Verizon kicked off an extensive upgrade to its fiber core packet network that will use Juniper Networks equipment to quadruple network performance with a path toward future growth while also reducing resource requirements. The carrier tied the upgrade to surging network demands coming from 5G-based wireless and fixed-line services.

The upgrade will see Verizon replace its legacy 100 Gb/s packet network routers with Juniper’s latest PTX10000-series of modular routers. These use Juniper’s Express silicon that will eventually include the Express 5 platform Juniper introduced earlier this year. The Express 5 silicon can support up to 28.8 Tb/s of throughput, or the equivalent of 36, 800 Gb/s interfaces. This represents a 45% improvement in power efficiency over previous chipsets.

The packet optical devices place data packets directly onto and receive them from an optical transport network. They are placed onto that network in what Juniper describes as an “optical transport envelope” that allows that data to bypass “much of the other external networking equipment needed to groom or otherwise process electrical or optical signals originating on the router.”

This process reduces the chance of data corruption and allows for closer monitoring of that data.

Kevin Smith, VP of planning at Verizon, said the PTX10000-series update will be replacing its legacy Juniper PTX3000 and PTX5000 routers that it deployed a decade ago. That legacy equipment tops out at 100 Gb/s throughput.

“The kind of traffic that is on this network is all of our public and private traffic, global FiOS traffic, all of our wireless traffic, as well as our former XO [Communications] network,” Smith said. “As we look ahead and we see both from an infrastructure as well as a customer perspective, a lot for 200-gig and 400-gig for both those places, and our current platform just can’t support that level of services.”

As an example, Smith pointed to Verizon’s recent claim of a 249% increase in data usage on the carrier’s spectrum-rich 5G Ultra Broadband network.

Sally Bament, VP of cloud and service provider marketing at Juniper Networks, said those boxes will include the vendor’s four-slot, eight-slot, and 16-slot chassis housing Juniper’s line cards. Those boxes are more power-dense with a footprint half the size of the existing equipment. This results in each box requiring less power, which drives down power usage per gigabyte and the cost per gigabyte to operate.

Smith added that Verizon expects a 10-times improvement in total throughput with the Express 5 silicon and new chassis footprint.

“With the density of these new shells, the horsepower they provide, it allows us to put a single node, a single box in more locations, but overall fewer boxes,” Smith said of that flexibility, adding that it also supports greater redundancy in the network.

“With minimum three-way diversity out of all of our sites, this makes our network uber-resilient in terms of how it operates,” Smith said. “You think about future protocols and failovers and all sorts of closed-loop automation, it just adds a whole next level of reliability.”

Smith said the upgrades are just getting started and that it will take a couple of years to complete. This will involve overlaying the new equipment into the same locations as the current deployment as well as installing physically smaller options into more edge locations.

That legacy equipment will continue to operate for some time after the new network is turned on as it will need to continue supporting the large number of network elements that will eventually be migrated to the new core.

Smith also explained that the new equipment is upgradeable to support higher-performing optical protocols like 800 Gb/s and 1 Tb/s per-port optical technology. The current 400 Gb/s move can manage up to 115 Tb/s of data, which the carrier expects to meet network demands through 2032. Updating to 800 Gb/s or 1 Tb/s will increase support to 230 Tb/s of data.