Industry-leading wired access solutions uniquely leverage Mist AI and the cloud to overcome enterprise networking operational challenges

Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR), a leader in secure, AI-driven networks, today announced a new cloud-hosted campus fabric workflow that facilitates the successful deployment of enterprise networks to expedite time-to-service and minimize troubleshooting costs. In addition, the new Juniper Networks EX4400-24X distribution switch delivers the power of Mist AI™ and the cloud to enterprise campus distribution deployments and low-density data center top-of-rack environments. These additions to Juniper’s award-winning wired switching portfolio bring even more scale, performance and security to the AI-driven enterprise.

“Traditional on-premises solutions for microsegmentation are extremely complex to deploy and manage, making it difficult to achieve their full promise of security and flexibility,” said Sudheer Matta, Group VP Product, AI-driven Enterprise at Juniper. “The latest addition to our AI-driven enterprise solutions solves this, combining the power of Mist AI and the simplicity of cloud with standards-based EVPN/VXLAN to create a secure, open and seamless solution for campus fabrics with additional microsegmentation capabilities.”

Simplified Campus Deployments

Campus IT departments are challenged by the configuration and testing of complex L2/L3 switching fabrics, like EVPN/VXLAN. As a result, they either avoid these useful architectures entirely or spend unnecessary time and money troubleshooting problems. Juniper’s new wired access workflow uses Mist AI and the cloud to overcome these challenges. Its unique features include:

• Customers can now deploy common standards-based campus fabrics, such as EVPN multihoming, EVPN core/distribution and IP Clos, with an easy three-step process in which they select their desired topology, assign devices/roles and push configurations.
• Mist AI brings proactive issue identification and remediation to enable successful fabric deployment and optimized ongoing wired operations. For example, with Juniper’s Wired Assurance subscription, customers and partners can easily identify and correct a wide array of switching problems, such as missing VLANs, port flaps and bad cables.
• With the Juniper solution, it is easy to set up automated group-based policies (GBP) and enable microsegmentation for improved security of applications and IoT devices. This is a perfect complement to SecIntel threat intelligence for EX, which protects against internal application and device compromise.
• The Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) utilizes Natural Language Understanding to provide simple answers to complex problems, proactively identifying key actions. By leveraging a common Mist AI engine across the whole Juniper campus/branch portfolio, the wired access, wireless access and SD-WAN domains all work together for incredible client-to-cloud insight and optimization.

With the Juniper campus switching solution driven by Mist AI, customers and partners get the full benefit of a seamless, standards-compliant L2/L3 fabric without the deployment headaches and operational costs that have traditionally hampered these environments.

The New EX4400-24X Distribution Switch Series: Enterprise-grade, Born in the Modern Cloud and AI Era

Enterprises of all sizes are faced with a rapidly increasing number of users, devices and applications that need to access the network simultaneously, quickly and securely. Building networks that can withstand the demands of both the present and the future require a client-to-cloud strategy that encompasses both software and hardware.

The EX4400-24X is the latest addition to the EX Series portfolio switching in the campus and branch, designed to complement the overall EX4400 line of switches with a 10 gig distribution or small core device that is born in the cloud and fully compatible with Juniper’s advanced campus fabric technology. Like other EX4400 models, the EX4400-24X is optimized for simplicity and scale with native cloud-based operations, while enabling superior user and IT experiences with Juniper’s industry-leading AIOps.

The switches are optimized for Mist AI, allowing IT teams to reduce deployment times with zero-touch provisioning and automated workflows. Mist AI also delivers rapid troubleshooting with full stack event correlation, proactive anomaly detection and self-driving network actions.

In addition, all EX4400 models include important security capabilities such as MACsec AES256 and standards-based microsegmentation using group-based policies (GBP) for the growing needs of IoT devices. They also provide real-time monitoring of flows to protect against ongoing security threats.

The EX4400-24X specifically has a compact footprint with 24 x 10GbE ports, various uplink options (100 GbE, 25 GbE and 10 GbE) and support for up to 10 members in a virtual chassis, making it ideal for enterprise campus distribution deployments and low-density data center top-of-rack environments.

