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New Features

This section describes the features available in Juniper® Routing Director Release 2.8.0.

Device Life-Cycle Management

Device life-cycle management (LCM) extends over the entire life cycle of a device. As part of device LCM, you install the device onsite, bring the device under management, monitor the device when it is in production, and finally decommission the device.

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 extends device LCM to the following platforms:

  • Device Support—The following devices are supported in the Routing Director 2.8.0 release:

    • MX301

    • SRX4000 Series—SRX4100, SRX4200, SRX4300, SRX4600, and SRX4700.

    • EX4400 Virtual Chassis

    You can onboard devices, export device details, view audit logs, and upgrade software. See Supported Devices for a complete list of devices supported by Routing Director.

  • Adopt brownfield Junos devices using the management VRF—Adopt brownfield Junos devices using the Use Management VRF toggle button on the Add a Device page (Inventory > Devices > Network Inventory > Add Devices). When enabled, the device uses the mgmt_junos VRF to connect to Routing Director, ensuring separation of management traffic from data traffic.

    [See Add a Device to Routing Director.]

  • Support for gNMI dial-in connection for telemetry—Routing Director uses gRPC Network Management Interface (gNMI) dial‑in connectivity to obtain device telemetry if the device is onboarded by using a network implementation plan.

    Routing Director acts as the gNMI client and initiates the gNMI connection to the devices. Earlier, the devices acted as the gNMI clients and initiated the connection to Routing Director (dial-out connectivity).

    When you upgrade from an earlier release to Routing Director Release 2.8.0, all the dial-out connections change to dial-in connections without any data loss.

    Note:

    Dial-in gNMI connections are not supported on devices running Junos OS and Junos OS Evolved versions 24.2R1, 24.2R2, and 24.4R1. See Supported KPIs for workaround.

    [See Firewall Requirements.]

Observability

You can use Routing Director to view your entire network topology in real time and monitor network health. Additionally, you receive notifications about network anomalies and troubleshooting guidance.

With observability, Routing Director monitors and analyzes the network and its components by using key performance indicators (KPIs), device logs, and metrics. Observability includes alerts and alarms that notify you about network issues.

Routing Director also runs connectivity tests using synthetic traffic to identify connection issues between devices in your network. In addition, the real-time routing dashboard allows you to actively monitor the overall routing health of your network. Timely detection of anomalies enables you to take prompt action and minimize the impact of any issues.

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following additional observability feature:

  • AI/ML-driven device health monitoring on additional platforms—In addition to ACX7024 and PTX10008, Routing Director monitors health and temperature for the following devices:

    • ACX7509
    • ACX7348
    • PTX10001-36MR
    • PTX10004

  • Detect physical layer faults in Routing Director using AI-ML—Routing Director generates alerts when physical layer faults are detected during device onboarding or on an operational device. You can view the number of alerts on the Connectivity accordion of:

    • The Device-Name page (Observability > Troubleshoot Devices > Device > Overview tab) when a device is operational.

    • The Device-Name page (Inventory > Device Onboarding > Onboarding Dashboard) during device onboarding.

    You can view details of the alerts on the Relevant Events section of the accordion.

    Note:

    Physical layer fault detection is supported only on ACX7100-48L devices.

    [See Detect Physical Layer Faults.]

  • Detection of traffic loss and blackhole on MX Series devices using AI-ML—Routing Director detects traffic loss and blackholes on MX204, MX240, and MX10008 devices in addition to the PTX10004 and PTX10008 Series devices. The detected information is displayed on:

    • Routing and MPLS accordion of the Overview tab of the Device -Name page (Observability > Troubleshoot Devices > Device -Name).

    • Alerts tab of the Events page (Observability > Events).

    [See Detect Blackholes.]

  • Increase KPI Data Retention—You can now increase the KPI data retention period in Routing Director beyond the default one-week limit. After you configure the retention period, the date-time selector on the following pages automatically adjusts to reflect the updated retention period:

    • Component-Name accordion (Observability > Troubleshoot Devices > Device-Name > Hardware/ Interfaces/ Routing & MPLS accordion > Component-Name-link)

    • Component-Name accordion (Orchestration > Instances > Service-Instance-Name Details page > Passive Assurance > Component-Name-link)

    • Instance-Name page (Observability > Health > Custom KPI Collection > Rule Instantiations > Instance-Name)

    You can now query KPI data within the updated retention range.

    CAUTION:

    Increasing the retention period requires additional disk space. The exact storage requirements depend on the configured retention duration and the volume of KPI data collected. For an estimate of the additional disk space needed, contact your Juniper Sales Representative.

    [See Retention Policies in Routing Director.]

