Juniper WAN Assurance

Juniper WAN Assurance is a cloud service that uses Marvis AI to bring AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) to your SD-WAN. As a key part of Juniper's AI-native SD-WAN solution, it completely transforms network management from a manual, reactive process to a proactive, automated one. The service works by continuously collecting and analyzing telemetry data from your network devices, such as Session Smart Routers and SRX Series Firewalls. By applying AI and machine learning to this data, WAN Assurance provides unparalleled visibility and control over your network's performance and health.

Juniper WAN Assurance accomplishes three main things for your SD-WAN:

1. Ensures a proactive, AI-native network: WAN Assurance shifts your network from a reactive to a proactive state. It uses Marvis AI to continuously monitor your network, automatically detecting and resolving issues before they impact users. This includes providing AI-native root cause analysis, which drastically reduces troubleshooting time.
2. Simplifies management and deployment: The service streamlines the entire network life cycle, from initial setup to day-to-day operations. With Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and intuitive, centralized management, you can deploy and scale your SD-WAN with unprecedented speed and efficiency.
3. Guarantees a superior user experience: Instead of just monitoring device health, WAN Assurance focuses on the quality of the end user experience. It allows you to set and enforce Service Level Expectations (SLEs) for critical applications, ensuring consistent and reliable performance for everyone on the network.

Juniper WAN Assurance greatly improves the end user and operator experience for enterprise WAN networks. This is accomplished with the Marvis AI engine, which analyzes rich streaming telemetry from Juniper Session Smart Routers and Juniper SRX Series Firewalls to provide real-time insights into individual user experiences.

Juniper WAN Assurance improves user experiences beyond what’s possible with any other enterprise cloud service. It’s the only cloud service that uses Service Level Experiences (SLEs) to measure and dynamically improve end user application experiences. Juniper WAN Assurance provides application health, WAN link health, and gateway health and utilization metrics, along with root cause discovery and anomaly detection. Juniper WAN Assurance also works in conjunction with Juniper Wired Assurance and Juniper Wi-Fi Assurance to isolate network issues for distributed enterprises.

Since system problems can actually be caused in one domain (such as the WAN) and felt in another (such as a LAN), Juniper WAN Assurance is part of a complete client-to-cloud service ensuring optimal experiences across the enterprise.

Marvis AI Assistant further simplifies troubleshooting with Natural Language Processing (NLP), a conversational assistant, prescriptive actions, and self-driving actions that automatically remediate issues.

The industry’s first AI-native networking digital experience twins now cover the full stack—wired, wireless, and SD-WAN domains. Marvis Minis perform automated speed tests to give enterprises the ability to see if they are getting the full bandwidth they have purchased, even when there are no users present. Operators can be alerted to upstream network issues and work on resolving them before the end users show up to the office.

Dynamic Packet Capture (dPCAP) has been added to the WAN. No longer will operators need to recreate issues on their network to capture the right packets. Now, Marvis will notice when an issue is occurring and automatically capture the appropriate packets for them. This will drastically shorten MTTR and allow operators to easily search for any needle-in-a-haystack issues.​

Going well beyond the concept of client health (that is, whether a device is functioning or not), SLEs measure actual user experiences in real time based on continuously delivered (and actionable) telemetry. SLEs are maintained using applied data science and machine learning to understand the actual end user experience on the network.

SLEs identify root causes of suboptimal application performance experiences in just a few clicks and proactively isolate needle-in-a-haystack problems that may occur anywhere in the WAN.

The SLEs in Juniper WAN Assurance are:

• WAN edge health: Percentage of time clients are affected by WAN edges (routers) not passing traffic efficiently
• WAN link health: Percentage of time clients are affected by suboptimal WAN link performance
• Application health: Percentage of time when monitored applications are not performing well
• Gateway bandwidth: Percentage of time where WAN links are operating within available bandwidth rates and when not hitting congestion thresholds
• Overall service: Derived from the above

These SLEs include classifiers that are continually updated based on analytics and that help quickly isolate and repair network problems. For example, classifiers for WAN link health could be a physical cabling problem or could be related to ISP reachability.

Other domains (wired and wireless) have their own SLEs and classifiers. For example, a wireless SLE is Successful Connections, with classifiers including authorization or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) issues, among others.

Yes. When used in conjunction with Juniper Wired Assurance and Juniper Wi-Fi Assurance, Juniper WAN Assurance transforms and unites all operations across network switches, IoT devices, access points, servers, printers, and other equipment.

The benefits of this cross-domain visibility and control can be seen in the resolution of complex issues, such as:

• Discovery that a problem with successful connections to an access point was caused by a configuration change in a WAN router (an MTU mismatch) that caused certificates to fail
• Generic case of the internet being slow turns out to be a disruption in a cloud security service
• Slow messaging application could be affected by latency on the application server, an LTE signal issue in the WAN, or even an issue in the LAN (wired or wireless)

Key benefits of Juniper WAN Assurance are:

• AI-native troubleshooting: Marvis AI Assistant proactively detects and resolves network issues before they impact users. This automation and AI-native root cause analysis dramatically reduces MTTR and boosts your IT team's efficiency
• Guaranteed user experiences: You can set and monitor SLEs for critical applications. This ensures consistent and reliable performance for all users, as the platform automatically works to meet these expectations
• Simplified operations: WAN Assurance streamlines the entire network lifecycle, from Day 0 to Day 2. With centralized management, templated configurations, and Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), deploying and scaling your SD-WAN becomes a fast and simple process
• Lower total cost of ownership (TCO): The operational simplicity from automation and streamlined deployments directly translates into significant savings on operational expenses (OpEx). You can achieve more with a leaner IT team and reduced need for costly site visits
• A unified platform for network and security: WAN Assurance integrates with Security Assurance to provide a single pane of glass for managing both network performance and security policies. This simplifies management and ensures a unified, AI-native Zero Trust posture across your entire network
• Bridging the IT skills gap: The Marvis conversational interface empowers less-experienced staff to troubleshoot complex network problems by using natural language. This frees up your senior engineers to focus on strategic projects rather than day-to-day support issues

Juniper WAN Assurance is designed for organizations and IT professionals who need to simplify the management of complex, distributed networks. It is particularly well-suited for:

• Enterprises with a distributed workforce: Organizations with multiple branch offices and remote locations that require a reliable, high-performance network. WAN Assurance helps these companies ensure a consistent experience for every employee and application, regardless of location.
• Managed Service Providers (MSPs): MSPs can leverage WAN Assurance to deliver a superior managed SD-WAN service to their customers. The platform's automation and proactive troubleshooting capabilities help them reduce operational costs, differentiate their offering, and provide a more reliable service.
• IT and networking professionals: The platform is built for network architects, directors, and engineers who are responsible for maintaining a healthy network. Marvis AI Assistant and AIOps features significantly reduce the time spent on manual tasks and troubleshooting, allowing these professionals to focus on strategic initiatives.
• Companies pursuing SASE and Zero Trust: For organizations looking to unify their networking and security, WAN Assurance provides a foundational platform. It works seamlessly with Juniper's Security Assurance to offer a comprehensive, single-pane-of-glass management experience for both network performance and security policies.

Distributed small- and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, telecommunications providers, and managed service providers use Juniper WAN Assurance to simplify WAN management. Here are a few success stories of customers using WAN Assurance:

T-Mobile

Volkerwessels

Deutsche Telekom

AmeriTrust

Seagate