the correct amount of oxygen to create a combustion powering the drive shaft to generate enough energy to move the vehicle. We just put the key in the ignition and turn it to the right.We often take technology for granted.  Every day, we simply flip a switch to turn the lights in a room or press one button on the microwave to make a quick meal without a thought. We don’t think about the complexity of starting a car. Gasoline automatically mixes with the correct amount of oxygen to create a combustion powering the drive shaft to generate enough energy to move the vehicle. We just put the key in the ignition and turn it to the right. We often take technology for granted.  Every day, we simply flip a switch to turn the lights in a room or press one button on the microwave to make a quick meal without a thought. We don’t think about the complexity of starting a car. Gasoline automatically mixes with the correct amount of oxygen to create a combustion powering the drive shaft to generate enough energy to move the vehicle. We just put the key in the ignition and turn it to the right.

Friday March 23rd added another important milestone to Juniper's long track record of firsts as the highly anticipated PTX5000 Packet Transport Switch began shipping to Service Provider customers seeking a new solution for managing ever growing and increasingly unpredictable network traffic with MPLS optimized forwarding.

When you benefit so heavily from the work of so many selfless individuals, you just have to give back when you can. So when I found out that the FreeBSD assets were moving from a datacenter in Santa Clara to another datacenter literally right across the street, I jumped at the opportunity to help. The cluster administrator for the hosting datacenter reached out to one of our FreeBSD committers and asked if we could provide some switches so they could support the work. In response, we gave them three EX3200s with full support contracts – free of charge.

OFC/NFOEC is off to a great start this week in Los Angeles, with more than 11,000 attendees showing up for the three day show, which runs through March 8. As I wrote on Monday, Juniper is hosting and presenting at several sessions this week and is showcasing how service providers can optimize network monetization with Juniper’s Converged Supercore, built with the PTX Series Packet Transport Switches.

As part of our Converged Supercore demonstration, we’re showing how seamlessly the PTX Series interoperates with a carrier’s existing legacy gear, including the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router and the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System. 

“Many devices which work on a small scale do not work on a large scale.” – Galileo

Although spoken several centuries ago, this observation uniquely applies to networks today. Scalability depends on the strength of the underlying network architecture. Recently, I had a chance to work with Network Test’s David Newman, one of the best in the business when it comes to network assessment tests. David and my colleagues put a QFabric System through a series of standardized tests under the most stringent data center conditions, across 1,536 10GbE ports—an unprecedented scale that has never been seen before (at least, not in my 13 years of experience). The results prove that QFabric delivers impressive performance at very large scale, provides operational simplicity with a single  switch model and seamlessly interoperates with existing data center and network infrastructure.

The annual OFC/NFOEC Conference gets underway in the Los Angeles Convention Center next week, and Juniper will be showcasing a live demonstration of its Converged Supercore architecture with the PTX Series Packet Transport Switch, powered by the Junos Express chipset.

The PTX Series was designed from the ground up to meet the service provider business model challenge: Exploding non-revenue generating network traffic with unpredictable patterns driving a chasm between network monetization and the cost of scaling the network.

The PTX plays a revolutionary role in helping to close that chasm by merging the core packet and optical network layers in an innovative single-element design with full function MPLS and dense 100Gbps interfaces, delivering capital cost savings of up to 65 percent compared to traditional architectures.

For me, Mobile World Congress (MWC) is like a birthday or Christmas – inasmuch it’s an annual milestone of my year, orienting me to the seasons. I have to say, it has thrown me a bit this year, being so much later in February, the first Valentine’s Day I have spent at home in years! Nonetheless, here we are, about to go to Barcelona again, an industry event focusing on “redefining mobile”  - and I can’t wait!

As a networking industry veteran, my early memories of MWC (or 3GSM World as it used to be) go back to its original home of Cannes, in the South of France. In those early days Juniper Networks based its activities on a beautiful boat moored in the harbour (the narrow, slippery gang-plank entrance/exit uncluttered with any handrails was always a heart-stopping moment, especially as it was in the days of large, heavy laptops that threatened to alter the carrier’s centre of gravity radically without warning).  Our presence at the show then was perfectly valid but somewhat peripheral – and as my memories of heavy laptops prove, the days of truly mobile computing were yet to come. Network infrastructure for fixed and mobile worlds were siloed apart, and the idea of data-rich applications and content via your mobile phone and/or a smart device was beyond the

horizon.

At the 2012 HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) event on February 20-24 in Las Vegas, Juniper Networks and IBM will lead a lunch & learn breakout session for healthcare IT executives entitled, “Innovate Your HIT With Transformed Telemedicine and Secure Clinical Mobility Solutions from IBM and Juniper Networks”.  The session will be held in room 103 from 12:00 to 1:30pm on Tuesday, February 21, 2012.

IBM has proven once again that "big things can come in small packages."  Today the company introduced a new reference configuration specifically designed for Mid-Market clients to quickly deploy a departmental, entry cloud solution. This reference configuration provides IBM business partners with a complete solution stack to help clients choose and deploy a comprehensive pre-tested solution including servers, networking, storage and software and the infrastructure and management tools needed to quickly and easily implement private clouds for their data centers.

Today the networking world has been all ‘a-twitter’ about Nicira; the networking start up who earlier this morning unveiled its network virtualization solution. Based on some of the analysis I’ve read, you’d think a gaping hole has opened up underneath Mathilda Ave. and Tasman Drive, destined to swallow the fortunes of network infrastructure vendors. But fear not; the reality is far more interesting -- and exciting. 

Juniper’s customers face exponential growth in online video traffic.  Leading analysts report aggregate traffic is expected to double every six months. The financial impact for customers is significant.  And, with migration of video consumption accelerating from traditional television toward online and mobile devices, it is even more critical that our customers have innovative content delivery solutions.

I am therefore excited about Juniper’s announcement today that we have acquired rights to the service management layer of BitGravity’s content delivery network (CDN) technology.