Intent-Based Network Optimization with Juniper Paragon Automation Solution Brief

Intent-Based Network Optimization with Juniper Paragon Automation quickly creates new value from modern programmable WAN networking technology while reducing the impact of changing network conditions on critical services.

Our approach to IBN addresses the shortfalls of traditional configuration automation that does not abstract away complexity and therefore cannot easily scale to large networks. It lets you separate the complexity of intent design from day-to-day operations and provides the automation of traffic management needed to maintain user intent under rapidly changing network conditions.

• Model-based, verified intent profiles for reuse at scale

Your network experts can specify a wide range of routing configuration options when designing intent models, such as tunnel symmetry, protocols, provisioning methods, priority, maximum delay, packet loss, bandwidth, and others. They can then simulate how these models would behave in a live environment. Once published, these verified intent models are maintained under version control and can be reused by operations teams as many times as they want. This reduces human error by maintaining careful control of intent profiles, reduces time-to-activation by eliminating repetition, and ensures consistent experiences for end users by including consistent ‘quality checks’ as part of the design process itself.

• Flexible, reliable connectivity services

The underlying technologies that enable AI for Networking are rapidly evolving, with new AI-driven approaches to detecting complex routing issues like blackholes emerging all the time. By separating optimization policies from tunnel profiles, Intent-Based Network Optimization from Juniper Paragon Automation allows operators to rapidly leverage these innovations to enhance performance and resilience, delivering increasingly strict SLA guarantees over time.

• Geospatial view for explainability and continuous improvement

Paragon Automation provides you with filterable, zoomable mapping views. Logs change over time, so you can quickly analyze connectivity, inspect and explain when and why the network has been automatically reconfigured in the past, and keep track of individual customers’ networks, even among thousands of physical nodes and links. This also gives your engineers important insights on how intent profiles can be further optimized to deliver even more predictable, reliable services to end users.

Easily create high performance networks that deliver to your exacting requirements while making the job of operations teams simpler and more intuitive. Free your skilled experts to focus on high-value activities such as improving efficiency, enhancing reliability, and creating high-value guaranteed services instead of day-to-day network management.

With Intent-based network optimization from Juniper Paragon Automation, you can accelerate time-to-value with a ‘design once, deploy many times’ approach to network connectivity, while maintaining precise, flawless user experiences with a network that self-optimizes to maintain user intent.

Intent-based Network Optimization with Juniper Paragon Automation provides advanced path computation, intent modeling and geospatial visualization. Like all Paragon Automation use cases, it is based on the cloud-native Paragon Automation platform, which scales to even the largest global networks and is deployable on premises or on public cloud instances for high availability.

• Advanced path computation and optimization
  Leveraging our decades-long experience in building sophisticated SDN controllers, at the core of the use case is a powerful path computation engine that blends a range of optimization capabilities. This is used to recompute network tunnels based on user-defined triggers, such as utilization levels, link delay, packet loss, or failure events. This allows for fully autonomous, closed-loop networking use cases, such as congestion avoidance, latency-based routing, and autonomous capacity optimization. The path computation engine is the critical component of intent-based network optimization that enables the network itself to adapt to changing conditions and unexpected events.
• Precision intent profile modeling
  Engineers can make network intent profiles available to operations teams based on three elements:

• Tunnels: End-to-end connections in the transport network that exhibit predictable (sometimes guaranteed) performance, including speed, latency, packet loss, and priority, among others
• Optimization: A description of the conditions when the associated tunnels will be recalculated, including specific triggers, threshold crossings, and time periods
• Endpoints: A collection of endpoints that a selected tunnel and optimization profile apply to (for example, all edge routers servicing a specific enterprise customer)

Operators can then select combinations of these intent profiles and provision them in the network.

• Dynamic network visualization
  Operators can visualize any combination of active intents running in the network to monitor how they are performing against the stated intent.

Only authorized users can create, validate, publish, and update intent profiles, consisting of tunnel profiles, optimization profiles, and endpoint groups. Your operations teams can deploy intent instances by selecting from the available published profiles.

This helps maintain the integrity of the connectivity you deploy while separating network configuration from day-to-day operations.

Optimization profiles can include time-based or event-based triggers, including, for example, KPI threshold crossings that indicate a risk to the delivery of user intent. So, if events outside of your control (such as power failures, cooling failures, or traffic spikes) cause a degradation in performance, the network will self-optimize and reroute all connections in the live network to maintain all user intents.

As part of the deployment of new instances, your operations team can visualize how they will be instantiated alongside existing services in your network. This helps to identify unexpected or unusual paths that may indicate potential capacity issues in the network that may require further investigation before committing the deployment.

Intent-based network optimization is part of the Juniper Paragon Automation portfolio of use cases. It brings the flexibility your expert engineers need to design connectivity that delivers diverse user intent while offering the drag-and-drop simplicity that enables your operations teams to quickly and confidently validate, deploy, and modify connectivity in minutes.

Consortium GARR is using Juniper Paragon Automation to deliver high-performance connectivity to 1,000+ research and education institutions across Italy.

Dimension Data uses Paragon Automation to manage service quality across its IP Core network spanning the U.K., Germany, and South Africa.

With intent-based network optimization, you get Juniper’s decades of expertise at the forefront of WAN routing in a simple to use package designed to optimize business outcomes. You can leverage your Paragon Automation instance to deploy any other use cases without additional system implementation.

To learn more about Intent-based network optimization, visit https://www.juniper.net/gb/en/solutions/sd-wan.html

For technical data sheets, guides and documentation, visit Juniper Paragon Automation Documentation | Juniper Networks