Customer Success Story

GARR automates terabit-scale network to advance research and education in Italy

Consortium GARR, Italy’s national research and education network, provides ultra-broadband connectivity, and cloud services to the nation’s universities, research centers, healthcare, cultural and arts organizations, and schools.

To keep pace with the digital needs of its user community, GARR introduced a next-generation, highly automated terabit-scale network. GARR chose Juniper 400G routing, security, and AI-Native Networking automation solutions to deliver new levels of service agility, capacity, and scale.

Company	Consortium GARR
Industry	Research
Products used	PTX Series, MX Series, Juniper Paragon Automation, Juniper Paragon Pathfinder, Juniper Paragon Insights, JRR200 , Juniper and Corero Joint DDoS Protection Solution
Region	EMEA

Customer Success At-a-glance

Access connections, a 10-fold speed increase over what was previously available

Simplifies service delivery and operations

Sites connected by more than 20,000 kilometers of fiber across Italy

Terabit-per-second backbone capacity, scalable to an aggregated 40 Tbps capacity

Challenge

Keep up with the pace of change

GARR, like many network operators, struggled to keep pace with change in the digital landscape. With a growing service portfolio and more customers than ever, GARR needed to meet increasingly high service requirements for its university and research centers as they accessed data center cloud resources that host experiments which require low latency, high throughput, and low delay.

GARR wanted to be able to guarantee service quality through automation. GARR began to explore the possibilities of network automation as well as a network fabric that would support over-booking, better scale, load balancing, and better resiliency.

GARR proposed an innovative new network model, called GARR-T, to its community. GARR-T would deliver the current portfolio of services but with greater speed and agility through advanced network automation.

SOLUTION

Terabit scale with automated network operations

The GARR-T model relies heavily on automation to achieve reliable, high-performance, seamless communication networkwide. The architecture takes inspiration from an IP Clos fabric, where each intermediate switching stage minimizes the number of cross-connects, thereby offering better scale, load balancing, and resiliency without over-subscribing capacity.

Juniper PTX Series Routers with 400GbE interfaces are used for the spine. Juniper MX Series Universal Routers are used as leaf and edge nodes to support the peering edge and data center interconnection. The Juniper JRR200 Route Reflector Appliance delivers massive scalability for routing tables. Continuous telemetry monitoring on all devices generates real-time data that helps drive automated actions.

GARR uses Juniper Paragon Automation to deliver the highest level of service quality while powering efficient operations. The product supports closed-loop automation use cases that enable high-performance service experiences throughout the service lifecycle, from Day 0 to Day 2+. It also uses Juniper Paragon Pathfinder to efficiently manage its transport SLAs through automation, proactive monitoring, and dynamic optimization. Juniper Paragon Insights provides operational intelligence to establish benchmarks, determine anomalies, and perform proactive corrective actions.

The Juniper and Corero joint DDoS protection solution protects the network against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Corero SmartWall Threat Defense Director software on GARR’s MX Series and PTX Series Routers delivers real-time DDoS detection and line-rate mitigation.

OUTCOME

Support collaboration, learning, and discovery in Italy and beyond

GARR-T is the culmination of a multiyear effort, and the reimagined network is delivering an exceptional quality of experience for GARR’s network, cloud, video, and identity service users. GARR-T supports the daily activities of more than 3 million researchers, professors, healthcare workers, students, and others across Italy.

GARR-T operates at 22 Tbps capacity today and can grow to an aggregated capacity of 40 Tbps. Users can access GARR-T at 400 Gbps, a more than 10-fold increase over what was available with GARR’s older network.

GARR can now achieve a far higher level of service excellence with its small operations team. Automation transforms monitoring and management, enabling GARR to respond rapidly to new requirements and change requests. Enhanced monitoring and analysis, along with automated provisioning, deliver a consistently better user experience while reducing time-consuming, manual work.

“We partnered with Juniper to create GARR-T, an automated and secure terabit network, that will allow us to respond to the ever-growing need for collaborative cloud services for our community.”

Massimo Carboni Chief Technology Officer, GARR

GARR Speeds Network Service Delivery through Automation

To maintain its service excellence while meeting evolving user requirements, GARR is building an automated 40-Tbps nationwide network with Juniper.

The Products

Product

PTX10001-36MR

The PTX10001-36MR is a high-capacity, space- and power-optimized routing and switching platform. It delivers 9.6 Tbps of throughput and 10.8 Tbps of I/O capacity in a 1 U, fixed form factor. Based on the Juniper Express 4 ASIC, the platform provides dense 100GbE and 400GbE connectivity for highly scalable routing and switching in cloud, service provider, and enterprise networks and data centers.

Product

PTX10004, PTX10008, PTX10016

The modular PTX10004, PTX10008, and PTX10016 Packet Transport Routers directly address the massive bandwidth demands placed on networks today and in the foreseeable future. They bring ultra-high port density, native 400GE and 800GE inline MACsec, and latest generation ASIC investment to the most demanding WAN and data center architectures.

Product

MX10003

The SDN-enabled MX10003 Universal Routing Platform is built for space and power constrained environments. It is also a carrier-grade, multiservice platform with extensive automation capabilities enabling operators to meet ever expanding bandwidth, subscriber and service demands. The MX10003 Universal Routing Platform delivers 2.4 Tbps of system capacity in a 3 RU unit and supports 144 x 10 GbE or 24 x 100GbE interfaces in a single chassis.

Product

MX480

The SDN-enabled MX480 Universal Routing Platform offers unprecedented scale for service provider and cloud applications, enabling the delivery of advanced business and residential multi-service edge services. The MX480 Universal Routing Platform delivers 7.5 Tbps of system capacity that supports inline MACsec without performance penalties for 10/40/100 GbE interfaces. It is also a carrier-grade platform with extensive automation capabilities.

Product

MX304

The MX304 Universal Routing Platform delivers massive scale and efficiency for space- and power-constrained environments. It is a carrier-grade, multiservice platform with extensive automation capabilities enabling operators to meet constantly expanding bandwidth, subscriber, and service demands. The MX304 Universal Routing Platform delivers 4.8 Tbps of system capacity in a 2 RU unit and supports 96 x 10 or 25 GbE, 48 x 40, 50, or 100 GbE, or 12 x 400 GbE interfaces in a single chassis.

Product

MX204

The SDN-enabled MX204 Universal Routing Platform provides a modular, automated, carrier-grade solution for service providers and enterprises. The compact platform brings 400 Gbps capacity and a full feature set to space and power constrained environments.