Juniper Routers and Switches Power the Core of ESnet4 Research & Education Network

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA, May 11, 2009 -- Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), the leader in high-performance networking, announced that the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) ESnet4, a best-in-class research and education (R&E) network built with Juniper routers and switches, has won the highly coveted "Excellence.gov" award from the American Council for Technology and Industry Advisory Council (ACT/IAC).

Excellence.gov awards are among the most prestigious given in the U.S. federal government arena, reflecting ACT/IAC's position as the leading association of government and industry leaders collaborating on common issues facing the federal IT and contracting community.

ESnet4 was named the winner in the category of "Excellence in Leveraging Technology," one of five 2009 Excellence.gov categories. More than 60 federal programs submitted projects for consideration. A panel of judges made up of federal government and industry executives reviewed the nominations, selected 21 finalists, and announced the five winners at the annual ACT/IAC Excellence.gov Awards Luncheon on Tuesday, April 14, in Washington, D.C.

Juniper Networks MX Series Ethernet Services Routers and EX4200 Ethernet Switches comprise the entire core of the multiple-10Gbps ESnet infrastructure. Officially known as the Energy Sciences Network Fourth Generation, ESnet4 provides direct connections to more than 40 major DOE research sites, as well as fast interconnections to more than 100 other global R&E networks, allowing scientists to make effective use of unique DOE research facilities and computing resources independent of time and geographic location.

ESnet4 allows the R&E community to access, share and analyze massive amounts of data being generated by large-scale scientific research projects around the world. These include the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland; the Earth System Grid II (ESG) for research in global climate change; and many other key research initiatives. The LHC alone is expected to deliver 100Gbps of data nonstop onto ESnet4 by 2010.

As the award-winning nomination stated, "ESnet4 is able to reliably move the massive datasets resulting from large-scale scientific experiments. Through a combination of innovative uses of existing technologies and the development and application of homegrown networking protocols, estimates are that ESnet4 will generate cost savings of more than $20 million between FY2007-2013 over scaling the previous generation network, and availability of the network increased from 99.989 percent in 2006 to 99.997 percent in 2008."

Steve Cotter, ESnet department head at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, accepted the award on behalf of the ESnet4 team and the DOE Office of Science, Advanced Scientific Computing Research. "We are honored and delighted to receive this recognition for ESnet4," said Cotter. "ESnet plays a vital role in the U.S. and world research community, and its performance and reliability are absolutely essential to hundreds of critical programs. We are proud to serve our R&E clients with near-Five 9's availability, and we are happy to recognize the role that Juniper continues to play in ensuring our networks meet those high performance standards."
Juniper Networks announced its contributions to ESnet4 earlier this year.