Juniper's WiMAX Gets Steel Belted

This has to be good as I remember our first network AAA server we built with steel Belted Radius almost a decade ago, still operational in the background. One of the most outside facing services have a trouble with AAA, Authentication Authorization and Accounting. Our first H323 based VoIP Gatekeeper was using SBR for these purposes.

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 25, 2008 -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, today introduced support for WiMAX broadband wireless networks with its Service Provider Steel-Belted Radius (SBR) Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) Server. With mobile WiMAX support, Juniper's SBR Carrier AAA Server will provide a single, unified multi-access AAA system that delivers the flexibility to serve the rapidly evolving mobile landscape, and will enable providers to accelerate the delivery of new services while leveraging existing network assets.

WiMAX is a next-generation mobile broadband technology that offers dramatically improved range and capacity over traditional wireless technologies, however mobile WiMAX places extraordinary demands on Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) systems, which need to support multiple Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) methods; manage mobile IP sessions; and facilitate roaming. Juniper's SBR Carrier AAA solution will address these challenges by supporting the methods required by the WiMAX standard for authenticating users and devices (EAP-TLS, EAP-TTLS and EAP-AKA), as well as legacy technologies such as EAP-SIM for backward compatibility--on a single, unified platform. With its mobile IP key derivation and management functionality, the SBR Carrier AAA Server will also have the intelligence to set up mobile IP sessions; manage mobile sessions throughout their lifetimes; and support roaming in both home and visited networks.

The Juniper Networks Steel-Belted Radius family of high-performance RADIUS servers is a core component of many mobile operator networks, providing centralized user authentication and access policy management, with the performance and reliability required by the world's largest mobile operators. Juniper Networks SBR servers give mobile operators control over how users access and use their networks--preventing unauthorized access, ensuring that users comply with security policies before they connect, granting the appropriate level of access to each user, and delivering accounting records to a billing/tracking system. More than 120 service providers worldwide rely on Juniper's SBR today to meet their mission-critical AAA needs. With its scalability, reliability, flexibility, and high performance, Juniper's SBR Carrier AAA Server will offer strategic value to service providers seeking to support mobile WiMAX services.

"By delivering high throughput, always-on access to content rich applications and broadband wireless services, WiMAX represents an enormous opportunity for many mobile operators, and Juniper's Advanced Mobile Solutions can help operators to accelerate the delivery of WiMAX and other advanced mobile services," said Mallik Tatipamula, vice president, mobile/FMC Business, Juniper Networks. "The enhanced SBR Server platform is another example of Juniper's service-enabling network infrastructure that expands and accelerates service model innovation by enabling providers to rapidly and cost-effectively introduce new services such as WiMAX."

Support for mobile WiMAX is expected to be generally available as a separate software module for SBR Carrier AAA server in Q3 2008. Additional information can be found at www.juniper.net.

tag: AAA, VoIP Gatekeeper, SBR Carrier AAA server, mobile WiMAX, WiMAX, Steel-Belted Radius, WiMAX broadband,