Juniper Enhances Platforms

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today announced new software enhancements for the WX and WXC application acceleration platforms that fortify application security without compromising performance. Juniper also announced enhancements to the WX Central Management System (CMS) that allow for the integration of content distribution and WAN optimization within a single platform. Through these latest innovations, Juniper will help customers to accelerate the deployment of new applications, enhance user productivity and gain IT infrastructure and management efficiencies across the extended enterprise.

Security Without Compromise

Juniper's WX/WXC platforms running the new WX software (WXOS) version 5.5 now include the new Application Flow Acceleration (AppFlow) for SSL feature, which is designed to speed encrypted application performance by as much as 25X over the wide-area network while helping enterprises maintain end-to-end security of business-critical information. AppFlow for SSL accelerates and optimizes a broad array of secure collaboration, customer relationship management, financial accounting and other mission-critical applications from companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and SAP. By participating in the application's trust model, WX/WXC platforms deployed in the branch office and data center are able to fully optimize and accelerate SSL-encrypted traffic without requiring changes to either the client or server.

With the new WXOS 5.5, Juniper has also added transparent acceleration for Server Message Block (SMB)-signed traffic. SMB signing is enabled by default on Windows 2003 servers when acting as domain controllers and helps prevent 'man-in-the-middle' attacks by ensuring that data packets have not been changed between the client and server. Signed SMB traffic creates complex scenarios for optimization, requiring enterprises to increase costs and management burdens by deploying proxy servers at the branch, or IT departments to disable signatures resulting in security compromises. With the introduction of transparent SMB signing, Juniper's WX/WXC platforms can provide 'zero touch' optimization and acceleration of signed SMB traffic without compromising the security or integrity of the data as it crosses the WAN.

Juniper Networks Inc.