SDK Applications Overview

The JUNOS Software Development Kit (SDK) allows members of the Juniper Open IP Solution Development Program (OSDP) to build custom applications that run on the JUNOS operating system and extend the functionality of JUNOS systems. Such an application may run on the Routing Engine or, to perform a specific service, on the MultiServices PIC. In JUNOS user documentation, these third-party applications are called SDK applications. These applications are installed in one or more packages.

The material in this part pertains only to configuring routers that run SDK applications. If you have no SDK applications on your router, you can disregard this and the next three chapters.

A JUNOS SDK application may already be on your router if it was provided to you by a third party, or you may need to install the SDK application if you acquired it separately from the router.

To install an SDK application, please consult the application-specific documentation supplied by the provider. The application-specific documentation may also have information about configuring the SDK application on the router that is in addition to the generic information in these chapters.

In the configuration itself, the SDK application is called an extension, and the third-party creator of that application is called a provider. Also specific to SDK applications is the SDK service process, or ssd. This process, which runs on the Routing Engine, is responsible for communications between the SDK application and the regular JUNOS software. Although ssd is present on the router, it does not run unless specifically enabled, as described in the section Enabling the SDK Service Process and SDK Application Deployment.

For security, an SDK application comes with a certificate that authenticates it as a product of a specific provider. Part of this certificate, the provider ID, must be activated on the router to allow the SDK application to be deployed on the router and run.

If an SDK application will run on the MultiServices PIC, which is based on a multicore chip, you can designate the number of cores used for control versus data handling. Your application provider may recommend values for this core allocation, or you may choose these values yourself.

For more information about the Juniper OSDP and the JUNOS SDK, please contact your account team or visit http://www.juniper.net/partners/osdp.html.

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