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October 30, 2025
AI-Native Routing for the AI Era with NEC and HPE Juniper Networking
AI-Native Routing for the AI Era with NEC and HPE Juniper Networking
Connectivity is the foundation of the AI Era. Is your WAN ready?
The AI revolution is reshaping business operations at unprecedented speed. In less than three years since ChatGPT's launch, generative AI has reached mass adoption faster than any previous technology breakthrough—including the PC, internet, and smartphone. For enterprise leaders, this creates both extraordinary opportunities and critical operational challenges for wide-area networks (WANs).
Why Traditional WAN Operations struggles with AI workloads
As companies race to deploy Generative AI across their business functions, many struggle to keep up with the unfamiliar network operations demands of AI connectivity. Less than half of enterprises believe their wide area network (WAN) is fully prepared for AI traffic[1]. Unlike traditional business applications, AI workloads create:
- Sudden traffic spikes from real-time inferencing that can quickly overwhelm network capacity and risk impacting other critical business applications. We see this in action today with the rise of AI chatbots and avatars across a range of enterprises
- New traffic patterns requiring peer-to-peer connections and increased uplink bandwidth, driven by the rise of multi-modal inferencing
- Sub-second latency requirements that are make-or-break for real-time AI use cases like fraud prevention and AI glasses
The solution: Self-Driving Networks that adapt to AI
Traditional network management approaches—reactive troubleshooting, manual provisioning, and rule-based monitoring—can't keep pace with AI's dynamic requirements. Network operations for the AI Era requires a self-driving network that automatically:
- Delivers guaranteed bandwidth and latency on-demand
- Maintains multiple services simultaneously under changing conditions
- Optimizes resources to minimize costs while ensuring performance
Achieving this requires four key prerequisite capabilities driven by a common, cloud-native platform architecture:
Realizing a self-driving WAN with AI-Native Routing: use cases with Juniper Routing Director
Juniper® Routing Director combines all of the above prerequisites into a single solution, transforming traditional WAN operations into AI-native routing. It delivers resilient, reliable connectivity on-demand, and cuts onboarding, provisioning and troubleshooting times from hours to minutes. It simplifies operations with repeatable, error-free intent-based network & service management.
Routing Director introduces AIOps for closed-loop automation, and an AI assistant for rapid troubleshooting, into Routing Director.
Use Case #1: blackhole detection & remediation with AIOps
With its proven AI Engine, Routing Director reduces time taken for detecting and fixing complex problems like blackholes, from hours to minutes. Routing Director lets you simplify troubleshooting with these steps:
- 1. Detect event or anomaly: Routing Director continuously monitors your network using telemetry data. It identifies tell-tale signs of a blackhole, such as a discrepancy between packets in and out on an interface
- 2. Correlate: Routing Director automatically scans for known events, such as link flaps, session flaps, or line card restarts, to confirm the blackhole
- 3. Locate (root-cause): Routing Director isolates potential root-causes: events that took place in the same timeframe as the blackhole, such as failed updates, software bugs, or misconfigurations, and presents these to the user
- 4. Learn: Over time, new patterns of events are uncovered, and the knowledge base is updated for future reference.
Use case #2: AI assisted troubleshooting with LLM Connector
Routing Director's LLM Connector acts as your intelligent network operations assistant, reducing complex multi-step analysis from hours to seconds. Unlike generic AI tools, it understands your specific network infrastructure, performance patterns, and operational requirements.
Ask natural language questions like, "Why is latency spiking between our data centers?" and receive instant, actionable insights based on real-time network data and operational best practices.
Routing Director from HPE Juniper Networking: Proven results for enterprise leaders
Routing Director is trusted by some of the world’s largest service providers and enterprises to manage the full end to end lifecycle of their networks and services. Powered by advanced AI/ML and driven by intent-based networking, Routing Director:
- Enables connectivity on-demand, cutting onboarding and provisioning times from hours to minutes with repeatable, error-free intent designs
- Delivers resilient, reliable connectivity, proactively detecting and mitigating complex problems before end users and intent SLAs are impacted
- Reduces manual time & effort, by cutting troubleshooting and analysis time from hours to minutes or seconds
Don't let network limitations constrain your AI initiatives. Discover how Routing Director can transform your WAN into an AI-ready, self-driving network with a 
personalized demo, or download the datasheet.
Enabling Autonomous Networks: The New Integrator Paradigm
NEC, as one of the world’s largest system integrators serving customers in over 70 countries in the network domain, believes the role of integrators is expanding in Autonomous Networking. Thanks to technological advances, tasks such as deployment, operations, and maintenance—once manpower-intensive—are now optimized through intent-based automation. However many immature AI and automation solutions have flooded the market, making it difficult for operators to identify reliable, tailored options and transition smoothly. Accurate assessment and alignment with technical and organizational needs are now more critical than ever.
This underscores the need for integrators to adopt a customer-centric approach—addressing not just technology, but also evolving working models, and backed by deep market and solution expertise. NEC provides comprehensive support from early business planning—including TCO analysis—to migration and operational transformation, offering a step-by-step approach toward autonomous networking. By deeply understanding organizational needs and technical solutions, NEC delivers tailored solutions for maximum effectiveness and ROI.
NEC LATAM CoE: Transforming Network Operations with Juniper Routing Director Expertise
Working closely with HPE Juniper Networking from the R&D phase, NEC delivers AI-Native networking solutions validated throughout our global laboratories. Juniper Routing Director, integrated with the MX304 and ACX7100 at the NEC LATAM CoE (Center of Excellence) laboratory in Bogota, Colombia, has been thoroughly tested by NEC's engineering team, which serves around 100 customers—including telecom operators and large enterprises—across 16 countries in the region. This collaboration enabled joint solution development, fortified our expertise in AI and automation, and showcased the product’s capabilities for diverse, real-world use cases. With this foundation, NEC is ready to support smooth migration to autonomous and next-generation network operations.
At our CoE lab, we offer a full range of validation services available both on-site and remotely, ensuring quality performance under various conditions. Our multi-domain environment lets organizations experience and test the latest technologies firsthand. We also provide hands-on enablement to strengthen technical capabilities, ensuring teams are ready for evolving network demands.
Conclusion
For years, autonomous networking was more of a buzzword than reality. Now, NEC and HPE Juniper Networking are driving real innovation, building robust, secure, and efficient networks. Together, we are leading operational transformation and delivering greater value for businesses and society.