Juniper unveils mobile network core products

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 February 2011 10:28

Business IT - Networking

Juniper Networks has unveiled, under the banner of MobileNext, a range of products for the core of packet based mobile networks, billing them as the industry's first open mobile core: because they all run its Junos operating system which has an open application programming interface, Junos Space.

Tim Nagy, systems engineer, Juniper Networks Australia, told ExchangeDaily "What we have announced is a suite of products branded MobileNext that perform the functions of the standard elements [of a mobile core network] with an open architecture and what we call breakthrough 'Any G' performance and scale.

"If an operator were to do these functions on a MobileNext product they would get about twice the session rate, eight times the setup rate - how many new subscribers you can sign on every second and ten times the throughput - and throughput is key because it is going through the roof right now with all the smartphones out there."

Several of the MobileNext products announced at Mobile World Congress are implemented as software on Juniper's MX 3D router, launched in late 2009, and the levels of performance Nagy mentioned are similar to those claimed for the MX 3D when it was launched, which Juniper attributed to its core, Junos Trio chipset.

According to Juniper the Trio chipset is able to scale along the dimensions of bandwidth, subscribers and services simultaneously (hence 3D) rather than compromising performance on one parameter for the sake of others.

Nagy said: "This announcement is about providing scale that has not previously been available'¦If an operator were to put in a MobileNext broadband gateway they could reduce total cost of ownership by 56 percent typically by using fewer routers to achieve the same throughput."

Juniper has announced four products in the MobileNext family:
- MobileNext Broadband Gateway, providing GGSN and PDN/Serving Gateway functions of a mobile core network in one platform;
- Mobile Control Gateway, providing SGSN and MME functions for 2G/3G and LTE mobile packet cores;
- Service Delivery Gateway, which provides functions such as carrier grade NAT, firewall, traffic direct for offload and video optimisation;
- The MobileNext Policy Manager.

Juniper also announced that it would resell technology from Bridgewater systems to provide key functions of the MobileNext product range.

All except the MobileNext control gateway are different software loads on the MX 3D. The control gateway is based on a different hardware platform, which is yet to be announced, Nagy said.

Juniper foreshadowed the MobileNext products under the banner of 'Project Falcon' in late 2009  and said that, with MobileNext, it was "delivering on Project Falcon." However Nagy said that these announcement were only the first in an ongoing project ."This is not the culmination of Project Falcon, it is the next evolution of Project Falcon, which is essentially about redefining mobile, growing the scale, growing the performance and ensuring we put the silicon in place for future mobile broadband developments."

Separately Juniper has announced enhancements to its Media Flow technology for delivering video to mobile devices and has upgraded its Junos Pulse Mobile Security Suite to bring its full range of functionality to the Apple iPhone and iPad.

Media Flow is a converged content delivery and caching system that, according to Juniper, "dramatically improves the performance of rich media delivery by leveraging unique innovations such as hierarchical caching, superior media-aware intelligence and massive scalability." Media Flow is based on Ankeena Networks' Media Flow Director. In April 2010 Juniper announced plans to acquire Ankeena and to integrate the Ankeena technology into its own products.

It has now announced plans to integrate OpenWave Systems' Media Optimiser into Media Flow and says "The combined solution is expected to dramatically improve the economics of delivering video over mobile networks while revolutionising the user viewing experience."

According to Nagy the OpenWave technology enables the Media Flow technology, installed in a mobile operator's network, to transcode video signals to suit the handset to which they are being sent.