At the recent Mobility Field Day 13 (MFD13) event in San Jose, Juniper Networks kicked off the vendor presentations discussing their new products and features. For years Juniper and Mist have been using Tech Field Day as an audience to showcase all their new stuff. That was the case as always. This time, one of their leading products has some ties into the recent public vernacular, following some recent technological breakthroughs with the infamous wreckage of the Titanic.
Digital Twins
Recently, National Geographic on Disney+ released a documentary digging into new details about the Titanic. The new WOW feature of this documentary that has everyone buzzing is the usages of digital scans of the seabed and wreckage. These scans, when stitched together, created a Digital Twin, a detailed capture of a moment in time that can be analyzed without the risks of the tragic OceanGate implosion.
Previously, scientists and researchers were limited to the micro viewpoint outside of a submarine’s porthole or the camera lens of an unmanned submersible. You got to see the little pieces of the wreck but were unable to see the two square mile graveyard as a whole. Models have been created that helped but models have to limit details. You can only zoom in so close to a model before you lose the detail.
In the documentary, a team of experts examine the Titanic up close in its full life size devastation, something impossible to do in a submersible or from a video lens. By stitching millions of photos together, scientists and researchers are able to see the full vision of the aftermath. You can zoom out or in to see macro or micro details about the sinking of the Titanic. From the Digital Twin, the scientists were able to determine, contrary to popular belief, that the crew was attempting to lower lifeboats up until the very last moment, and how a different outcome probably would have happened if the Titanic had hit the iceberg straight on instead of turning to try to avoid it.
Similarly, Digital Twin technology is changing computer networking. I first heard of Digital Twin technology about two years ago on a podcast. That got me thinking about the benefits that this new modeling system could provide. I didn’t even consider the possibilities that Juniper is now using with the digital twins.
Digital Twin technology takes a view of the world, whether that is a famous ocean liner on the bottom of the ocean or an enterprise network, and gives you the ability to research and see the bigger picture or finite details. Like Doctor Strange can see all the possible outcomes in Avengers: Infinity War leading to Endgame, technologists can use a Digital Twin of a network to analyze multiple possibilities to pinpoint and perform root cause analysis. Instead of fully relying on the experience of a couple seasoned network engineers, Digital Twin and AI technologies relies on data from the experience of thousands of networks and network engineers. This enables engineers to quickly rule out possibilities and get to the actual cause quicker.
Marvis Minis
Mist cofounder, Bob Friday, was sitting at home watching Watson compete on Jeopardy. This lit off a lightbulb in his mind and cause him to want to integrate this new AI machine learning technology to solve networking issues. From that Mist was born followed by Marvis. Mist got their start focusing on the future of using AI to troubleshoot and improve enterprise networks, starting with the Wi-Fi network. Then the game changed again when Juniper Mist announced Marvis Minis in March 2024.
Personally, I was lucky enough to find Mist before the Juniper acquisition and got to see some of the beginning of the technology that would soon to be sold to Juniper for $405 Million and then is now in process of being bought by HPE Aruba for $14 Billion, if it passes the courts and the DoJ. That is a powerful technology, and the next iteration, beyond just a Marvis chatbot, is the power that comes from digital twins.
Marvis Minis takes the current settings of an enterprise network and can run all the possibilities, just like Doctor Strange, to determine the root cause or get close to the cause of network problems. Marvis helps you reach the mean time to innocences (MTTI) much faster to move the blame from the Wi-Fi to other sources such as the ARP table or DHCP. That is what we have been using for the last year with Marvis Minis 1.0.
Marvis Minis Goes To The Internet
Until now, Marvis Minis Digital Twin was limited to just the local network infrastructure and certain applications, such as DHCP, ARP, and DNS. A digital copy of the network on the Wi-Fi, Switching, and Routing sides only. Any issues beyond the local network, Marvis was unable to see those possibilities. That changed at MFD13.
Bob Friday, announced that Marvis Minis were going global, expanding beyond the local network and moving into the SD-WAN and Internet. From the Client to the Cloud, Marvis Minis are now able to see more possibilities. Want to know if there is an issue with AWS or Google Cloud? Marvis Minis is now able to test those possibilities. Want to know if the Wi-Fi is the problem, Minis already does that. Have an application that needs better performance tracking and testing, that’s possible.
The Network is moving from a Reactive to a Proactive troubleshooting model. Instead of waiting on the phone call from an end user experiencing a problem, IT teams can now find out issues and solve them quicker, or prove that the problem is with the application servers or at the telco level. Juniper is calling this new ability, a Self-Driving Network. Juniper says that the troubleshooting is moving to where Marvis can make changes to the network to resolve problems in real-time.
Beyond just expanding the reach of Marvis Minis, Juniper also announced that Marvis Minis are getting their own Service Level Expectations (SLE). Marvis has had SLEs for many years that help direct the live data. Marvis Minis SLEs take that one step further and gives you a Doctor Strange viewpoint of the possibilities examining the Digital Twin, in real-time.
Canaries in the Coal Mine
For several years, Juniper Mist has been using Zoom and Microsoft Teams as canaries in the coal mine for discovering network health. To get the benefits, you integrate your Juniper account with those companies and Juniper starts pulling performance data. Sadly, this is something I’m unable to do at my day job because of our Zoom accounts are provided by a larger statewide organization. They won’t give me admin access to authorize Zoom integration with Juniper. I have Microsoft Teams integrated but most of our web meetings are on Zoom or Cisco Webex.
BUT.. what this solves is you don’t necessarily need that integration. You still get benefits from integrating Zoom and Microsoft Teams because those technologies have some of the highest requirements of the network, with real time synchronization of video and audio that had memes created about it during the COVID lockdowns.
What you get is the ability to determine the possibilities for other canary like applications. The possibility for using data from Juniper’s competitor, Cisco Webex, is now possible while a true integration is most likely never going to happen.
The expanded Marvis Minis brings new troubleshooting techniques. Instead of looking out a porthole of a submarine to find a problem affecting the whole network, Marvis Minis evaluates the whole network and directs your resources closer to where the problem is actually located. Do you need a 1000 foot view of the network? Marvis Minis can give you it. Need to drill into a problem with a client? Marvis evaluates and gives you those details.
What’s else came out of MFD from Juniper? More data.. Need help onboarding your clients into the 802.1X WPA3-Enterprise Wi-Fi network? Install the Marvis Client. How is Wi-Fi 7 working? What trends is Juniper seeing? Wes Purvis provides the data for that. There is a reason Juniper is making waves in the industry and has companies spending billions of dollars to acquire them. No need for installing Raspberry Pis or other Sensors. The network provides the data you need. No overlays required.
I highly recommend anyone interested in Juniper’s Digital Twins to go watch the full stream from the Tech Field Day’s website or Youtube.
Now if we could just get Marvis Minis like functionality working in the Private 5G world.. I’m still hoping.