ACX500, ACX1000, ACX2000, and ACX4000 Universal Metro Routers Datasheet

• ACX2200: The ACX2200 is a compact, Ethernet only, environmentally hardened router with fanless passive cooling and a fixed-port configuration featuring four copper 10/100/1000 Mbps interfaces, four combination copper/fiber GbE ports, two GbE SFP ports, and two 10 GbE SFP+ ports, making it ideal for IP-RAN deployments.
• ACX4000: The 2.5 U ACX4000 offers two Modular Interface Card (MIC) slots that can house 16 T1/E1 ports, 6 GbE copper/fiber combination ports, or 4 CHOC3/STM-1 ports. The platform also provides a number of fixed ports that include 2x10GbE, 2xGbE SFP, or 8xGbE copper/fiber combination. It is optimized to enhance the mobile subscriber experience while significantly improving network monetization for service providers.

The environmentally hardened small form factor ACX Series platforms deliver comprehensive routing and security services, application awareness and control, with high availability to ensure business continuity and resiliency, and they are perfect choices for supporting such mission-critical communications networks. The ACX Series enables seamless migration from legacy TDM/SONET to Ethernet/IP, with support for legacy services.

The accelerating speed of innovation is forcing mobile operators to migrate to LTE-Advanced and 5G capabilities. LTE-Advanced and 5G place more stringent requirements for capacity, latency, synchronization, and security on the network infrastructure.

Supporting 1GbE/10GbE interfaces and throughput in a variety of small form factors starting at 60 Gbps, the ACX Series satisfies LTE-Advanced and 5G capacity requirements. In addition to high capacity and density to address scaling requirements, the ACX Series also addresses end-user quality requirements through high-precision timing, advanced security features, and enhanced SLA management capabilities.

The ACX Series supports all mobile services profiles including 2G/3G high-speed packet access (HSPA), 4G LTE, LTE-Advanced, and small cell. In a typical backhaul deployment scenario, the ACX500 is used as a small cell router and grandmaster, whereas the ACX1000 line, ACX2000 line, or ACX4000 are macro cell site routers.

As enterprises and governments are embarking on their digital transformation journey, they need to deploy and upgrade their mission-critical communication networks, some of which are located in demanding and harsh environments such as field area networks for providing supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system connectivity. These include power utilities, oil and gas, mining, rail and transportation, defense and public safety industries, and so on.

Powered by Juniper Networks Junos^® operating system, ACX Series routers complement Juniper Networks MX Series 3D Universal Edge Routers through a flexible and scalable service provider and enterprise branch routing portfolio optimized to support rapidly growing mobile, video, and cloud computing applications. The ACX Series introduces Juniper’s proven IP/MPLS leadership from core and edge into the access layers of the network. Maintaining relative simplicity in the access network, the ACX Series supports a rich suite of L2, L3, and IP/MPLS functionality to allow large-scale seamless MPLS networks with simplified service provisioning and operations.

• Seamless MPLS: ACX Series routers support both Ethernet bridging and MPLS. Growing demands for bandwidth are accompanied by network growth in terms of number of nodes. In some cases, we can see demands to scale a network up to tens of thousands of nodes. Seamless MPLS architecture enables scale and service flexibility by decoupling physical topology for transport and service layers. With a seamless MPLS architecture, service providers can leverage the existing investment of MPLS in the core and edge and extend the operational benefit into the access layer. This enables higher network service flexibility and higher scaling parameters of the metro area network (MAN), where metro Ethernet services can span across multiple network segments and be seamlessly terminated at any point of the network or cloud.
• Junos OS: Junos OS is a reliable, high-performance, modular network operating system that is supported across all of Juniper’s physical and virtual routing, switching, and security platforms. Junos OS improves network operations and increases service availability, performance, and security with features like low-latency multicast, comprehensive quality of service (QoS), unified in-service software upgrade (unified ISSU), and Junos Continuity, which eliminates the risk and complexity of OS upgrades. Junos OS comes with embedded scripting tools and APIs, which enable automation of many routines and practical integration with any operator’s back-end management tools. With secure programming interfaces, the Juniper Extension Toolkit (JET), versatile scripting support, and integration with popular orchestration frameworks, Junos OS offers flexible options for DevOps-style management that can unlock more value from the network.
• Management: Junos Space^® Network Management Platform provides comprehensive management with broad fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management (FCAPS) capabilities, for both device and service-level management. For device management, it supports Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF), CLI, SNMP v1/v2/v3 protocols, while its northbound APIs support easy integration with existing network management systems (NMS) and operations/business support systems (OSS/BSS). Running on the Junos Space platform, Junos Space Connectivity Services Director ensures effortless end-to-end service provisioning of metro Ethernet (E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, E-Access), VPLS, L3VPN, EVPN, and MPLS, using a simple interface to design, validate, and manage these services. Another application of Junos Space, Cross Provisioning Platform helps service providers provision E-Line, L2/L3 VPN services, and virtual private LAN service (VPLS) between Juniper devices and those from third-party vendors. The Juniper Networks proNX Optical Director software platform manages and controls Juniper Programmable Photonic Layer open-line system elements and Juniper coherent dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) transponder-based solutions, as well as integrates DWDM transponders on MX Series routers, PTX Series Packet Transport Routers, QFX Series switches, and TCX1000 Programmable Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs).

