Juniper (Sunnyvale, Calif.) released its M5 and M10 routers on Tuesday (Sept. 19), both targeted at the network edge but containing the same hardware used in the M160, the company's fastest system for the network core.

By adapting its technology to the network edge, where speed is less of a requirement, Juniper officials said they have created the "headroom" for a feature-rich system, meaning it has enough processing power to handle complex features without falling behind the speed of incoming traffic.

Because Juniper started at the core of the network, the edge is a natural area for expansion, and one that service providers have begun to query Juniper about, said Carl Showalter, the company's vice president of marketing. "As we've gotten customers to use our devices in the core of the network, they've gotten comfortable with us," he said.

It's a maxim in networking that adding features slows down your switch or router. With the M5 and M10, Juniper's plan is to offer enough power that such slowdowns won't make a difference — the machine can still perform at an expected speed, which probably won't exceed OC-48 (2.5 Gbits/second) for the network edge.

"We're moving to this space because of business reasons," said John Stewart, manager of marketing engineering for Juniper. "But we're also moving to this space because customers see that we have the technology to remove that bottleneck."

Like their predecessors, the M5 and M10 are based on Juniper's own packet-forwarding ASIC, which it calls the Internet Processor II. The chip consists of packet processing "primitives" whose exact function can be changed on the fly by Junos, Juniper's proprietary networking operating system, analogous to Cisco Systems Inc.'s IOS.

"The ASIC wasn't implemented in any kind of a hard-wired way," Stewart said. "It makes the addition of new services a software effort and not one of these long hardware processes."

It also means software features for Juniper's systems must be programmed into Junos by Juniper. Most carriers aren't asking for the ability to alter Junos and wouldn't have the in-house software expertise to do so effectively anyway, Stewart said.

The M5 and M10 will support most of the same line interfaces as the M160, except for an OC-192 (10-Gbit/s) connection, which isn't yet required at the edge. In addition, Juniper has rolled out new, slower interfaces such as DS-1 and channelized DS-3, intended specifically for edge traffic.

Another concession to the edge is that the M5 and M10 are compact, only three rack units (13.3 cm) high. This is important particularly for metropolitan markets, where lots of equipment has to be crammed into a small space, Stewart said.

Juniper also is planning software features specifically for the edge. For example, the 4.1 version of Junos, also released Tuesday, includes programming for rate limiting, which allows a service provider to prevent users from exceeding the bandwidth they pay for.

The M5 includes four interface slots, while the M10 includes eight. Both systems are currently shipping, at prices of roughly $25,000 and $40,000 respectively.

Slots are populated by physical interface cards (PIC), which differ according to the types of interfaces required. PICs cost an additional $10,000 each.