Mission Continued: Campus Fabrics Simplified through Mist AI

Since Juniper Networks’® acquisition of Mist Systems back in 2019, Juniper has consistently been leveraging AIOps and the cloud to simplify Day 0+ enterprise operations, delivering unprecedented agility, scale and performance, as well as the best user experiences for both end users and IT practitioners. By leveraging a common Mist AI™ engine across our entire campus and branch portfolio, we uniquely bring automation, insights and assurance to the Wired, Wireless, indoor location, SD-WAN and security domains for superior user experiences from client to cloud.

These unique capabilities specifically drove a record year for our EX Switch portfolio and AI-driven business. In addition to new marquee Wired Access customers like City of Philadelphia, University of Texas Arlington and Canadian Tire, Juniper was also recognized as a Leader in the 2022 Garter® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN infrastructure for the third year in a row. For the second year in a row, we are the furthest position of any vendor in both Ability to Execute & Completeness of Vision. Plus, in the 2022 Critical Capabilities report for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN, Juniper leads in four of the five use cases.

But when it comes to our wired switching portfolio, we are not resting on our laurels. Today, we’re pleased to announce two exciting additions to this portfolio: a new campus fabric workflow and the latest AI-driven cloud-operated switch, the EX4400-24X! These enhancements make it easier than ever to bring the advanced capabilities of Mist AI and the cloud to more enterprise switching environments.

Campus Fabric Workflow

The campus fabric workflow makes deploying EVPN/VXLAN in the campus simpler than ever before! Powered through the cloud and Mist AI, this new switching solution delivers a seamless, standards-compliant L2/L3 fabric without the deployment headaches and operational costs that traditionally occur in these environments.

Customers can now deploy common standards-based campus fabrics, such as EVPN multihoming, EVPN core/distribution and IP Clos with an easy 3 step process in which they can select their desired topology, assign devices/roles and push configurations.

Check out our live demo at Network Field Day on Jan 18^th, 2023, here: Bringing EVPN and VXLAN to the Campus with Juniper

Juniper’s campus fabric workflow gives customers the ability to deploy at scale and manage with ease, eliminating the deployment challenges that have hampered EVPN/VXLAN deployments in the past. It’s innovative, simple and flexible, delivering an easy way to automate group-based policies (GBP) and microsegmentation for improved security of applications and IoT devices. When coupled with Mist AI, the Juniper solution proactively finds and fixes configuration issues to assure the success of wired fabric deployments.

The campus fabric workflow is available today with the software subscription of Mist Wired Assurance.

Introducing the EX4400-24X Ethernet Switch

The new EX4400-24X Ethernet Switch is the latest addition to the EX Series portfolio. Like other EX4400 models, the EX4400-24X is optimized for simplicity and scale with native cloud-based operations, while enabling the best user and IT experiences with Juniper’s industry-leading AIOps. For example, Mist AI expedites deployment times with zero-touch provisioning and automated workflows, and it delivers rapid troubleshooting with full stack event correlation, proactive anomaly detection and self-driving network actions.

The EX4400-24X specifically has a compact footprint with 24 x 10GbE ports, various uplink module options (100 GbE, 25 GbE and 10GbE) and can support 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.

The EX4400 line of switches include important security capabilities such as MACsec AES256 and standards-based microsegmentation using group-based policies (GBP) for growing needs of IoT devices. And they provide real-time monitoring of flows to protect against ongoing security threats.

As with other “born in the cloud” EX switches, the EX4400-24X switch transmits rich telemetry to the Mist cloud, enabling actionable client-level insights in real time—simplifying Day 0-2+ IT operations when operated with Wired Assurance, Marvis and Mist AI.

Features include:

24×1/10GbaseX

2x100GbE/40GbE uplinks/virtual chassis (HGoE)

Common EX4400 uplink modules, including:

4x25G MACsec AES256
4x10G non-MACsec
1x100G MACsec AES256

Virtual Chassis Capabilities: Up to 10-member virtual chassis, high gig over ethernet.

MACsec AES256 on all ports: MACsec ready ports.

Campus Fabric EVPN/VXLAN: The EX4400-24X has EVPN/VXLAN capabilities, giving network architects the ability to deploy scalable and flexible EVPN/VXLAN campus fabrics with a just few clicks in the Mist dashboard.

Microsegmentation via GBP: Standards-based microsegmentation based on GBP gives customers the ability to build granular access control security policies.

Flow-based Telemetry: With the EX4400-24X series of switches, traffic flows can be monitored in real-time to detect anomalies with flow-based telemetry, thus protecting against security threats.

Cloud LED & Phone Home Client: Provides easy onboarding and clear visibility to device status

Juniper Professional Services Simplify and Accelerate Deployments

Mist AI inherently simplifies the design and deployment of the network. But for customers who need that extra help, Juniper offers professional services to shorten the time-to-value of your network. Two offerings are available: the Wired Assurance Deployment Service and Campus Deployment Service. Using best practices, Juniper experts build a solid design, deploy the network glitch-free and start production.

Additionally, Juniper Support Insights enhances the customer support experience and improves lifecycle management capabilities. It enables AI-driven support across the Juniper portfolio, providing holistic visibility into the operational health of all devices. Included with Juniper Care, the service easily and securely connects Juniper devices to the cloud and provides actionable intelligence with simple, easy-to-use dashboards that optimize the network.

The Mist AI Journey

These new AI-driven product additions expedite time-to-service and minimize troubleshooting costs, while also bringing new scale, performance and security to campus networks. We’re constantly evolving Juniper’s award-winning AI-driven enterprise portfolio to keep pace with our customers’ and partners’ needs, and we’re especially excited about these latest enhancements to our wired switching solution.