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Juniper bags AARNet fatter pipes and SDN

MX routers for 100 Gbps-plus backbones

Juniper has given an elbow to Cisco's ribs down under, nabbing a key AARNet upgrade contract in the long-time Borg-friendly network.

The research network, whose history stretches back to the very beginnings of the Internet in Australia, is currently planning its AARNet 4 upgrade, which will deliver a 30-fold expansion in capacity over AARNet 3.

As well as expanding capacity, the Juniper deployment will support the company's SDN architecture, making the new network fully buzzword-compliant.

Juniper's MX Series 3D routers will provide 100 Gbps Ethernet backbone connections, and allow backbone routes to be built out of multiple 100 Gbps Ethernet links. AARNet 3 has single 10 Gbps Ethernet backbone links. AARNet's announcement also cites the MX's low latency as a key characteristic.

MPLS and VPLS (Virtual private LAN services) will be implemented in the network, for greater resiliency and traffic control, and to support Layer 3 VPN services.

The network will also be deploying hundreds of Juniper EX4550 switches as the CPE for university members, supporting multiple gigabit and 10 Gbps Ethernet access ports and up to 40 Gbps as the POP uplink.

AARNet says its eight-year-old AARNet 3 network has undergone a doubling of traffic every two years, as more universities have come online and as scientists have found ways to eternally expand the size of datasets they work with. ®

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