Data center operator 21Vianet this week announced plans to deploy Juniper Networks’ MX-series Universal Routing Platform to support growing internet traffic demands in the Chinese market.

21Vianet is one of the largest carrier-neutral internet data center providers in mainland China with more than 50 data centers in 20 cities, amounting to over 51,000 network cabinets. With the company anticipating a double-digit increase in internet traffic each year, the operator has expanded its relationship with Juniper to address this “explosive growth.”

“21Vianet has rapidly established itself among the largest and most influential service providers within the [internet data center] industry in China,” said Norman Lam, VP and managing director, China at Juniper Networks.

Juniper’s MX routers are available in a wide variety of port speeds and configurations including virtualized routing appliances. More recent updates have even extended containerized security functionality to Juniper's routing portfolio.

In addition to increasing the capacity of 21Vianet’s network, Juniper’s MX-series routers offer support for segment routing traffic engineering (SR-TE) protocols. These protocols helped to improve overall network efficiency through the automation of traffic management, Juniper claims.

Additionally, 21Vianet is implementing Ethernet VPN over MPLS and VXLAN protocols to support application mobility and allow network administrators to migrate applications within and between data centers more easily.

Junipers MX routers have long been a mainstay of network operators deployed by Verizon and others for more than a decade.