Customer Success Story
RETN scales Eurasian network with Juniper 400G
RETN owns one of the world’s largest independent networks, with diverse routes throughout Eastern, Central and Western Europe that extend to the border of China and into Southeast Asia. With a long history as a transport provider and a reliable partner for the wholesale market, RETN is increasingly serving the communications needs of enterprises.
RETN expanded its pan-European network with Juniper 400G routing and switching for a flexible and efficient way to meet the growing demand for network services across all Pan-European region.
400G
Upgrade of pan-European core network entailed just two hours of downtime
36.8 Tbps
Network capacity
132,000
Kilometers of network and 865 points of presence
11th
Largest network in the world, ranked by the number of autonomous systems
Meet growing digital demand from east to west
“We have a challenging target to become a Tier 1 provider within the next two years,” says William Manzione, product manager at RETN. “RETN continues to invest in and expand our network to achieve that business goal.”
Customer focus and serving their needs is a priority for RETN. The service provider takes an engineering-focused, customer-driven approach as it delivers high-quality IP transit, peering, Ethernet VPN, collocation, and cloud connect services over its 132,000-kilometer network. RETN’s in-country expertise helps customers overcome cultural difficulties as they enter new territories and regions.
“Customers appreciate our expertise and flexibility,” says Manzione. “We work with them to understand their business and help them achieve their goals.”
To support customers’ growing need for high-performance, resilient connectivity, RETN wanted to upgrade its pan-European network with the next generation of 400G routers.
A seamless way to expand
RETN has relied on Juniper for its Eurasian backbone for almost 20 years. Based on proven reliability and flexibility, as well as the team’s operational expertise with Juniper platforms, RETN chose the Juniper MX10008 for its next-generation transport network and Juniper ACX Cloud Metro Routers for modernising its metro networks.
“We don’t have a strict separation between our core and metro networks,” explains Aleksei Serdiuk, project manager at RETN. "The majority of our network functions as the core, enabling us to directly link customers to the backbone, ensuring exceptional performance and resilience. We offer all customers direct access to core routers, and performance-wise, leveraging the right gear enhances the excellence of this architecture."
RETN’s Eurasian network is extensively interconnected to maximize capacity and resiliency, and the Juniper MX10008 delivers the performance, 100GbE and 400GbE interface density, and versatility that RETN wanted—as well as the investment protection it needed. The MX10008 router, which scales to 76 Tbps in 13 RU (rack units) now and is 800GbE-ready, provides ample capacity for future needs.
The network upgrade is always seamless. “With the latest change we replaced the core routers with only two hours of downtime,” says Serdiuk.
Demand for collocation services is also growing, and RETN uses the Juniper QFX5220 Switch and the Juniper QFX5120 Switch for its data center IP fabric. The QFX5220 is ideal for large, dense, and fast data center fabrics and metro networks, with 10GbE to 400GbE interfaces. RETN uses the QFX5120, which supports 1GbE to 100GbE interfaces, for access.
RETN is deploying Juniper ACX Cloud Metro routers as it expands into more cities and regions. The high-bandwidth, low-latency ACX7100 delivers 4.8 Tbps throughput for aggregation in a compact, energy-efficient footprint. The company uses the ACX710 for access. “We started in London, and next we plan to use the ACX Cloud Metro routers to connect our metro networks in the Baltics,” says Manzione.
High capacity with a global reach
Service providers and enterprises can rely on RETN for fast, reliable connectivity in western Europe as well as in fast-growing eastern European markets. RETN’s network, with a total 36.8 Tbps capacity and highly diverse routes, supports the delivery of high-performance, highly available services. With the upgrade of its European network, RETN can directly connect customers at speeds from 100 Gbps to 400 Gbps.
An all-Juniper network supports agile service delivery. RETN’s operations and engineering teams have extensive experience with Juniper solutions, which is essential to the company’s commitment to highly expert, personalised customer support.
“We don’t have a traditional helpdesk with support tiers,” explains Serdiuk. “Customers communicate with an experienced technical person right away. A team of qualified RETN engineers constantly monitors the network and take preventive measures to ensure continuing service availability. Our NOC team is dedicated to timely detect, diagnose and resolve issues in a precautionary approach. As we grow, we see the benefits of this way of operating; it’s one of the secrets of our superior customer experience.”
The Products
MX10003
The SDN-enabled MX10003 Universal Routing Platform is built for space and power constrained environments. It is also a carrier-grade, multiservice platform with extensive automation capabilities enabling operators to meet ever expanding bandwidth, subscriber and service demands. The MX10003 Universal Routing Platform delivers 2.4 Tbps of system capacity in a 3 RU unit and supports 144 x 10 GbE or 24 x 100GbE interfaces in a single chassis.
MX10004 and MX10008
The MX10004 and MX10008 Universal Routing Platforms deliver unprecedented scale for service provider and cloud operators, enabling advanced business and residential multi-service edge services with a cloud-optimized form factor, and superior cost-per-bit economics. The MX10004 and MX10008 are SDN-enabled, delivering up to 76.8 Tbps of system capacity in 4, 8, or 16 slot chassis supporting dense 100 GbE, 400 GbE, and, in the future, 800 GbE interfaces. These carrier-grade platforms have extensive automation capabilities.
MX304
The MX304 Universal Routing Platform delivers massive scale and efficiency for space- and power-constrained environments. It is a carrier-grade, multiservice platform with extensive automation capabilities enabling operators to meet constantly expanding bandwidth, subscriber, and service demands. The MX304 Universal Routing Platform delivers 4.8 Tbps of system capacity in a 2 RU unit and supports 96 x 10 or 25 GbE, 48 x 40, 50, or 100 GbE, or 12 x 400 GbE interfaces in a single chassis.
MX204
The SDN-enabled MX204 Universal Routing Platform provides a modular, automated, carrier-grade solution for service providers and enterprises. The compact platform brings 400 Gbps capacity and a full feature set to space and power constrained environments.
QFX5220
The QFX5220 line offers up to 400GbE interfaces for very large, dense, and fast standards-based fabrics based on proven internet-scale technology. QFX5220 switches are an optimal choice for spine-and-leaf data center fabric deployments as well as metro use cases.
QFX5120
The QFX5120 line offers 1/10/25/40/100GbE switches designed for data center, data center edge, data center interconnect and campus deployments with requirements for low-latency Layer 2/Layer 3 features and advanced EVPN-VXLAN capabilities.
ACX710
The ACX710 1U router is a hardened multiservice solution that delivers the performance, capacity, and features needed to provide universal metro access and aggregation services. It offers a high-density, cost-optimized metro solution in a compact footprint.
ACX7100
The ACX7100, part of the ACX7000 family, delivers high density and performance in a compact, 1 U footprint. Ideal for service provider, large enterprise, wholesale, and data center applications, it helps operators deliver premium customer and user experiences.
Published November 2023