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. 

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

Juniper AI-driven SD-WAN improves end user 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, which—when combined with Mist AI—provides actionable insights into user-experience and possible network issues. 

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.  

Tunnel-free SD-WAN offers many benefits, including these top three: 

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. 

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

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. 

The difference is huge orders of magnitude in fact. Tunneled WANs can often scale to thousands of sessions; whereas 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. 

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. 

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-prem or in the cloud by the Session Smart Conductor or via the Juniper Mist Cloud. 

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’s 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 

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.