Weekly Networking News: Cisco, Juniper & Nokia (Aug 3, 2025)

This week’s networking news round‑up explores how the industry’s biggest vendors are pushing the boundaries of AI‑ready networks, data centre fabrics and service provider solutions.

Cisco – AI‑ready networks and data centres

At Cisco Live 2025, Cisco’s leadership highlighted a bold pivot: the company is positioning itself as an AI‑driven firm with networking at its core. The focus is on building AI‑ready networks that can support the massive data flows generated by training and inference workloads. Cisco announced new high‑capacity switches based on its Silicon One chips, an AI Canvas to accelerate AI development, and integrated security and observability tools such as Hypershield. This shift from simply delivering network hardware to providing a unified platform underscores how important data centre networking has become in the age of agentic AI.

 

 

Juniper – AI‑nati vedata centre and routing

Juniper’s AI‑Native Networking Platform, now part of HPE, integrates Mist AI, the Marvis virtual assistant and Apstra automation to simplify operations across campus, data centre and WAN. Juniper says its AI data centre solution provides a quick way to deploy high‑performance AI training and inference networks while remaining flexible and easy to manage. On the WAN side, the company’s AI‑native routing family delivers robust 400 GbE and 800 GbE capabilities for high performance, reliability and sustainability. This combination of automation and high‑speed hardware earned Juniper recognition as a leader in the 2025 Magic Quadrant for enterprise wired and wireless LAN infrastructure.

Nokia – Visionary in data centre switching

Nokia was named a Visionary in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for data centre switching. The company’s portfolio includes the 7220 and 7250 IXR platforms, SR Linux operating system and Event‑Driven Automation framework, with options to run community SONiC software. These switches support 400 GbE and 800 GbE speeds and emphasise automation and reliability, reflecting Nokia’s vision for AI‑native data centres and service provider networks. The recognition underscores both the completeness of Nokia’s vision and its ability to execute in the data centre market.

Summary

Across the board, networking vendors are rapidly adapting to AI’s demands. Cisco is refocusing its strategy around AI‑ready data centre networks; Juniper, under HPE, is promoting AI‑native platforms that combine high‑speed hardware with automation; and Nokia is expanding its vision with next‑generation switching fabrics. We’ll continue monitoring these developments every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to keep you informed of the latest trends.

AI‑Native Networking: How Juniper’s HPE Acquisition and Cisco Live 2025 Signal a New Era for Data Centers

 The networking industry is at an inflection point, where artificial intelligence workloads and the demands of modern data centers are forcing vendors to rethink their architectures. In July 2025, Hewlett Packard Enterprise completed its US$14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks, creating a combined HPE Networking business that doubles HPE’s networking revenue and positions it as a direct competitor to Cisco. A month earlier, Cisco used its Cisco Live 2025 conference to unveil an AI‑first vision for networking.

## HPE–Juniper: building an AI‑native competitor to Cisco

HPE’s acquisition brings Juniper’s data‑center and service‑provider expertise — think EVPN‑VXLAN fabrics, high‑performance routing and Mist AI — under the same roof as HPE’s Aruba campus networking and GreenLake cloud platform. Juniper’s former CEO, Rami Rahim, now leads the combined organization. The integration aims to give customers a unified network architecture spanning enterprise, data center and service‑provider segments, with consistent management across on‑premises and cloud deployments. For network architects, this promises simplified hybrid‑cloud implementations and new competition to Cisco’s dominant market position.

## Cisco Live 2025: agentic AI and AI‑ready networks

At Cisco Live 2025, Cisco’s president and chief product officer Jeetu Patel announced a cascade of AI‑driven solutions designed to modernize infrastructure and revolutionize IT operations. Key highlights include:

• AgenticOps and the Deep Network Model – a domain‑specific large language model trained on decades of Cisco expertise that diagnoses network issues and troubleshoots automatically.

• AI Canvas and Intelligent Workspace – a generative AI interface for NetOps, SecOps and DevOps teams, scheduled for general availability in October 2025.

• Secure and scalable AI‑ready networks – a unified management platform for Catalyst, Meraki and industrial devices; ThousandEyes assurance integrated with Splunk monitoring; and a quantum‑resistant security model.

• Hardware refresh – routers offering up to three times the throughput of prior models and Catalyst switches delivering up to 1.6 terabits per second of stacked bandwidth.

Cisco is also partnering with OpenAI to develop compute clusters tailored for large language models. The message is clear: AI will be deeply embedded in network operations, and networks must be designed to support AI workloads.

## Why AI needs data‑center networking innovation

Training large language models requires moving terabytes of data between hundreds of GPUs, creating east–west traffic patterns that overwhelm legacy data‑center networks. Modern fabrics use technologies such as EVPN‑VXLAN, segment routing and RDMA over Converged Ethernet to deliver high bandwidth and low latency. Both HPE‑Juniper and Cisco are investing heavily to ensure their platforms meet these requirements. For network engineers, this convergence of AI and networking marks a new chapter: understanding protocols like EVPN, segment routing and BGP EVPN will be essential for designing AI‑ready data centers.

## Conclusion

The convergence of networking and AI is transforming how data centers are built and operated. HPE’s integration of Juniper brings Mist AI and EVPN fabrics into a larger portfolio, while Cisco’s agentic AI and AI‑ready architecture offer a unified platform and refreshed hardware. Staying ahead means keeping pace with these developments and mastering the underlying technologies. Stay tuned for upcoming posts where we’ll dive deeper into protocols like OSPF, IS‑IS and segment routing — and explore how they support the AI‑native networks of tomorrow.

JunOS upgrade

JUNOS upgrade on MX960 platform.

Recently I have been participating in project where we had to upgade few big boxes in the network. I have been upgrading Alcatel SR7750 TiMOS, Juniper MX960 JunOS and few Cisco boxes.

Here I am going to show you how to upgrade JunOS on Juniper MX960. I hope this can be usefull.