  • Use Export Manager to stream data to external systems—Routing Director enables you to stream operational and observability data, including underlay and device KPIs and syslogs to an external Kafka system. You can configure Kafka destinations, define streaming parameters, map data categories to pre‑created Kafka topics, and add, pause, or resume streams while preserving configuration state.

    Configure TLS and SASL to secure communication between Routing Director and external Kafka system. Routing Director can export events and KPIs in continuous streams, enabling integration with third‑party systems such as SIEM platforms, AI/ML pipelines, and other event‑monitoring systems. A new menu, Management, is added to the menu bar on the left-side of the Routing Director GUI. Use the Export Manager page (Management > Export Manager) to configure data streams and the Kafka destination.

    [See Export Manager Overview.]

  • IGP anomaly alert generation—Routing Director detects and displays all IGP anomalies as alerts on the Events page (Observability > Health > Events). These anomaly alerts directly contribute to the overall routing health computation displayed on the Health Dashboard (Observability > Health > Health Dashboard).

    Use these insights to correlate topology‑level issues with overall routing health status, which enables faster diagnosis and improved visibility into the impact of IGP anomalies on network performance.

    [See IGP Anomaly Detection Overview.]

  • View BGP Route Details—View all routes and paths advertised by BGP in Routing Information Bases (RIBs) of devices from the Routes Tab (Observability > Routing > Route Explorer > Route Status). You can view information such as the list of devices, prefix addresses and lengths, extended communities, details of the RIB where a route is installed, and so on.

    [See About the Routing Status Tab.]

Trust and Compliance

Routing Director helps protect the network from threats and vulnerabilities by periodically checking whether a target's configuration, integrity, and performance comply with predefined security benchmarks. The term target refers to a device or a device component. Routing Director distills the outcomes of these checks into a single trust score that you can use to determine how trustworthy a device is.

There are no new features in Release 2.8.0.

Service Orchestration

Service orchestration is the process of designing, configuring, validating, deploying, and monitoring a network service. Routing Director automates the entire life cycle of a network service by providing workflows that execute the tasks required to deliver a service. You can provision various network services by using predefined service designs. The service catalog is an inventory of service designs, which are templates that provide guidelines and parameters for instantiating a service. A service instance defines the elements of a service. A service order includes the instruction to create, modify, or delete a service instance. After you initiate a service order and provision it, Routing Director activates the automated workflow to provision the service in the network. After provisioning, Routing Director automatically monitors network health and measures service quality.

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following additional service orchestration features:

  • Updated ESI configuration format in the L2 resource instance—Define the prefix and suffix for the Ethernet Segment Identifier (ESI) ID, as well as the start and end values for the ESI ID range on the Modify L2-Addr-Resource-Instance-Name page (Orchestration > Service > Resource Instances > L2-Addr). These values create a structured pool of ESI IDs that Routing Director uses when allocating placement ESI parameters for EVPN services.

    [See Configure Resource Pools for Resource Instances, Add EVPN Service Post Update Placements Parameters, and Add EVPN-VPWS Service Post Update Placements Parameters.]

  • Configure custom local VPWS ID—Define a custom local VPWS ID for each CE device‑facing site network access on the Add Connection page of the Add E-Line EVPN VPWS CSM wizard (Orchestration > Service > Instances > E‑Line EVPN VPWS CSM). The local VPWS ID of one CE-device facing site network access is applied as the remote VPWS ID in the second CE device configuration. If no value is provided, the system automatically assigns default VPWS IDs 1 and 2 to the first and second CE device-facing site network accesses. This ensures consistent VPWS ID mapping across CE device‑facing site network accesses.

    [See Add EVPN-VPWS Site and Site Network Access Details.]

  • Upgrade service design versions in bulk—You can upgrade multiple service design versions at once from the Service Designs page (Orchestration > Service Catalog > Service Designs). After a successful upgrade, the Version column displays the upgraded version of the service designs used by service instances.

    [See About the Service Designs Page.]

Network Optimization

Routing Director's network optimization use case helps you optimize resource utilization, boost network performance, and ensure reliable, efficient data delivery. By using an intent-based approach, Routing Director optimizes the network through active life cycle management of label-switched paths (LSPs).

You can create a path intent using the Routing Director GUI. Path intents are specific LSP configurations that define how traffic is steered through the network. In traditional methods, you configure and provision each path in a tunnel individually with all its attributes. With path intent, you can create sub-profiles of attributes that can be reused for creating paths. This modular approach reduces redundancy and streamlines the process of provisioning multiple tunnels.

