Planning to make large-scale changes to your computer network? Yet don’t want to invest lots of money to run tests through a real physical lab?
You can now model a large-scale deployment of a network inexpensively — testing parameters like traffic routing and network capacity — through cloud-based network lab testing solution Junosphere, which was just launched by networking vendor Juniper this week.
For as low as US$50 per day, you can “rent” a network over the cloud from Junosphere to do network modeling. Sold as a SaaS (software-as-a-service), Junosphere charges US$5 per virtual machine image per day (minimum of 10 VMs, or US$50). You don’t even need anything fancy, just a web browser and an internet connection.
Because Junosphere’s virtual environment is hosted in the cloud, it eliminates the power, space or cooling requirements of a physical lab. Therefore, it is an inexpensive way to test a full-scale network, and you get up to 90 percent savings, according to Juniper.
Juniper also claims that it speeds up network modeling times by up to 30 percent, and that Junosphere also makes a good platform to train network technicians.
It’s of course also a smart way to market Juniper’s JUNOS network OS, and try to get customers interested in their products.
Said Lee Doyle, IDC’s group vice president and general manager, Network Infrastructure and Security Products and Services in this Network World story by Jim Duffy: “They’re providing the tools, access, and for low money. To the extent that Juniper can get more people to use JUNOS, the better it is for them.”
To facilitate a comprehensive network modeling platform, Junosphere also includes select applications from partners like:
- Cariden Technologies, which does traffic management and simulation,
- Mu Dynamics, which does application load-testing and modeling,
- Packet Design, which visualizes network routing traffic in real-time,
- Spirent Communications, who validates cloud computing performance, and
- WANDL, for configuring network topologies.
