Juniper takes its Ethernet gear to the edge

Juniper Networks today introduced half- and quarter-sized versions of the core Ethernet router it brought to market earlier this year, hoping to compete more directly in Ethernet edge and metro markets.

The new MX480 Ethernet Services Router, available since August, offers 480 Gb/s of capacity (240 Gb/s in, 240 Gb/s out) in an eight-rack-unit box. And the MX240, which begins shipping in next year’s first quarter, offers 240 Gb/s of capacity (120 Gb/s each way) in a five-rack-unit box. Like their larger predecessor, the MX960, each of the new products is capable of managing up to 1 million MAC addresses, Juniper said.

Juniper began shipping its first MX product, the MX960, in March, with 960 Gb/s of capacity (480 Gb/s in, 480 Gb/s out). The vendor unveiled the MX960 nearly a year ago after seeing Alcatel-Lucent use cost-effective Ethernet aggregation to quickly gain market share in the multiservice edge networking space. Rather than introduce an Ethernet edge product, however, Juniper started in the core in keeping with its philosophy that market penetration begins in the core and moves downstream from there. In its first full quarter of availability, the 960 pulled in more than $10 million in revenue, Juniper said.

“The 960 came out first due to customer demand,” said David Boland, product marketing manager for Juniper. “Larger customers were asking for a larger chassis first.”

"We also believe AT&T is trialing the MX family, and Juniper is likely to win some business with this account for 2008," UBS Investment Research analysts said in a note issued Monday.

Also today, Juniper announced the addition of traditional Ethernet features to its Junos operating system (OS), such as spanning tree and the ability to learn MAC addresses and store them in hardware. The new version of the OS, which began shipping last month, is meant to allow carriers to configure their MX routers more fully as Layer 2 Ethernet switches. Customers of the 960 have so far deployed it in Layer 3 configurations, Juniper said.

“The chassis and common equipment are agnostic as to what layer it is — Layer 2 or Layer 3,” Boland said. “The intelligence fits on the line cards. That’s where the routing tables or the MAC address tables are.”

Juniper also introduced two new line cards for its MX routers today. In addition to the already available DPC-R line card, which can be configured for Layer 2 switching or Layer 3 routing, the new DPC-X, available now, is cost-optimized for metro Ethernet transport with high-density 1 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s configurations for access aggregation. The DPC-EQ, unveiled today but not available until November, includes bandwidth reservation and quality of service controls for business users; each card supports up to 64,000 virtual LANs.  

“[The DPC-X] is Layer 2 plus MPLS,” Boland said. “Layer 2, Layer 2.5.”

With the new Ethernet gear, Juniper reiterated that it has not yet announced support for provider backbone transport, an Ethernet-based transport technology championed by Nortel Networks and others in recent months.