Juniper Session Smart Router (SSR) Series
The Session Smart Router is a software-based router that enables tunnel-free, application-aware, and Zero Trust secure networks, ideal for modern digital businesses requiring agile and resilient SD-WAN connectivity. It combines a service-centric control plane with a session-aware data plane to provide IP routing, feature-rich policy management, advanced data collection, and analytics, alongside high-speed packet forwarding, classification, and security functions. The SSR scales from small branch offices to high-capacity edge routers and hyperscale, software-defined data centers, supporting use cases like SD-WAN, SD-Branch, multicloud, and IoT.
Key Features and Benefits
- Tunnel-Free Architecture: Utilizes Secure Vector Routing (SVR) to reduce bandwidth usage by 30–50%, improving application performance and reducing costs compared to traditional tunnel-based solutions. Eliminates double encryption overhead for enhanced efficiency.
- Application Awareness: Supports load balancing and traffic steering based on session policies and network status, ensuring optimal performance for critical applications. Provides granular insights into user experiences, anomalies, and root causes via Juniper Mist WAN Assurance and Mist AI™.
- Zero Trust Security: Inherent deny-by-default access control, directionality, and segmentation policies ensure robust security without sacrificing performance. The Advanced Security Pack adds URL filtering and Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDS/IPS) for protection against advanced threats.
- Scalability and Flexibility: Scales to thousands of sites with centralized orchestration via the Juniper Session Smart Conductor or Juniper Mist Cloud. Supports deployment on customer premises equipment (CPE), data center servers, white-box platforms, or cloud environments (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
- Simplified Management: Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP), automated templating, and AI-driven insights simplify deployment and management, reducing deployment times from days to minutes.
- Advanced Security Pack: Integrates URL filtering to block specific sites and an IDS/IPS with an extensive signature database to protect against vulnerabilities. Can be deployed standalone or alongside SRX Series Firewalls and supports SASE integration with Juniper Secure Edge.
- Virtual Network Function (VNF) Support: Runs as a VNF on Juniper NFX150, NFX250, and NFX350 platforms using VirtIO and SRIOV technologies, or as instances on AWS and Azure.
Deployment Options
- Physical: Certified white-box platforms or Juniper NFX Series platforms.
- Virtual: Runs on VMware, KVM, or public clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).
- Management Platforms: Juniper Mist Cloud or Session Smart Conductor, creating a distributed control plane and session-aware data plane for centralized management and full-stack visibility.
Use Cases
- SD-WAN and SD-Branch: Delivers cost-effective, high-performance connectivity for branch offices.
- Multicloud: Connects cloud environments with secure, scalable routing.
- IoT: Supports IoT deployments with robust security and application-aware routing.
- Data Center Edge: Scales to high-capacity edge routing for software-defined data centers.
Operating System
- Junos OS, with integration into Juniper’s AI-Native Networking Platform for AIOps, Mist AI, and comprehensive network management.