'I've had customers put things on hold right now, and not just the Juniper side but both sides,' Forrester's Andre Kindness said.

“It's moving from I don't want to tell the network exactly what to do, I want to tell it what I want to achieve," Ericsson's Gabriel Foglander said.

The Department of Justice's scrutiny of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proposed $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks likely stems from two critical issues.

Is networking set to rebound?

The company has signed up more than 400 network-as-a-service customers over the past year, which CEO Kate Johnson noted was “a good start for sure.”

"We'll probably see the opening potentially for the fixed-wireless access and for satellite to play in these broadband spaces,” Cisco's Robin Olds said

AvidThink's Roy Chua explained that while “certification can be helpful,” the current process should not be viewed as an absolute.

"We don't have a gun to our head,” Boost Mobile CTO Eben Albertyn said of the carrier's ability to swap software vendors.

A recent enterprise survey and report from William Blair found “Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware continued to be disruptive for partners and customers alike."

“The general rule that we have from software development teams are, if it can be done twice manually, it's going to get automated," Comcast's Elad Nafshi said.

Broadcom also launched a pair of high-end VeloCloud SD-WAN edge devices that are targeted at high-scale and artificial intelligence needs.

Network transformation needs more than internal strategy, it also needs an ecosystem of external collaborators that align with your vision.

Arm and Github are integrating their platforms through a new GitHub Copilot extension.

That attentiveness could be critical to Broadcom maintaining positive sentiment from its customers, many of whom are suffering through sticker shock.

Analysts predict the private 5G market could finally be gaining its legs.

Timing of that API-fueled edge revolution remains in question.

An increasing number of enterprises are realizing that their legacy networking systems are too old and need replacement.

Self-healing artificial intelligence empowers networks to adapt, optimize, and defend themselves autonomously.

Why network-as-a-service providers are better positioned to meet enterprise cloudification needs when transitioning from on-premises to cloud-based networking.

Analysys Mason's Gorkem Yigit noted that while the multicloud networking market “is expanding, it has lost some of the initial momentum.”

Verizon and T-Mobile US also initiated new connection goals that show continued consumer and enterprise growth expectations

Ericsson is riding some telecom momentum, while Nokia continues to struggle in that space and is looking at alternative verticals to drive future growth.

Gartner noted that the top seven SD-WAN vendors accounted for two-thirds of the market.

Gartner noted that VMware concerns will result in half of enterprises over the next couple of years initiating plans for an alternative vendor.