Orange Poland picks Juniper Networks for major core network upgrade

To ready itself to meet the growing demands of its fixed and mobile network users, specifically in preparation for the roll-out of 5G, Orange Poland has embarked on a project to enhance the resilience and automation capabilities of its IP network core.

The telco has more than 20 million subscribers across mobile, fibre to the home (FTTH), digital subscriber line (DSL) and fixed telephony, and the upgrade will see it automate its WAN, enhancing the management of label-switched paths (LSPs), redirecting LSPs for maintaining the network resilience in case of failures and maintenance windows.

It will also attempt to optimise infrastructure by monitoring telemetry data, combined with planning tools, to help create explicit routing paths dynamically using a global view based on user-defined constraints.

The new WAN network will have an automated toolset for visibility into operational performance and infrastructure resources. This will allow Orange Poland to take advantage of big data analytics and machine learning in a distributed architecture that puts the power of self-driving infrastructure at the core of its cloud. Benefits include increased network utilisation and enabling a customised and programmable networking experience for the creation of traffic engineering paths across the network.

Orange Poland’s core network will be based on the MX Series 5G universal routing platform from artificial intelligence (AI)-driven networks provider Juniper Networks. With the deployment of the NorthStar Controller, Juniper’s WAN controller for software-defined traffic optimisation, Orange Poland will gain granular visibility into and control over Internet Protocol (IP) Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) flows in its network.

Looking ahead, in 2020 the telco will add Juniper’s Contrail HealthBot to utilise its telemetry and management features, with the aim of improving service delivery across its network. Real-time and historic monitoring, performance visibility and dynamic optimisation features improve cloud orchestration, security, accounting and planning.

“Orange Poland is constantly evaluating ways to improve the performance and reliability of our network,” remarked the telco’s director of WAN transport, Witold Konopka. “By implementing Juniper’s intelligent network automation tools in our core network, we can deliver savings in network operations, mitigate network incidents and better deploy network resources – a vital consideration for our move to 5G.”