Juniper Expands MX

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced the expansion of its Carrier Ethernet portfolio with new platforms, system hardware and software enhancements designed to enable the efficient and cost-effective deployment of Ethernet networks and services. With the new MX240 and MX480 Ethernet Services Routers, the MX-series now delivers industry-leading performance and scale in a range of compact, efficient form factors. Juniper also announced a suite of new Dense Port Concentrator (DPC) cards that maximize MX-series system flexibility, enabling providers to drive new sources of revenue while reducing cost and complexity.

"The MX240 and 480 extend the high-performance and capacity of the MX960 to compact form factors that fit a broad range of applications," said Raj Patel, vice president of network, system and storage engineering at Yahoo!. "We are pleased to see Juniper expanding its MX-series portfolio with this announcement." The MX-series leverages the proven JUNOS software as its operating system, which now delivers many scalable Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) innovations and new Layer 2 operations, administration and management (OAM) capabilities and features, in addition to full Layer 2 switching. The powerful combination of these next-generation hardware platforms with JUNOS improve the performance and scalability of Carrier Ethernet, while also simplifying the deployment, provisioning and management of new services.

Breakthrough Carrier Ethernet Performance and ScaleThe new MX240 delivers 240 Gbps of switching or routing capacity in a compact 5 rack unit (RU) form factor; the MX480 features 480 Gbps of capacity in an 8 RU size. The platforms can simultaneously support up to 120 and 240 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, respectively, which is more than twice the capacity of similarly-sized Carrier Ethernet platforms. Because the MX-series can support more than twice as many interfaces per chassis, customers can increase the energy efficiency of their networks, reducing power, space and cooling costs by as much as 60 percent. Both platforms scale to support over 1 million MAC addresses–15 times more than the closest currently available competitive offering–which enables providers to overcome one of the major challenges associated with scaling Ethernet to support large service provider deployments.

In combination with the MX960, the new platforms further strengthen Juniper's expanding position in the multi-billion-dollar Ethernet market, and offer service providers a greater degree of choice and flexibility. Synergy Research is forecasting Carrier Ethernet Equipment revenue to increase to over $7 billion by 2011 with a CAGR of 17 percent.

"Ethernet has clearly become the technology of choice for service providers who are increasing bandwidth to support new applications, such as digital media, while also needing to reduce costs," said Ray Mota, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. "With bandwidth-intensive applications transforming network architectures at the edge, Juniper has addressed this opportunity with the introduction of the MX240 and MX480. With the same functionality as the MX960, but in a smaller form factor, they are giving service providers more cost-effective choices to meet their specific capacity requirements."

Juniper Networks Inc. (NYSE: JNPR)