Management of on-premises networks in recent years has increasingly been done from the cloud.

Juniper Networks is looking to push even more campus network management to the cloud, with a little help from artificial intelligence (AI). Juniper has been steadily adding AI capabilities into its networking gear since at least 2019, when the company acquired Mist AI for $405 million. Over the last several years Juniper has been extending and integrating the Mist AI technology across its portfolio in an effort to make networks smarter and more autonomous.

Now in March 2023, Juniper is using AI to help enable a new cloud hosted campus network workflow. The goal is to make it easier for campus network administrators to deploy and operate, with AI assisted configuration and security capabilities. Alongside the new fabric workflow, Juniper is also extending its EX switch portfolio, with the EX4400-24X distribution switch that is designed to help support the Mist AI powered capabilities.

"Given the complexity associated with modern IT environments, It is always good to see vendors coming out with solutions that drive operational efficiency," Bob Laliberte, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group told SDxCentral. "Often organizations are wary of deploying fabrics because of the initial setup and configuration and lack of skilled resources to do so."

The Challenges of Modern Campus  Networks

Modern campus IT networks are facing a barrage of ongoing challenges.

Laliberte commented that many organizations are reimagining their campus environments today to better support hybrid work. This means transitioning from a few dedicated video rooms to ensuring anyone can use voice and video collaboration tools from any location in the environment. Often this may require new deployments with WiFi 6/6E and the corresponding upgraded wired network to support the new environment. Another area campus networks need to address in Laliberte's view is supporting IoT devices to enhance sustainability and security

"The network needs to be able to support all that and provide as good or better experience as when working from home," Laliberte said.

Tim Zimmerman, VP Analyst at Gartner also sees the overall complexity inherent in networks today as being a challenge. Zimmerman commented that 97% of enterprises have a concern when adopting IoT at the edge of their enterprise network, according to a Gartner survey.

"When asked about challenges facing their IoT and edge projects, respondents noted that complexity was the number one concern," Zimmerman told SDxCentral. "IT administrators must be able to identify, secure and manage all devices connecting to the enterprise network."

How Juniper Brings AIOps to the Campus Network

Reducing complexity through the use of AIops to solve campus fabric challenges is the goal for Juniper.

The campus fabric workflow that Juniper has launched is being made available as a new feature that is now available to all Juniper Mist Wired Assurance customers. Wired Assurance is part of the Mist AI cloud and is the cloud-hosted subscription service that brings Juniper’s Mist AIOps solution to Juniper wired/switching customers.

[caption id="attachment_127694" align="alignnone" width="569"] Juniper says the EX4400-24X switch uses streaming telemetry to send real-time data to the Mist AI cloud.   (Credit: Juniper Networks)[/caption]

"Campus fabrics are not a new concept, but designing and deploying these fabrics was complex, error-prone and difficult to update and maintain," Christian Gilby, Senior Director of Product Marketing, AI-driven Enterprise at Juniper told SDxCentral.

In particular one area of complexity is with EVPN-VXLAN, which is an open, standards-based protocol that’s heavily used by cloud-scale data centers. EVPN-VXLAN is functionally a network overlay that can be used on top of an existing physical network infrastructure. Gilby said that the new campus fabric workflow helps organizations to deploy EVPN-VXLAN-based campus fabrics.

"Previously customers would have to manually deploy these complex EVPN-VXLAN campus fabrics," Gilby said. "This new workflow takes that effort from days and even weeks down to minutes."

Gilby explained that EVPN-VXLAN helps IT teams extend VLANs across buildings and geographies which allows them to use the same set policies for accessing resources. For example a school of engineering may have a test lab several miles from the main college. Network users have the same access experience at all locations. IT teams also have consistent VLANs regardless of location, simplifying the management of policies for users and devices including IoT.

"This allows IT teams to better secure the growing attack surface, especially with more IoT devices," he said.

Hardware Still Matters, Even in the Cloud

As part of its new campus workflow, Juniper also launched its EX4400-24X switch.

Gilby noted that the EX4400 switching portfolio employs streaming telemetry allowing it to send real time data to the Mist AI cloud for multiple switch states and metrics.

"This rich data is fuel for the AI engine, feeding the various algorithms that drive AIOps in Wired Assurance," Gilby said.

Gartner analyst Zimmerman also has a positive view of the new switch. Zimmerman commented that the convergence of line of business and facilities management requirements onto the enterprise has continued to increase the number of clients and performance needed to address end user application needs.

"The ability for the EX4400-24X to provide up to 10 Gig while leveraging Mist AI to automate the provisioning process, as well as optimizing the performance is a good fit for in campus distribution environments and low-density top of rack requirements in data centers," Zimmerman said.