Juniper adds core campus switch to EX series

Juniper Networks has added to its EX series a core aggregation switch aimed at enterprises with campus networks that are too small for the company's EX9000 line.

Like the EX9000 series, the EX4650 -- a compact 25/100 GbE switch -- uses network protocols typically found in the data center. As a result, the same engineering team can manage the data center and the campus.

"If an enterprise has a consistent architecture and common protocols across networks, it should be well-placed to achieve operational efficiencies across the board," said Brad Casemore, an analyst at IDC.

The network protocols used in the EX4650 and EX9000 are the Ethernet VPN (EVPN) and the Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN). EVPN secures multi-tenancy environments in a data center. Engineers typically use it with the Border Gateway Protocol and the VXLAN encapsulation protocol. The latter creates an overlay network on an existing Layer 3 infrastructure.

Offering a common set of protocols lets Juniper target its campus switches at data center customers, Casemore said. "That's a less resistant path than trying to displace other vendors in both the data center and the campus."

Juniper released the EX4650 four months after releasing two multigigabit campus switches, the EX2300 and EX4300. Juniper also released in February a cloud-based dashboard, called Sky Enterprise, for provisioning and configuring Juniper's campus switches and firewalls.

Juniper rivals Arista and Cisco are also focused on the campus market. In May, Arista extended its data center switching portfolio to the campus LAN with the introduction of the 7300X3 and 7050X3 spline switches. Cisco, on the other hand, has been building out a software-controlled infrastructure for the campus network, centered around a management console called the Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Center.