From business Ethernet and mobile transport to edge AI and regional content aggregation, metro networks now carry more diverse and demanding workloads than ever. That said, traditional designs can’t meet the level of scale, agility, or service differentiation required to support this new generation of traffic. Juniper’s Metro as a Service (MaaS) addresses this challenge head-on, and we’re thrilled to announce it’s available now.
Developed through close collaboration with Iometrix and aligned with Carrier Ethernet standards established by the Mplify Alliance (formerly MEF), MaaS is an extensively tested, standards-conformant Juniper Validated Design (JVD) that enables the coexistence of legacy services with modern cloud and AI era use cases—within a unified metro architecture.
Our MaaS offering is more than a design concept—it’s the industry’s first vendor-executed validation of MEF 3.0 conformity across a cloud metro architecture, verified through thousands of end-to-end test cases. As a JVD, it provides a comprehensive, turnkey blueprint for building and operating next-generation metro networks with confidence.
The solution reflects our ongoing innovation in metro networking while building on the capabilities of our latest-generation ACX and MX platforms. With the design fully validated, operators can begin realizing the operational benefits of MaaS immediately.
Inside the solution
The Metro as a Service JVD is our most rigorously tested and deployment-ready metro solution to date, offering service providers and large network operators standards-conformant blueprints for building MEF 3.0-qualified network architectures. It provides a clear path to evolve legacy designs and complex operations, enabling operators to confidently deliver differentiated, modern services while supporting the full spectrum of legacy, cloud, and AI era applications.
Our solutions feature a dual-topology, multidomain approach, combining multi-ring access with a spine-and-leaf metro fabric to support a broad range of SR-MPLS-based services—EVPN, L2VPN, L3VPN, and others—with intelligent service enforcement. And because it’s based on modular, extensible Juniper MX and ACX platforms, operators can build a network architecture spanning access, edge, and aggregation using the same consistent infrastructure and operations.
Within the JVD, operators will find a diverse portfolio of production-ready carrier services, including nearly 20 validated service scenarios such as EVPN, BGP-VPLS, L2Circuit, and others. The solution can support dense, mixed L2 metro environments and is extensible for emerging use cases like high-bandwidth edge computing and AI/ML inference. Using the MaaS JVD, operators gain:
- A fully qualified MEF 3.0 metro architecture, validated end-to-end using the same testing methodology that operators use to qualify their own offerings
- A controller-agnostic, scale-out metro fabric that supports both legacy and modern services
- Lightweight yet sophisticated traffic engineering with the ability to tag service types with “colors” and use color-aware steering across preferred and fallback paths to deliver guaranteed quality and reliability under service-level agreements (SLAs)
- Broad support for emerging services like edge AI inferencing and future-ready enterprise VPNs
- Pre-validated configuration templates and automation-ready blueprints for key deployment scenarios such as provisioning EVPN services and implementing traffic steering policies across AS boundaries—significantly reducing deployment timelines
Together, these capabilities establish MaaS as a foundation for delivering differentiated metro services at scale.
Validating the solution
The MaaS JVD builds on years of Juniper metro innovation, real-world deployment experience, and our commitment to open standards. It evolves the well-established and proven framework of our Metro Ethernet Business Services JVD, enhancing it to meet the demands of distributed, cloud-scale, and AI-driven service environments—supporting modern applications and workloads across the edge.
To validate the solution, we collaborated with Iometrix via its “Lab in the Sky” testing platform. We executed more than 12,000 service test cases, including both mandatory and conditional MEF 3.0 tests for E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, and Access E-Line in a realistic, production-like network environment. We followed the same methodology service providers use to qualify their own metro services. Rather than validating individual devices, Juniper extended MEF 3.0 testing across the end-to-end metro interdomain architecture, including access, aggregation, core, and edge. This approach ensures the MaaS solution aligns with real-world service delivery models and enables Mplify conformance across the entire network.
The resulting design is more than a lab exercise or white paper. It’s a holistic, production-grade qualification that sets a new industry benchmark as the first vendor-driven Carrier Ethernet MEF 3.0 validation of a cloud metro architecture. The solution empowers operators to deploy with confidence, minimize integration risk, and accelerate time to market.
Start your metro transformation
The Metro as a Service JVD is already seeing enthusiastic reception from operators seeking to modernize their metro edge and aggregation networks. However, the range of potential use cases extends much further, including:
- Wholesale operators and neutral hosts delivering business connectivity services
- Large enterprises and government agencies building private metro domains or distributed campuses
- Cloud and content providers investing in edge AI transport or regional service aggregation
All these use cases, and many others, can benefit from the flexibility and operational efficiency of our MaaS solution. Backed by a thoroughly tested, deployment-ready design, MaaS helps reduce risk and accelerate time-to-value.
Whether you’re seeking to boost capacity, optimize traffic engineering, modernize network operations, or enable emerging AI-native services at the edge, the MaaS JVD provides a proven foundation to get started.
What can you expect? Faster time to market with a pre-validated, Mplify-conformant solution. Seamless interoperability with other standards-aligned systems gives you broad deployment flexibility for both greenfield and brownfield network environments. In addition, you’ll enjoy a future-ready metro network built to support the next wave of 5G, AI, and IoT workloads.
Dig deeper into the solution
For more details about the MaaS solution, including solution architecture, validation results, configuration guidance, and real-world deployment examples, explore the full Juniper MaaS JVD or contact your Juniper representative.
