Juniper Networks Unveils Industry’s First AI-Native Networking Platform to Deliver Exceptional User Experiences and Lower Operational Costs

Industry’s leading AIOps and virtual network assistant expanded with first integrated digital experience twinning and end-to-end insight across campus, branch and data center infrastructures; new additions to industry’s simplest and most flexible AI Data Center solutions that drive even more speed, scale and value

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – January 29, 2024 – Juniper Networks® (NYSE: JNPR), a leader in secure, AI-Native Networking, today announced the industry’s first AI-Native Networking Platform, purpose-built to leverage AI to assure the best end-to-end operator and end-user experiences. Trained on seven years of insights and data science development, Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform was designed from the ground up to assure that every connection is reliable, measurable and secure for every device, user, application and asset.

Unique to the industry, Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform unifies all campus, branch and data center networking solutions with a common AI engine and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA). This enables end-to-end AI for IT Operations (AIOps) to be used for deep insight, automated troubleshooting and seamless end-to-end networking assurance, which elevates IT teams’ focus from maintaining basic network connectivity to delivering exceptional and secure end-to-end experiences for students, staff, patients, guests, customers and employees. The Juniper AI-Native Networking Platform provides the simplest and most assured Day 0/1/2+ operations, resulting in up to 85 percent lower operational expenditures than traditional solutions, demonstrates the elimination of up to 90 percent of network trouble tickets, 85 percent of IT onsite visits and up to 50 percent reduction in network incident resolution times. 

“AI is the biggest technology inflection point since the internet itself, and its ongoing impact on networking cannot be understated. At Juniper, we have seen first-hand how our game changing AIOps has saved thousands of global enterprises significant time and money while delighting the end user with a superior experience. Our AI-Native Networking Platform represents a bold new direction for Juniper, and for our industry. By extending AIOps from the end user all the way to the application, and across every network domain in between, we are taking a big step toward making network outages, trouble tickets and application downtime things of the past.”

• Rami Rahim, Chief Executive Officer, Juniper Networks

Within the new AI-Native Networking Platform, Juniper is introducing several new products that advance the experience-first mission, from more predictable, reliable and measurable IT operations using AI, to simpler high performance data center networks specifically designed for AI training and inference.

AI for Networking: Going Deeper and Wider with Marvis VNA

The new AI-Native Networking Platform includes two new enhancements to Marvis, the only AI-Native VNA in the industry driven by Mist AI, with proactive recommendations and self-driving operations plus a conversation interface (using GenAI for some use cases). With the following new capabilities, Juniper customers and partners get even more automation and insight:

• Marvis Minis: the only AI-Native Networking Digital Experience Twin, uses Mist AI to proactively simulate user connections to instantly validate network configurations and find/detect problems without users being present. Minis simulates end user/client/device/app traffic to learn the network configuration via unsupervised machine learning and to proactively highlight network issues. Data from Minis is continuously fed back into the Mist AI engine, providing an additional source of insight for the best AIOps responses. 

No manual configuration is required, as Minis is always on and can be deployed automatically during periods of low network usage (e.g. at midnight on weekends) or via trigger events (e.g. after a network configuration change). Also, unlike conventional digital twinning solutions and synthetic testing, Marvis Minis integrates directly with the network, eliminating manual monitoring and analysis via external sensors, clients and applications. 

• Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) for the Data Center: Juniper is introducing the first and only AI-Native VNA for the data center, delivering the best insight throughout the entire data center lifecycle across any vendor’s hardware. For example, issues with data center cabling, configuration and connectivity from any vendor’s hardware are surfaced in the Marvis Actions UI (from Juniper® Apstra®) with suggested proactive actions. Additionally, the Marvis conversational interface (CI) allows IT teams to pose direct queries and get simple, seamless insight into the data center product documentation and knowledgebase using GenAI. 

Data center actions are shown in a single UI alongside similar Marvis actions for wired access, wireless access and secure SD-WAN. In addition, the same Marvis CI is used for generative knowledge base queries across all Juniper products. For the first time ever, Juniper customers have a single VNA for end-to-end visibility and assurance across all enterprise domains. 

