Juniper Networks has flagged a new approach to simplifying service delivery in complex metro networks, launching a new Metro Fabric offering designed to deliver an agile network infrastructure to facilitate simplified metro service creation and delivery.

The firm said the variety of services and the number of connected devices supported across metro networks – the layer of a service provider’s infrastructure most commonly associated with connecting subscribers to the internet – has recently expanded exponentially.

"Ethernet business services, popular applications like Netflix and Skype, IaaS offerings like Amazon Web Services and a throng of IoT devices have proliferated and this will only continue with emerging 5G rollouts. The result is a complex web of legacy products, manual processes and divergent architectures and protocols that have hindered true innovation and rendered it difficult for service providers to keep up with bandwidth demands and cost constraints," it said.

"By combining adaptive and predictive software with new and existing network infrastructure offerings,

we are evolving our solutions to enable service providers to deploy a metro network capable of faster service creation and time-to-revenue for a new generation of services and applications, including emerging 5G and IoT services," said Juniper Networks service provider marketing VP Sally Bament.

Juniper’s Metro Fabric, which claims to feature the industry’s only disaggregated programmable photonic layer as well as its upgraded ACX Series Universal Metro Routers and PTX Series Packet Transport Routers, will blend automation, versatility, security and IP and open packet-optical networking into the metro for new levels of operational simplicity.

"Service providers building metro services for mobile, business, cable, fibre residential and direct public cloud use cases, can now leverage a modern service creation platform to quickly and efficiently deliver new revenue-generating services," said Juniper, which added that it had begun to introduce the initial building blocks of the refreshed metro: two new ACX Series Routers, and a new PTX Series Packet Transport Router.

Juniper also also intends to continue executing against its plan to deliver a Self-Driving Network across its networking suite, including the new Metro Fabric.