In today’s fast-paced digital world, maintaining optimal network performance is paramount. Juniper Networks is at the forefront of this mission, continually enhancing its enterprise AI plans to help customers proactively spot and fix WAN routing, SD-WAN, and SASE problems. These enhancements are designed to fortify Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform, announced earlier this year, which integrates Juniper’s wired, wireless, data center, campus, and branch networking products into one cohesive management system.
The Challenge of Network Management
Managing complex network environments can be daunting, particularly with the increasing dependence on SD-WAN and other WAN technologies. Issues such as bandwidth congestion, traffic misrouting, and security threats can significantly impact performance and user experience. Traditional troubleshooting methods are often time-consuming and reactive, leading to prolonged downtime and inefficiency.
The Solution: AI-Native Networking Platform
Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform addresses these challenges by leveraging advanced AI to gather telemetry and user state data from various network components like routers, switches, access points, firewalls, and applications. This data is then analyzed to provide actionable insights and automated workflows for proactive issue detection and resolution.
At the heart of this platform are Juniper’s cloud-based Mist AI and Marvis Virtual Network Assistant (VNA) technologies. These tools can detect and describe countless network problems, offering a robust foundation for maintaining optimal network performance.
Key Features and Benefits
Marvis Minis: Proactive Network Simulation
One of the standout features of the AI platform is Marvis Minis. These software agents simulate end-user, device, and application traffic to learn the network configuration and continuously feed data back into the Mist AI engine. By setting up a digital twin of a customer’s network environment, Marvis Minis can simulate and test user connections, validate network configurations, and detect problems without requiring additional hardware.
SD-WAN Speed Tests
Juniper has now added support for running SD-WAN speed tests via Marvis Minis. This feature allows customers to verify link speeds and take proactive actions if problems are detected. According to Jeff Aaron, vice president of product marketing, “Marvis Minis for SD-WAN adds and performs always-on, automated speed tests to ensure that the network is delivering as promised—even if users aren’t present.”
Dynamic Packet Capture
Another new feature, Dynamic Packet Capture, automatically performs packet captures when error events occur. This provides operators with detailed visibility for troubleshooting, eliminating the need to reproduce issues or track down needle-in-a-haystack problems.
Application Routing Insights
For SD-WAN customers, Application Routing Insights offer a user-friendly visualization of the traffic traversing the SD-WAN. This enables network operators to identify bandwidth-intensive applications and ensure that all traffic is routed correctly. These enhancements provide greater visibility into SD-WAN performance, reduce troubleshooting time, and enable reliable network performance.
Additional Enhancements
WAN Congestion Monitoring
The new WAN Congestion service level expectations (SLE) feature alerts IT teams to network interface utilization issues. “The new congestion monitoring SLE informs operators of network interface utilization and alerts them if interfaces are being over-utilized and causing poor user experiences,” Aaron stated.
Security Insights Mist Dashboard
Juniper is also introducing a new security insights Mist dashboard within its Premium Analytics product. This dashboard provides visibility into security events, persona-based policy activation, and threat responses. “This increased visibility provides actionable intelligence to security teams, enabling them to quickly identify incidents and respond to threats in real-time,” Aaron stated. Integrated insights and an auditing dashboard simplify workflows and improve efficiency and agility while reducing operating costs.
Routing Assurance Service
Juniper is bringing its Routing Assurance service under the Mist AI umbrella. With Juniper Mist Routing Assurance, businesses can describe customizable service levels that let administrators monitor, analyze, and resolve issues and anomalies swiftly across connected WAN Edge and peering locations for Juniper’s edge MX and ACX routing products, including MX204, MX304, and ACX7024 models.
Conclusion
Juniper’s latest AI-driven enhancements deliver greater visibility, proactive troubleshooting, and improved performance for SD-WAN and WAN routing. These advances are part of Juniper’s broader strategy to leverage AI for optimizing network operations and reducing operating costs.
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