When you apply the path intent to the network, Routing Director interprets these intent-based sub-profiles and automates the creation, modification, and deletion of tunnels and LSPs. By autonomously executing the required actions, Routing Director aligns the network state with the specified intent. Routing Director ensures that LSPs are established based on network policies, traffic engineering constraints, and service level agreements (SLAs).

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following additional network optimization features:

  • Re-parse device collection—To manually trigger re-parsing of previously-collected configuration and show commands, click Re-parse on the Advance tab of the Topology Settings page (Observability > Network > Topology > Topology Menu Bar > Settings icon).

    Use this option when the network model configuration state is out of sync with the collected configuration file and operational command output.

    [See View Network Topology Details.]

  • Map display options on the Topology page—Use Show World Map on the Map tab of the Topology Settings page (Observability > Network > Topology > Topology Menu Bar > Settings icon) to select the map type on the Topology page. In case of air-gapped installation, you can choose a map option that uses local map data from Routing Director and does not require internet access.

    [See View Network Topology Details.]

  • Flexible metric selection for the color legend—Select different traffic metrics on the Links tab of the Topology Settings page (Observability > Network > Topology > Topology Menu Bar > Settings icon). The selected metric appears in the color legend at the bottom right corner of the Topology map. This helps you to quickly analyze various utilization types.

    [See View Network Topology Details.]

  • Configure multiple autonomous systems—Routing Director allows each BGP-LS peer address to have a different AS number. You can also configure multiple BGP-LS peers per AS. This granular control over AS assignments enhances network segmentation, isolates routing policies, and tailors routing strategies according to operational needs.

    Use the Dynamic Topology tab of the Topology Settings page (Observability > Network > Topology > Topology Menu Bar > Settings icon) to configure multiple BGP LS peers.

    [See View Network Topology Details.]

Planner

Planner is used for offline visualization and detailed architectural planning of any production network. Planner enables you to forecast the impact of changes to your network, such as additional traffic, shifts in traffic flows, and new capacity or services.

Planner generates a topology view of a network, enabling you to add, remove, and reconfigure network elements. Using the network topology view, you can model and visualize dynamic, explicit routing paths, designed to operate within end-user defined constraints. The effects of these changes and other traffic scenarios can be simulated without affecting the production network.

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following additional planner feature:

  • View offline topology changes—View the changes you have made to your offline network (model). Run Update Model and Paths and click the Reload icon on the Topology page (Planning > Networks > Offline Models > Model-Name > Open).

    Click Update Model and Paths on the Topology page to save your changes and select whether Routing Director must:

    • Recompute all paths

    • Recompute newly-added paths, or

    • Only update parameters

    Use Reload to refresh the topology view.

    [See About the Offline Topology Page.]

  • Group working models using tags—Use tags to organize and group working models. A tag is a label in the key:value format. Tags enable faster identification of related working models.

    You can add one or more tags to a working model on the Working Models page (Planning > Networks > Offline Models).

    [See About the Working Models Page.]

  • View reports in the Topology page—View the What-If failure simulation report within the Topology page (Planning > Networks > Offline Models > Model-Name > Open).

    When you select a link, tunnel, or demand in the report, the topology map displays the original and rerouted paths, link utilization-related changes, and so on. This visualization helps you to quickly evaluate the impact of the simulated failure and plan mitigation.

    [See About the Offline Topology Page.]

Active Assurance

Active Assurance is a programmable test and monitoring solution, which generates synthetic traffic in the underlay network to gain continuous insights on network quality, availability, and performance. Active Assurance uses Test Agents, which are measurement points in your network. Test Agents generate and receive synthetic traffic, and enable you to continuously monitor and validate the infrastructure. You can deploy Test Agents at strategic locations in your network and install them on routers running Junos® OS Evolved, x86 hardware, or on virtual machines (VMs). Routing Director uses RPM to collect metrics data for Juniper Networks® MX Series Universal Routers and Juniper Networks® PTX Series Routers.

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following additional Active Assurance features:

  • Centralized view of Measurement reports—View the reports generated by Measurements on the Reports Tab of the Measurement Details page (Observability > Active Assurance > Measurement Explorer). The centralized view helps you to:

    • Verify outcomes by viewing Measurement validation results in one place.

    • Troubleshoot issues faster using plugin-specific configuration data.

    • Monitor the overall health, performance, and behavior of the Measurement using general details such as status, duration, start and end time, and so on.

    Reports are generated only after a Measurement reaches its final state (Passed, Failed, Error, or Stopped). Reports are available only for Measurements related to QoS Policy profiling and Path MTU discovery.

    Note:

    Reports are available only for Monitors. Tests do not generate reports.

    [See About the Reports Tab.]

