Juniper Updates MX Routers With New Silicon, Built-In Encryption

Juniper Networks’ latest update to its MX routers includes new silicon and built-in encryption targeting 5G and IoTdeployments. The MX Series 5G Universal Routing platform is built on Juniper’s new Penta Silicon, a programmable 16nm processor with integrated security. “This is the new silicon that is going to power the entire MX series going forward,” said Donyel Jones-Williams, ‎director of product marketing management at Juniper Networks. “And it’s an industry first: the silicon itself does all the processing of packets and also does encryption.” Encryption will become even more important as service providers roll out 5G, Jones-Williams said. “As services move more to running on the public internet, businesses are requiring their service providers have the ability to encrypt their services so they can protect their own data,” he explained. “We’re seeing this as a fundamental element of 5G. Encryption is no longer an option that’s nice to have. It’s a must-have-slash-table-stakes.” The silicon natively supports both MACsec and an IPsec crypto engine for Layer 1 and Layer 3 security. And the new packet forwarding engine delivers a 50 percent power efficiency gain over the existing Junos Trio chipset, which leads to a 3x bandwidth increase for the MX960, MX480 and MX240, the company claims. The routing platform also includes hardware acceleration for Control User-Plane Separation (CUPS). As service providers prepare for 5G deployments, the 3GPP CUPS standard allows customers to separate the evolved packet core user plane (GTP-U) and control plane (GTP-C) with a standardized Sx interface. This allows service providers to scale each independently as needed.