Juniper Networks Applies Node Slicing to Create Virtual Networks

In a move that borrows a page from the server virtualization playbook, Juniper Networks today unveiled a node-slicing capability to its router software that makes it possible for IT organizations to virtualize network services.

Donyel Jones-Williams, director of service provider portfolio marketing for Juniper Networks, says that as part of a Cloud-Grade Networking portfolio of networking equipment and services, Juniper Networks is also moving to adopt a single router chassis through which multiple variations aimed at different networking scenarios will be offered.

In addition, Juniper Networks announced it is adding support for Source Packet Routing in Networking (SPRING) to its SDN along with a new real-time stream telemetry capability enabled by a Junos Telemetry Interface (JTI). That latter capability can be employed to provide real-time traffic visualization, trending and optimizing via a single click of a button.

In general, Jones-Williams says, Juniper Networks is moving to make networks more responsive to rapidly changing demands for network bandwidth. To achieve that goal, JunOS software now includes a JunOS Node Slicing capability that allows multiple network services to share the same network underlay while maintaining isolation of network services.

“The cloud made computing elastic,” says Jones-Williams. “We’re trying to bring that same level of agility to the network.”

The degree to which IT organizations can or want to enable multiple network services to share the same networking infrastructure remains to be seen. But there is a need to be able to manage enterprise networks at much higher levels of abstraction. After all, it shouldn’t take two weeks or more to provision a network service when the virtual machine that invokes it can be spun in less than two minutes.