Juniper Networks: Juniper Beyond Labs tackles AI networking, quantum security

Juniper Beyond Labs is set up to identify and cultivate promising new network and security technologies. CTO Raj Yavatkar took the helm in 2023, when Juniper Networks launched the lab with the goal of incubating technologies that could lead to new products and help customers move their enterprises into the future."If nothing else, we also get to explore some great new technology strains before they become well established," Yavatkar told Network World. Among the current areas of focus for Yavatkar and the lab are AI networking, application performance, and quantum networking and security.Building AI networksExploring the networking impacts of AI clusters in the enterprise is a key initiative for Juniper Beyond Labs."Providing fabric connectivity for AI clusters is very different than traditional network fabric," Yavatkar said. "Our focus has been to develop new algorithms for traffic management, congestion control and so on," Yavatkar said.width="1200" height="800" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px">CTO Raj Yavatkar is responsible for charting Juniper's technology strategy.JuniperIn terms of networking fabrics, the lab is working on technologies that understand AI workload requirements, which tend to vary based on training or inferencing, Yavatkar said. "Each application requires different techniques, very big flows, non-blocking, multiple path-based networking for large training workloads and inferencing," Yavatkar said. "The network needs to scale up, not just scale out within a rack or between two tracks. You have to provide scale-up networking between GPUs for inferencing, and that requires very low latency.""We have been now investing in industry standards like Ultra Accelerator Link and Ultra Ethernet Consortium but also developing our own internal algorithms for traffic management," Yavatkar said.AI-driven security and managementAnother initiative is aimed at applying generative AI to understand network threat vectors, Yavatkar said."How do we proactively generate such threat vectors and test our products against that? More importantly, we also found a flip side - that Gen AI can be used to also come up with defenses against such threats. So there's sort of a duality of using gen AI for both offense and defense that is going to be very important," Yavatkar said.The lab is also working on AI-based technology to simplify and orchestrate the management of hybrid cloud and multicloud infrastructures, Yavatkar said.Juniper Cloud Interlink is an AI-powered software product that's being incubated in Juniper Beyond Labs. It's designed to securely let enterprises connect applications across public cloud, co-location and on-premise data centers at scale with fully integrated network and security stacks. Juniper Cloud Interlink collects telemetry and analytics and includes an AI engine to monitor cloud networks in real time to assure network experiences and proactively provide troubleshooting suggestions. Since the native network and security services offered by some cloud providers are limited, Juniper Cloud Interlink offers embedded security and supports bring-your-own security options," Yavatkar wrote in a blog post about the product. "Its single, centralized portal provides administration, visibility into application connectivity performance and the health of the network and cost optimization for IT and DC operations teams."The idea is to help customers identify performance bottlenecks before they impact application performance as well as discover any misconfigured network devices that could impact the application, Yavatkar said. In January Juniper and communications provider Liberty Global said they are testing the Interlink technology and developing it for future release.Quantum security focusSecurity in the quantum computing world is also a focus of Juniper Beyond Labs. In particular, the focus is on new algorithms being designed for post-quantum cryptography (PQC), which will replace the known cryptographic algorithms used today, Yavatkar said."If you had asked me four years or five years ago if I thought PQC would be an issue, I might have said [maybe in] 2035. But the need for it has accelerated, and now it looks like post-quantum cryptography will happen by '27 or '28 or '29, especially in European countries as well as government and the Department of Defense. It is going to require that people have algorithms certified 'post quantum secure' starting in 2027, so that's where we are focused," Yavatkar said.The lab has been instrumental in a couple of Juniper's efforts around quantum security. For example, it helped develop Juniper's Quantum Safe IPsec VPN technology, which is available today. In addition, last year Juniper made a strategic investment in Quantum Bridge Technologies for developing Distributed Symmetric Key Exchange (DSKE) for PQC networks. The idea is to coordinate Quantum Bridge's work with the lab's work for future projects."Driven by governmental mandates and growing interest from system integrators, the quantum technology market is commercializing with both European and North American government agencies issuing guidance to standardize quantum security. According to Qureca, the quantum key distribution (QKD) market is projected to grow from $6 billion to $13 billion by 2030," Juniper stated in the 2024 announcement.Quantum networking takes shapeThe other piece of the quantum trend is the growing number of quantum vendors and other researchers developing quantum computers and services. Most recently, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, and Google have accelerated the quantum computing timeline, Yavatkar said.Just last month, Nvidia rolled out an Accelerated Quantum Research Center in Boston with a goal of speeding the timeline to practical, real-world quantum applications. And in December, Cisco hosted its Quantum Summit 2024 gathering and shared details about its vision for quantum data centers.On the quantum networking front, Yavatkar cited the announcement in March of an international research team led by Chinese scientists who transmitted encrypted signals over a distance of 12,900 kilometers (8,015 miles) via satellite between China and South Africa as an example of growing developments. "We are paying attention to quantum networking in environments which require a lot more bandwidth in a short distance, smaller data center interconnects and so on, which are only one or two kilometers away," he said."Quantum security is going to be the name of the game in the future, but quantum communication is also becoming reality," Yavatkar said.