At the recent SuperComputing Conference (SC19) in Denver, Colorado, Juniper Networks successfully delivered a 400GbE link from the show floor in Denver to StarLight, an advanced networking facility located at the Chicago campus of Northwestern University. StarLight was created to support large-scale next generation information technology for research and education, providing Northwestern with unprecedented access to resources around the world. Thanks to StarLight, these research and education communities now have powerful, advanced capabilities that innovatively integrate new designs, technologies and techniques. Collectively, these new methods have provided a powerful new set of integrated tools for educators and researchers that are already beginning to enable a wide range of advanced science and engineering applications, programs and interdisciplinary activities.
The Technology
To validate the 400GbE configuration between Denver NOC (Network Operations Center) and StarLight at SC19, Juniper’s QFX5220-32CD switch was deployed.
HostA —QX5220 —PTX10003 —Ciena 2x200G Wave — PTX1003 —- HostB
Denver Chicago
As a result, Juniper Networks successfully delivered 400Gbps Ethernet live traffic over 1,300 miles (2.092 km) in a trial conducted in conjunction with SCinet, the SuperComputing Conference’s high-capacity network. The QFX5220-32CD was extremely valuable not only in providing interconnection, but also in troubleshooting interconnection via 400G-FR4 (Fiber Reach 4) Optical Transceivers to the PTX10003 and surrounding devices. Additionally, Juniper’s QFX5220-32CD switch successfully interoperated with switches from three different vendors via 400G-FR4/ Active Optical Cable (AOC)/Direct Attached Copper (DAC) connectivity.
Together, our high-performance networking experts and a team of volunteers built the fastest, most powerful 400GbE network in the world for the SC19 Conference. This network enabled SCinet to offer an unprecedented amount of bandwidth — 4.22 terabits per second for SC19 — within the conference exhibit hall, connecting the Colorado Convention Center to the broader internet. Members of the High Performance Computing (HPC) community participating at the SC19 Conference were able to demonstrate the advanced computing resources of their home institutions and showcase the revolutionary applications and experiments, thanks to the incredible network built by key contributions from Juniper Networks. QFX5220-32CD running Junos® OS Evolved provided attendees and visitors the same JunOS experience provided by the rest of the Juniper infrastructure along with the modularity, openness and programmability required for the new cloud era.
In addition, Juniper Networks demonstrated a QFX5220-32CD switch in the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) Booth at SC19. NICT ran traffic from their Hong Kong location to the QFX5220-32CD across a 400GbE AOC connected to a Cisco Nexus switch and then onward to their Europe location. Juniper’s QFX5220-32CD successfully interoperated with the Cisco Nexus 3432D-S switch on a 400GbE link.
This is not the first time that QFX5220-32CD has excelled in its 400GbE capability and interoperability demonstration. The QFX5220-32CD also interoperated with a Cisco Nexus switch at the 2019 Sapporo Snowfest, passing 8K live-video traffic across a layer-2 configuration setup in Hokkaido, Japan. The platform also won two awards at Interop Tokyo 2019. And as if that wasn’t enough, our switch continues to turn the heads of customers belonging to major cloud provider and research education segments.
“This field trial represents a significant milestone in realizing the promise of 400GbE’s high- capacity, next-gen networks. Juniper Networks has a long history of leading the industry in fast and simplified networking. By delivering cutting-edge innovations in 400GbE networks, we are laying the foundation for the fastest and most advanced networks in the world,” stated Andy Athreya, Chief Development Officer at Juniper Networks.
At Juniper, we look forward to attending SC20 in Atlanta, GA later this year.