Juniper Professional Services Simplify and Accelerate Deployments

As infrastructure evolves, teams need to evolve with it. The adoption of cloud technologies has forced IT teams to adopt new technologies quickly, leaving organizations vulnerable to mistakes.

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance Deployment Service and Juniper Mist Campus Deployment Service are designed specifically to give customers access to Juniper experts, automation tools and best-practice design methodologies to help improve workflows and reduce the burden on IT teams. The service simplifies and accelerates deployments of EX Series Ethernet switches as well as third-party vendor switches, reduces risk and minimizes downtime. Customers can design large campuses in distributed enterprises, streamline IT operations, reduce mean time to repair (MTTR) and deliver a new generation of experience-first networks with faster onboarding, configuration and management through these Juniper services.

Additionally, customers can enhance their experience and lifecycle management capabilities with Juniper Support Insights. It enables AI-driven support across the Juniper portfolio, providing holistic visibility into the operational health of all Juniper devices in an organization, including EX4400 switches. Included with Juniper Care, the service easily and securely connects Juniper devices to the cloud and provides actionable intelligence via simple, easy-to-use dashboards that can optimize an organization’s network.

A Leader in Wired/Wireless Access

These announcements extend Juniper’s goal to provide experience-first networking to customers of all sizes and across industries – a mission resonating with the networking community. Juniper Networks was recently named a Leader by Gartner, Inc. in the 2022 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure for the third year in a row. In this new report, published in December of 2022, Juniper was positioned, for the second year straight, furthest in “Completeness of Vision,” which evaluates vendors' ability to convincingly articulate current and future market strategy, innovation and product strategy. In addition, Juniper was again positioned highest in “Ability to Execute,” which evaluates vendors on their product/service, market responsiveness and customer experience.

Earlier in the year, Juniper also received the 2022 Gartner^® Peer Insights™ Customers’ Choice distinction in Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure, which recognizes vendors and products rated by end users. Juniper has an overall rating of 4.9 out 5 based on 469 reviews as of December 23, 2022.

Supporting Quotes:

“We anticipate that Juniper’s campus fabric workflow will help us deliver a modern campus network and achieve a level of network automation and self-healing - for both wired and wireless- by utilizing machine learning and AI to assist in diagnosing network-related errors. This will improve user experiences, primarily for students in our managed Halls of Residence but also for IoT style devices on campus, as well as improve network security options, enabling microsegmentation using VXLAN.”

- Alex Israel, Infrastructure Architect at University of Plymouth

“Organizations are actively reimagining their campus environments to provide enhanced security and user experiences. The network will play a significant role delivering both. However, the combination of legacy and modern network architectures creates challenges for operations teams managing and troubleshooting these environments. Fortunately, there are solutions to address many of these issues, such as the Juniper Mist Wired Assurance service, which leverages the newly released campus fabric workflow. This allows any size organization to design, deploy and operate campus switching using group-based policy (GBP) microsegmentation quickly and easily. Plus, Juniper’s new cloud native EX4400-24X distribution switch enables greater operational agility, scale and granular access control security policies. When combined, the Juniper solution can deliver greater operational efficiencies, improved user experiences and enhanced security for the campus.”

- Bob Laliberte, Principal Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group

Additional Resources:

• Product pages
  • EX4400-24X
  • Juniper Mist Wired Assurance
• Blog: Campus Fabric Fundamentals: Simpler, Better, Faster, Stronger
• Blog: Mission Continued: Campus Fabrics Simplified through Mist AI

About Juniper Networks

Juniper Networks is dedicated to dramatically simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Our solutions deliver industry-leading insight, automation, security and AI to drive real business results. We believe that powering connections will bring us closer together while empowering us all to solve the world’s greatest challenges of well-being, sustainability and equality. Additional information can be found at Juniper Networks (www.juniper.net) or connect with Juniper on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Juniper Networks, the Juniper Networks logo, Juniper, Junos, and other trademarks listed here are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Category – enterprise

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