Networking for AI: High Performing and Scalable Networks for AI Training and Inference

Juniper is expanding its AI Data Center solution, which is the fastest and most flexible way to deploy high performing AI training and inference clusters, and the simplest to operate with limited IT resources. The Juniper solution consists of a spine-leaf data center architecture with a foundation of QFX switches and PTX routers operated by Juniper Apstra, the only multivendor solution for DC fabric management, automation and assurance. With unique intent-based operations via Apstra, the new Marvis VNA for data center and validated AI designs, Juniper takes much of the complexity out of AI Data Center networking design, deployment and troubleshooting, allowing customers to do more with fewer IT resources. The solution also delivers unsurpassed flexibility to customers, avoiding vendor lock-in with silicon diversity, multivendor switch management and a commitment to open, standards-based Ethernet fabrics.  

Building upon Juniper’s AI Data Center architectural advantages, the company is announcing the following new products and capabilities to drive even more speed, efficiency and scale:  

• Juniper Apstra has been expanded to provide faster and more efficient processing of AI/ML traffic over Ethernet, including congestion management, load balancing and flow control.
• New Express 5 silicon-based PTX routers and line cards with the promise of industry-leading performance and energy-efficient sustainability to enable the necessary massive scale with high-density 800GE capacity.  
• A new QFX switch provides 2X the capacity of the previous generation and is the first announced data center switch from an Original Equipment Manufacturer using the most advanced Broadcom Tomahawk 5 silicon for 800GE. 

Both the new PTX and QFX platforms support high 800GE port density and the necessary AI infrastructure protocols, including RDMA over Ethernet (RoCE v2) for power-efficient and scalable AI Data Center networking.

Sustainability Considerations

The AI-Native Networking Platform exceeds sustainability requirements without sacrificing performance and security. Its AIOps enables fast and remote troubleshooting, significantly cutting inter-site travel by 85 percent in certain instances. Furthermore, it features power-efficient hardware which minimizes energy consumption and is modularly built to make repairs easier and prolong product life. 

Supporting Quotes:

“Our IT team used to spend hours troubleshooting network issues. Juniper’s AI-native Networking Platform changed everything. With its AI-powered insights from Marvis and automation, we’ve seen a 90 percent reduction in wireless-related issues reported by employees and a significant reduction to our mean time to resolution of issues, freeing up our team to focus on more strategic initiatives. Now, with Marvis Minis, we will be able to proactively find and resolve issues before they impact our user experience. Another amazing benefit is that Marvis Minis is fully integrated into our existing Marvis VNA subscription; there’s no need for additional hardware or software. It’s a game-changer for our network operations.”     

– Sajeev Nair, Senior Director Design & Build Engineering, ServiceNow  

“With Juniper Mist, we can quickly diagnose network problems. Now, with Marvis Minis, we can proactively determine wireless performance issues before they impact the user experience for our staff and students.”  

– Amel Caldwell, Assistant Director of Wireless and Mobile Communications, University of Washington

“Ashland School District has many sites across our district that we manage with Juniper Mist. We are thrilled to deploy Marvis Minis without the burden of installing additional overlay sensors. This enables us to save money and time while also delivering a reliable network experience to boost academic outcomes.” 

– Steve Mitzel, Executive Director of Operations, Ashland School District, Oregon

“Juniper’s AI-Native Platform provides comprehensive solutions for organizations seeking to transition from reactive to proactive and even predictive network troubleshooting and management. The combination of proven AIOps and the addition of synthetic testing enables highly available and optimized network environments. Juniper is extending its AI capabilities to the data center by coupling Marvis VNA with Apstra so it can provide end-to-end context and simplified use leveraging conversational AI interfaces. Additionally, Juniper’s AI-native solutions and switches can be applied to power back end GenAI network infrastructure. Organizations can take advantage of Juniper’s Validated Solutions to accelerate adoption and time to value of these GenAI environments.”

• Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

Supporting Blogs

What Does it Really Mean to be AI-Native?: Rami Rahim

The Most Flexible Way to Deploy & Manage High-Performing Networks for AI Workloads: Jeff Aaron

Meet Marvis Minis: The Next Level of Network Optimization is Here: Sudheer Matta

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks believes that connectivity is not the same as experiencing a great connection. Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform is built from the ground up across the AIOps layer and our systems to fully harness the power of AI. From real-time fault isolation to proactive anomaly detection and self-driving corrective actions, it provides campus, branch, data center, and WAN operations with next-level predictability, reliability, and security. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on X (Twitter), LinkedIn and Facebook.

EASA partners with IATA to counter aviation safety threat from GNSS spoofing and jamming  

30 January 2024– The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced the conclusions of a workshop jointly hosted at EASA’s headquarters to combat incidents of GNSS spoofing and jamming.

The workshop’s high-level conclusion was that interference with satellite-based services that provide information on the precise position of an aircraft can pose significant challenges to aviation safety. Mitigating these risks requires short-, medium- and long-term measures, beginning with the sharing of incident information and remedies.

“GNSS systems offer tremendous advantages to aviation in increasing the safety of operations in a busy shared airspace,” said EASA Acting Executive Director Luc Tytgat. “But we have seen a sharp rise in attacks on these systems, which poses a safety risk. EASA is tackling the risk specific to these new technologies. We immediately need to ensure that pilots and crews can identify the risks and know how to react and land safely. In the medium term, we will need to adapt the certification requirements of the navigation and landing systems. For the longer term, we need to ensure we are involved in the design of future satellite navigation systems. Countering this risk is a priority for the Agency.” 

“Airlines are seeing a significant rise in incidents of GNSS interference. To counter this, we need coordinated collection and sharing of GNSS safety data; universal procedural GNSS incident guidance from aircraft manufacturers; a commitment from states to retain traditional navigation systems as backup in cases where GNSS are spoofed or jammed. In actioning these items, the support and resources of EASA and other governmental authorities are essential. And airlines will be critical partners. And whatever actions are taken, they must be the focal point of the solution as they are the front line facing the risk,” said Willie Walsh, IATA’s Director General.

Measures agreed by the workshop to make Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services provided by GNSS more resilient, include:  

–Reporting and sharing of GNSS interference event data. In Europe, this would occur through the European Occurrence Reporting scheme and EASA’s Data4Safety programme. As this is a global problem, it is important, for a better and complete understanding, to join all the information available from reports by connecting the databases such as IATA’s Flight Data Exchange (FDX), or EUROCONTROL’s EVAIR.  This topic will be included in the discussions among all interested stakeholders, which will be launched following this workshop.

-Guidance from aircraft manufacturers. This will ensure that aircraft operators are well equipped to manage jamming and spoofing situations, in alignment with EASA’s Safety Information Bulletin (SIB 2022-02 R2).

-Alerting: EASA will inform the relevant stakeholders (airlines, air navigation service providers (ANSPs), manufacturing industry and airports) about attacks.

-Backup: Aviation must retain a Minimum Operational Network (MON) of traditional navigation aids to ensure that there is a conventional backup for GNSS navigation. 

Background on ‘spoofing’ and ‘jamming’

In very recent years, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) jamming and spoofing incidents have increasingly threatened the integrity of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services across Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Similar incidents have been reported in other locations globally. GNSS is a service based on satellite constellations such as the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and EU’s Galileo. ‘Jamming’ blocks a signal, whereas ‘spoofing’ sends false information to the receiver on board the aircraft. 

These disruptions pose significant challenges to the broader spectrum of industries which rely on precise geolocation services, including aviation. Such attacks belong to the domain of Cybersecurity, safety threat for which EASA has developed a toolkit. The National Aviation Authorities (NAAs) in Europe had explicitly tasked EASA with taking measures to counter this risk.   

About the workshop

Participants in the workshop shared information on actual events experienced, to deepen the collective understanding of the perceived threat. There was wide appreciation from the attendees for the event and a shared understanding of the need to tackle this issue collectively in a timely fashion. Over 120 participants from airlines, manufacturers, system suppliers, ANSPs and institutions joined the in-person event, which was held in Cologne on January 25, 2024.