  • Support for additional plug-ins—Routing Director enables you to evaluate the QoS in your network using the following plug-ins:

    • Cisco IP SLA Ping—Use this plug-in to measure network responsiveness and verify IP (IPv4 and IPv6) reachability between Cisco devices. The plug-in sends ICMP Echo Requests to the configured endpoint and evaluates metrics such as response time and packet loss. A verification test, using this plug in, helps detect issues related to connectivity, latency, and path stability.
    • Path MTU Discovery—Use this plug-in to determine the maximum transmission unit (MTU) supported along a network path. The plug-in sends probe packets of varying sizes to identify the largest packet that can traverse the path without fragmentation. A verification test, using this plug in, helps detect MTU mismatches and fragmentation constraints that may impact performance.

    • QoS Policy Profiling—Use this plug-in to validate Quality of Service (QoS) behavior and bandwidth distribution across all IPv4 and IPv6 traffic classes. This plug-in uses TCP and UDP flows to verify throughput allocation, delay characteristics, packet loss, and buffer behavior. A verification test, using this plug in, helps identify QoS misconfigurations, prioritization issues, and policy enforcement gaps.

    [See Supported Plug-ins.]

Juniper Routing Director Installation

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides the following installation-related feature:

  • Install on a single node—Install Routing Director on a single virtual machine (VM). The single VM functions as both a primary node and worker node.

    Install Routing Director on a single node in lab environments, POCs, and small scale deployments where only a minimal number of devices (under 10) need to be managed. The single-node deployment must be used only when scalability or availability requirements are far less stringent than those of production deployments.

    The installation process is the same as that of a multinode cluster. You can backup and restore a single-node setup, but you cannot upgrade an older release of Routing Director to a single-node setup.

    [See Routing Director Implementation, System Requirements, and Deploy the Cluster.]

Beta Features

Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0 provides Beta support for the following features:

  • Use Model Context Protocol (MCP) server to query Routing Director—A network operator can use any AI agent such as Claude, Copilot, and ChatGPT to query Routing Director through an MCP server. The MCP server helps network operators to query network data, create dashboards, and access KPIs conversationally instead of writing code or learning complex API syntax.

    [See Query Routing Director Using MCP.]

  • Use LLM Connector to query Juniper documentation—Use LLM Connector to query only the documentation available on the Documentation site (https://www.juniper.net/documentation/), and cite references for the responses. Configure LLM Connector to query documentation on the Documentation tab of the Configure LLM Connector widget (Settings Menu > System Settings > Organization Settings). in the Organization Settings (Settings Menu > System Settings > LLM Connector).

    [See LLM Connector Overview.]

  • Configure an IRB interface for L3VPN services—You can configure an IRB interface for L3VPN services for the following scenarios:

    • L3VPN with EVPN using regular untagged interfaces with OSPF as PE-CE protocol and insights.

    • L3VPN with EVPN using regular untagged interfaces with BGP as PE-CE protocol and insights.

    • L3VPN with EVPN using interfaces in VLAN mode with OSPF as PE-CE protocol and insights.

    • L3VPN with EVPN using interfaces in VLAN mode with BGP as PE-CE protocol and insights.

    [See Add L3VPN Site and Site Network Access Details and Add L3VPN Service Post Update Placements Site Network Access Parameters.]

  • Upload a customized service design—Upload customized service designs to Routing Director by using the service orchestration cMGD CLI.

    Note:

    To create and customize service designs, contact Juniper Networks Professional Services.

    You can view the uploaded service designs on the Service Designs page (Orchestration > Service > Service Catalog) and use them to provision corresponding services in the network.

    [See Upload a Customized Service Design.]

Deprecated Features

The following features are deprecated in Juniper Routing Director Release 2.8.0.

  • upgrade_routing-director-release-build-ID.tgz compressed archive file—You can no longer upgrade to the latest release of Routing Director using the .tgz format file. You must use the .img file to upgrade to the latest release.

    [See Upgrade Routing Director.]

  • Manual creation of topo resource instances—You cannot create topology resource pools from the Resource Instances page (Orchestration > Service > Resource Instances > + Add New Resource Instance) . You can modify only existing topology resource pools from the Resource Instances page. Configure topology resources by specifying them in the network implementation plan.

    [See Configure Resource Pools for Resource Instances.]

  • EVPN ESI name and count configuration—The legacy EVPN ESI section in which you configured a name and count for EVPN ESIs is deprecated. This section is available only to support service instances provisioned in releases prior to release 2.8.0. We recommend that you migrate service instances from earlier releases to the new EVPN ESI configuration in which you must enter a fixed prefix, suffix and a variable middle range.

    [See Configure Resource Pools for Resource Instances.]