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ThousandEyes-Juniper pact focuses on hybrid WANs

ThousandEyes and Juniper boost visibility for hybrid WANs; IDC records sharp rise in cloud spending; and a vendor group issues specifications for optical 100 Gbps interoperability.

Eamon McCarthy Earls
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Published: 19 Jan 2018

ThousandEyes has deployed its network performance monitoring agents on routers and customer premises equipment, or CPE, made by Juniper Networks to improve visibility for hybrid WANs and other extended networks.

ThousandEyes software, running as virtual network functions on NFX250 branch routers, will support a wide range of capabilities, the companies said, including gauging network health and confirming traffic paths. Among other capabilities, the agents probe latency and bandwidth, monitor MPLS and automate outage detection. They also can report connection errors for FTP, HTTP, Session Initiation Protocol and Real-Time Transport Protocol-based applications, and carry out root-cause analysis for problems stemming from domain name system and Border Gateway Protocol routing.

The proliferation of hybrid WANs, SD-WAN and SaaS offerings, as well as ongoing consolidation of data centers, means enterprises face visibility challenges with their extended networks. The addition of ThousandEyes' software is aimed at eliminating some of those challenges, said Mihir Maniar, vice president of product management for Juniper Networks. 

"As more and more of our customers move to cloud-centric networks to realize its cost and agility promises, the migration -- often to a hybrid public-private environment -- can also bring new network blind spots that, if left unchecked, can wreak havoc on service delivery, application development, SLAs [service-level agreements] and the overall end-user experience," Maniar said in a statement.

Cloud revenues soar 25% in Q3: IDC

Sales of cloud infrastructure products, such as Ethernet and servers, surged in the third quarter of 2017, growing 25.5% year over year and reaching $11.3 billion, according to the most recent study by IDC. The firm's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker found that public cloud investments fueled most of the sales increase, representing 68% of all cloud IT infrastructure sales during the quarter. Storage platforms generated the highest growth, with revenue up 45% over the same quarter in 2016.

IDC said all regions of the world, except for Latin America, experienced double-digit growth in cloud infrastructure spending, with the fastest growth in Asia-Pacific and in Central and Eastern Europe. Private cloud revenues reached $3.6 billion, an annual increase of 13.1%. Noncloud IT infrastructure sales, meantime, rose 8% to $14.2 billion.

"2017 has been a strong year for public cloud IT infrastructure growth, accelerating throughout the year," said Kuba Stolarski, research director for computing platforms at IDC, in a statement.

"While hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google are driving the lion's share of the growth, IDC is seeing strong growth in the lower tiers of public cloud and continued growth in private cloud on a worldwide scale," he added.

New Intel and AMD platforms launched in 2017 will provide a further boost to the cloud segment, Stolarksi said, as providers and enterprises take steps to upgrade their IT infrastructures.

Lambda MSA issues preliminary optical specification

The 100G Lambda Multi-Source Agreement, or MSA Group, released preliminary interoperability specifications based on 100 Gbps pulse amplitude modulation 4-based optical technology. The new optical interface specification is intended for next-generation networking equipment and is suitable for tasks requiring increased bandwidth and greater bandwidth density.

In addition to ensuring optical receivers from multiple vendors can work together, the new spec increases the distances supported by both 100 Gigabit Ethernet and 400 GbE  systems from the 500 meters currently specified in the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet standard to up to 10 kilometers for 100 GbE and up to 2 kilometers over duplex single-mode fiber for 400 GbE.

The Lambda MSA group is comprised of major networking vendors, such as Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cisco and Juniper Networks, as well as major enterprises, such as Alibaba and Nokia. Final specifications will be released later in 2018, the MSA Group said.

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