Customer Success Story
DQE expands regional network to meet needs ranging from 5G to differentiated services delivery
Regional service providers like DQE Communications have a home-team advantage, with a nuanced understanding of local needs plus the agility to react quickly. DQE, which serves Western Pennsylvania, moved swiftly to expand its metro network services to meet the digital needs of its customers and its growing metro edge and mobile backhaul requirements.
Overview
| Company | DQE Communications LLC |
| Industry | Service Provider |
| Products used | ACX7100, ACX710, Juniper Paragon Pathfinder, MX Series |
| Region | Americas |
4,097
Mile fiber network serving Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio
2,490
Buildings, 118 business parks, and 17 data centers connected by fiber
76
Libraries in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County were provided with high-speed Internet
Meet rapidly growing demand for secure connectivity
DQE, a sister company of Duquesne Light Co., provides Internet, metro Ethernet, wavelength, dark fiber, SD-WAN, and colocation services to enterprises, carriers, and commercial real estate properties.
“We are seeing increased demand for bandwidth from every corner of our market,” says Paul McGinn, manager of IP services and network engineering at DQE Communications. “The introduction of 5G is driving the growth of our mobile backhaul business.”
5G allows businesses and consumers to download content twice as fast as 4G and opens up a host of new applications. Beyond mobile, DQE is seeing increased bandwidth consumption across all segments, especially in manufacturing, healthcare, education, media, and government.
Create a blueprint for efficient metro expansion in a bandwidth-hungry world
DQE’s fiber network provides a flexible foundation to serve customers’ digital transformation needs and for expansion into new geographic regions, such as Central Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Juniper MX Series 5G Universal Routing Platforms provide core network routing and Juniper ACX Series Universal Metro Routers are used for the metro edge and mobile backhaul. With ACX Series routers, DQE can extend MPLS services to the edge, enhancing the customer experience and reducing cost.
DQE expanded its metro service with the Juniper ACX7100-32C Universal Metro Router, which sets new benchmarks for capacity, density, and low latency in the ACX family of access and aggregation routers.
The ACX7100 enables cloud-scale reliability, agility, and open programmability to accelerate service deployment. The hardened Juniper ACX710 Universal Metro Routers will provide flexible access and aggregation at 200 other locations on the DQE network.
Expand digital access in Western Pennsylvania and beyond
Fast, reliable, and secure connectivity is more important than ever to DQE customers, whether it’s a public library system, a manufacturer embracing 3D printing, or a university inventing the future of autonomous vehicles.
“With the ACX router, we can support differentiated quality per service type, including broadband Internet and mobile, to support our diverse customer needs,” says McGinn.
DQE also uses Juniper Paragon Pathfinder, a cloud-native controller, to simplify traffic engineering and efficiently manage strict transport service-level agreements through automated planning, provisioning, and proactive monitoring of large traffic loads.
With Juniper’s cloud metro solution, DQE has a cost-effective way to aggregate metro traffic to its core network, with the precise feature set needed to efficiently deliver Ethernet, mobile backhaul, and other services to customers across education, financial services, healthcare, and carriers.
The Products
Junos OS
The Junos operating system runs in Juniper Networks routing, switching, security and whitebox hardware products to create a consistent operational experience over network infrastructure end to end.
Juniper’s automation-led approach to networking simplifies and accelerates WAN and data center planning, design, and operations for more reliable and sustainable network services.
Dramatically improve your operational experience with the industry’s most scalable, programmable, and resilient routers. Juniper’s comprehensive portfolio of best-of-breed routers offer unparalleled capacity, agility, and operational consistency, with end-to-end automation required for service-aware networks that power today’s hyperconnected world.
Future-proof for the multicloud era with open SDN solutions that provide abstracted control, automated workflows, and security.
High-performance ACX Series Routers serve metro access, aggregation, and data center use cases. They are energy-efficient, CE 3.0 compliant, and support 5G high-precision timing and synchronization.
ACX7100
The ACX7100, part of the ACX7000 family, delivers high density and performance in a compact, 1 U footprint. Ideal for service provider, large enterprise, wholesale, and data center applications, it helps operators deliver premium customer and user experiences.
ACX710
The ACX710 1U router is a hardened multiservice solution that delivers the performance, capacity, and features needed to provide universal metro access and aggregation services. It offers a high-density, cost-optimized metro solution in a compact footprint.
With a robust portfolio of SDN-enabled routers, the MX Series provides industry-leading system capacity, density, security, and performance with unparalleled longevity.
Juniper Paragon Pathfinder
Powerful and flexible traffic engineering software simplifies and automates provisioning, management, and monitoring of Segment Routing and IP/MPLS flows across large networks.
Published October 2021