INLINE CGNAT ON JUNIPER MX304: A MAJOR SHIFT IN SERVICE PROVIDER EDGE ARCHITECTURE
INLINE CGNAT ON JUNIPER MX304: A MAJOR SHIFT IN SERVICE PROVIDER EDGE ARCHITECTURE IPv4 Exhaustion and Legacy CGNAT Architectures IPv4 exhaustion is still a daily operational reality for many service providers. For years, this forced operators to deploy centralized CG NAT platforms and separate BNG and AAA systems. Subscriber traffic had to be routed […]
CHOOSING YOUR FIRST ISP HARDWARE STACK SHOULD NOT FEEL LIKE ROULETTE
CHOOSING YOUR FIRST ISP HARDWARE STACK SHOULD NOT FEEL LIKE ROULETTE Choosing your first ISP hardware stack should not feel like roulette, but for many teams it does. They look at Juniper, Arista, Mikrotik, Cisco, and Arrcus and feel stuck. Each vendor looks strong on paper, but the tradeoffs are not obvious without deep […]
BUILDING AN ISP FROM SCRATCH WITHOUT THE PAINFUL MISTAKES
BUILDING AN ISP FROM SCRATCH WITHOUT THE PAINFUL MISTAKES Starting an internet service provider from scratch can feel overwhelming very quickly. Most first time teams focus on buying equipment or getting upstream connectivity, but the real risks appear much earlier. We have seen many new ISPs struggle not because they lacked effort, but because they […]
STARTING 2026 STRONG WITH A NEXT GENERATION CORE NETWORK UPGRADE
STARTING 2026 STRONG WITH A NEXT GENERATION CORE NETWORK UPGRADE 2026 is starting strong for us, because we are kicking off a major core network upgrade for one of our customers, built on next generation routing platforms from Juniper Networks, specifically the MX304. This project is not just a hardware refresh. It is a full […]
WORKING AS ONE TO KEEP INFRASTRUCTURES STABLE
WORKING AS ONE TO KEEP INFRASTRUCTURES STABLE Behind every stable infrastructure, there is a team working in sync, with strong ownership and attention to detail. At ITcare, working in the NOC goes far beyond monitoring and alerts. It is about constant collaboration with our Network Engineering and DevOps teams, because real world issues are never […]
MULTI VENDOR MPLS LOOKS SIMPLE UNTIL THE LABELS TELL ANOTHER STORY
MULTI VENDOR MPLS LOOKS SIMPLE UNTIL THE LABELS TELL ANOTHER STORY Multi-vendor networks look beautiful on paper. In practice, they love to test our patience. Recently at ITcare, we built a LAB for a PoC with Cisco vXR, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks vEOS and Nokia vSR routers. We wanted one simple backbone. A single OSPF […]
FROM LAB TESTING TO PRODUCTION ROLLOUT
FROM LAB TESTING TO PRODUCTION ROLLOUT Last month, our new Juniper MIST equipment arrived at the warehouse, and during this period it was thoroughly tested and validated in our lab. This stage allowed us to fine tune the design, validate configurations, and make sure everything behaves exactly as expected before touching the production environment. This […]
PROCESS, NOT JUST SKILL: WHAT REALLY MAKES AN OFFSHORE NETWORK ENGINEERING PARTNER RELIABLE
PROCESS, NOT JUST SKILL: WHAT REALLY MAKES AN OFFSHORE NETWORK ENGINEERING PARTNER RELIABLE Skill is what gets an offshore engineering team into the meeting. Process is what gets them the contract. Many enterprise buyers have learned the hard way that strong engineers without strong procedures create more risk, not less. They have seen changes applied […]
WHY NOC COVERAGE MUST BE TRULY TWENTY FOUR SEVEN
WHY NOC COVERAGE MUST BE TRULY TWENTY FOUR SEVEN Your customers do not care when your NOC is open. They only care when their service is down. Over the last quarter we noticed a recurring problem. Internet service providers, data centers and connectivity providers have good NOC setups, but only working 9-5 and only […]
Outsourced NOC Trials: Why Trust Is Earned in 90 Days
Outsourced NOC Trials: Why Trust Is Earned in 90 Days Trust in outsourcing is earned in 90-day steps. Enterprise IT leaders rarely sign multi-year contracts on a first engagement anymore, and the ones evaluating an outsourced NOC have usually been through enough vendor transitions to know the pattern: polished onboarding, rushed integration, and three months […]