Fueled by increased revenue across its routing, switching, enterprise, and service provider sectors, Juniper Networks announced a highly profitable third quarter Thursday afternoon.

Sunnyvale, California-based Juniper posted a profit of $198 million, or 51 cents a share, compared to $103.6 million, or 23 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Non-GAAP net income increased to 57 cents a share from 36 cents per share a year ago.

Juniper’s revenue grew 11 percent to $1.25 billion, which exceeded Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski’s estimate of $1.24 billion.

Routing revenue increased 13 percent year-over-year to $604.4 million while switching revenue grew 30 percent to $201.4 million.

While security revenue was down 1 percent to $119.6 million, it still exceeded Goldman Sachs’ estimate of $111 million. With security, Juniper saw its second consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth excluding Junos Pulse.

Juniper’s enterprise division reported revenues of $444.3 million, which was a marked increase from $384.4 million a year ago. The service provider sector grew its revenues from $741.5 million in last year’s third quarter to $804.3 million in the quarter that ended Sept. 30.

“Notably, this quarter we saw strong performance within our telecom and targeted enterprise vertical,” said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim during yesterday's conference call. “Our security business is showing early strength in the high-end SRX with cloud and service provider customers.”

Rahim was particularly proud of AT&T selecting Juniper Networks‘ Contrail Networking as part of its cloud-based SDN network build out. Among Juniper’s top customers in the quarter, four of the top 10 were cloud or cable providers. Rahim said that consolidation in the cable operator industry would make that sector “lumpy” in the short term, but Juniper’s long-term prospects there were good.

Also in the third quarter, Juniper said it bought back about $50 million in stock and paid out $36 million in dividends after announcing last year it would return $1.4 billion to shareholders by the end of next year. To date, Juniper has spent approximately $3.5 billion on dividends and share buybacks.

In the current fourth quarter, Juniper expects to make between 57 cents and 60 cents a share on projected revenues of $1.27 billion to $1.31 billion. Goldman Sachs weighed in at $1.26 billion and 57 cents per share.

Quotes taken from the Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call.