AI‑Driven SD‑WAN

Reliable connectivity, Zero Trust security, and AI-Native insights

Juniper SD-WAN, driven by Juniper Mist AI™, enables exceptional IT- and end-user network experiences. Powered by Juniper Session Smart™ Routing and Juniper Mist WAN Assurance, it simplifies network operations and safeguards business matters from client to cloud.

How Juniper can help

Juniper's SD-WAN solution offers unparalleled secure and resilient connectivity tailored for today’s cloud-focused enterprises. Leveraging AI-driven insights and automation, it streamlines deployment processes and significantly diminishes the time required for troubleshooting. In addition, a pioneering tunnel-free architecture eradicates the inefficiencies, scaling limitations, and cost constraints traditionally associated with legacy solutions.

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Scale seamlessly

Juniper's microservices cloud solution, Mist AI, ensures rapid deployment through zero-touch provisioning and simple, proven templates that minimize errors. It scales dynamically to align with your changing needs, while offering seamless integration with platforms like Zoom, Teams, and ServiceNow via 100% open APIs.

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Enhance control and cut costs

Juniper's Session Smart technology offers unparalleled visibility and control, providing insights into each session flow while eliminating the inefficiencies and overhead of traditional tunnel-based traffic management. The cutting-edge tunnel-free design enhances bandwidth efficiency, reduces network congestion, and eliminates scaling limitations.

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Protect your network

Juniper’s AI-Native Zero Trust architecture seamlessly integrates SSE connectors to any SSE, while employing Adaptive Encryption to protect data and prevent double encryption scenarios. Our Next-Gen Firewall stands as the industry's bulwark against threats, utilizing AI to preemptively identify and neutralize exploits and malware, safeguarding your operations from potential disruptions.

Related Solutions

Managed SD-WAN

Juniper SD-WAN is an integral part of a unique, secure client-to-cloud networking approach designed to provide the best operational experience for operators, as well as the best network and application experience for enterprise customers. It leverages AI and the Juniper Mist Cloud Architecture for proactive insights and automation that take the complexity out of network operations and support.

Managed Services

With Juniper’s comprehensive set of industry-leading, AI-Driven solutions, you can deliver managed services differentiated by experience, for you and your enterprise customers. Using Mist AI and the Juniper Mist Cloud Architecture, our solutions arm your NetOps team with proactive insights and automation for the best day 0 through day 2 operations experience.

Security

Make your network threat aware. The Juniper Connected Security portfolio safeguards users, data, and infrastructure by extending security to every point of connection, from client to cloud, across the entire network.

AI-Driven SD-Branch

Simplify branch-office communications with cloud-managed routing, switching, Wi-Fi, and security. Our AI-Driven SD-Branch solution automates and accelerates operations across wired and wireless LANs and WANs, allowing IT teams to do more with less.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Seagate to Leverage Juniper Networks' AI-driven Enterprise Solutions

Seagate Technology® has selected Juniper’s full stack AI-driven enterprise portfolio to support its evolving business needs. The Juniper solution, driven by Mist AI and the cloud, offers Seagate proactive automation and unique client-to-cloud insight, as well as optimized performance and cost savings in key areas of their IT infrastructure.

Seagate, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, has multiple sites in 18 countries that share a vast amount of data. As a way of decreasing network costs and optimizing the performance of key applications between these locations, Seagate is moving from a traditional MPLS network to Juniper’s AI-driven SD-WAN solution. Juniper’s unique tunnel-less SD-WAN architecture can help reduce Seagate’s telco and hosting costs, which is ideal for high bandwidth activities like data transfers.

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Resource Center

AI-driven SD-WAN FAQs

What is AI-driven SD-WAN?

Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN is a tunnel-free, application-aware, and zero-trust secure solution for reliable and secure WAN connectivity. 

What products comprise the Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN solution?

The Juniper Session Smart Router, Mist AI, and Juniper Mist WAN Assurance make up the Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN Solution.

What are the benefits of Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN?

Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN improves end- and IT-user experiences by simplifying operations and improving application performance. Inherent zero trust policies and a tunnel-free architecture enable strong network security without sacrificing performance. AI-driven SD-WAN also collects rich telemetry on network traffic that—when combined with Mist AI—provides actionable insights into user-experience and possible network issues.

What are the limitations of tunnel-based SD-WAN solutions like IPsec?

Tunneling protocols like IPsec (Internet Protocol Security) add about 30 percent additional bandwidth per packet sent, which reduces available network capacity and slows application performance. (We refer to this wasted overhead as “badput.”) Additionally, setting up tunnels between every site in a network is time consuming, error prone, and scale limiting. See the ACG Research Report: Tunnel-based versus Tunnel-free SD-WAN to learn more.

What are the benefits of tunnel-free SD-WAN?

Tunnel-free SD-WAN offers many benefits, including:

  1. User experience guarantees, along with application performance assurances: Tunnel-free SD-WAN does not add additional overhead to traffic, enabling improved application performance and costs savings. WAN Assurance further enables better user experiences.
  2. Huge scale improvements: Sessions tying an application to a user are addressed individually for as long as the session is open. 
  3. Inherent zero-trust security: This is achieved with a deny-by-default approach to all new traffic accessing the network. 

How does tunnel-free SD-WAN secure traffic?

In a tunnel-free, session-intelligent WAN, traffic is not allowed on the network unless it meets the requirements (e.g. users, applications, groups, etc.) defined by the session. This deny-by-default approach ensures a zero-trust network.

What are the limitations of tunneling protocols like IPsec?

Tunneling protocols like IPsec add about 30 percent additional bandwidth per packet sent, which reduces available network capacity and slows application performance. (We refer to this wasted overhead as badput.)

Tunneled architectures limit scaling and are inflexible in terms of their topology requirements. They can be hub and spoke, but the hub will slow down real-time traffic. Attempting a point-to-point architecture is possible, but becomes very unwieldy and difficult to maintain. A session-based architecture is much more flexible and can optimize for both real time and asynchronous traffic.

What are the scaling differences between tunneled SD-WANs and session-intelligent, tunnel-free SD-WANs? 

Orders of magnitude differences, in fact. Tunneled WANs can often scale to thousands of sessions, while a session-intelligent WAN can scale to millions of sessions. This is because sessions are not kept alive after the user-application transaction is complete. Tunnels continue to exist even when they are not being used.

What are the main security features in Juniper’s SD-WAN solution?

Juniper’s tunnel-free AI-driven SD-WAN is inherently Zero Trust secure with deny-by-default access policies. The Session Smart Router has built-in firewall functionality, such as intrusion detection and prevention (IDP) and URL filtering. It is also FIPS 140-2 certified and PCI and HIPAA compliant. For advanced network security, the Juniper SD-WAN solution integrates with Juniper Secure Edge and third-party security providers to support a complete Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) Architecture.

What are the deployment options for Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN?

Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN is powered by the Session Smart Router, which is software-based and deployable on Juniper SSR Series Routers, white-box customer premises equipment, data center network servers, and the cloud. Session Smart Routers can be managed on premises or in the cloud by the Session Smart Conductor or via the Juniper Mist Cloud.

Who should use the Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN?

Small- and medium-sized business, enterprises, telecommunications providers, and managed service provides looking to modernize their network and improve network user experiences should all consider Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN.

Where can I get help with Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN?

Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN supports the following use cases:

  • Providing optimized experiences for users in all network domains
  • Reducing operational costs, especially to and from the cloud
  • Accelerating cloud migration initiatives
  • Expediting and simplifying WAN deployments and management operations 

Where can I get help with the Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN?

For information regarding AI-driven SD-WAN deployment services, read the AI-driven SD-WAN Deployment services Datasheet. For help with the Session Smart Router, view our Session Smart Router Documentation, take a Training Course, or join our SD-WAN Community.

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Gartner Magic Quadrant for Network Firewalls, by Rajpreet Kaur, Adam Hils, Thomas Lintemuth, 19, December, 2022.

Gartner Critical Capabilities for Network Firewalls, by Rajpreet Kaur, Adam Hils, 17 January 2022.

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