The ACX Series delivers new levels of programmability, reliability, and scalability to service provider and enterprise networks. The ACX Series portfolio improves customer satisfaction while lowering the total cost of operating, maintaining, and updating the network infrastructure.

Based on Junos OS automation capabilities, the ACX Series routers support a zero touch deployment (ZTD) model. The ZTD model significantly reduces the time for any new equipment installation and provisioning, resulting in lower OpEx and TCO and improved operational efficiency. In addition, this model reduces the traditional complexity of deploying MPLS in the access layer.

The ACX Series incorporates highly scalable and reliable hardware-based timing technology, based on Juniper’s intellectual property that meets the strictest LTE-A requirements for frequency and phase synchronization. Providing an accurate timing reference is one of the most significant technical and operational challenges for deployment of LTE radio access networks. ACX Series routers support Synchronous Ethernet for frequency as well as Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for both frequency and phase synchronization. Furthermore, the ACX Series allows Synchronous Ethernet and PTP to be used in a hybrid mode for the highest level of frequency (10 ppb) and phase (< 500 nS) accuracy required for LTE-A. The ACX500, ACX500-O, and ACX500-O-PoE also provide an integrated GPS receiver and can act as a grandmaster (GM) clock for a distributed PTP implementation, making them an ideal choice for the aggregation of small cell traffic when the backhaul is transported over the Internet.

One of the significant challenges in the rollout of small cells is the risk of security threats from easily accessible locations. The ACX500 enables advanced security services such as IPsec, Media Access Control Security (MACsec), Network Address Translation (NAT), and TPM to protect against potential vulnerabilities to the network as well as subscriber traffic. Hardware acceleration through a purpose-built services engine enhances the scalability of these computationally intensive services to support a large-scale small cell deployment.

The ACX Series routers provide a comprehensive set of features. Using 802.3ah, 802.1ag, Y.1731, Two-Way Active Measurement Protocol (TWAMP), and RFC2544, mobile operators and wholesale service providers can make sure that the services being offered through ACX Series routers are meeting the desired SLAs.

Most of the ACX Series models such as ACX500, ACX1x00, and ACX2x00, are temperature hardened and support passive cooling for outdoor deployments in extreme weather conditions. The ACX500-O and ACX500-O-PoE are based on environmentally hardened, ruggedized chassis and are IP65-compliant for outdoor deployments with no need for an enclosure or cabinet. These routers are designed to be pole or strand mounted alongside outdoor small cells.

Junos Continuity and unified ISSU features remove the downtime risks associated with implementing new hardware or upgrading operating systems. Junos Continuity eliminates OS upgrades and system reboots when adding new hardware to ACX Series routers—a plug-in package provides the drivers and support files needed to bring the hardware online. Unified ISSU reduces the risks associated with OS upgrades by enabling upgrades between two different Junos OS releases (major or minor) with no control plane disruption and minimal traffic disruption on the forwarding plane.

The ACX Series routers are MEF CE 2.0-compliant (excluding the ACX6000 line) and are able to support all carrier Ethernet services, which include E-Line, E-LAN, E-Tree, and E-Access.

The ACX Series routers support a full feature set of L2, L3, and IP/MPLS. Service providers cannot only monetize Layer 2 Ethernet services, but also Layer 3, IP/IP-VPN services, etc., for greater monetization.

At Juniper Networks, we are dedicated to dramatically simplifying network operations and driving superior experiences for end users. Our solutions deliver industry-leading insight, automation, security and AI to drive real business results. We believe that powering connections will bring us closer together while empowering us all to solve the world’s greatest challenges of well-being, sustainability and equality.

1000397 - 018 - EN AUGUST 2023