Securing the network: Juniper Networks has realigned its security focus after its acquisition of NetScreen, with a push toward integrated security ins

Telecom Asia: There's been a great deal of talk about ubiquity. How important will it be in the near term?

Scott Kriens: We believe there's going to be a ubiquitous network, it will be a single infrastructure, it will carry multiple services, it will be very intelligent, it will enhance our lives. That will all be true some day. The observation that that it is true is meaningless. The issue is when will what elements within that grand claim be true and what will it mean when they are. It is the path to how one gets there that is where all the real opportunities lie.

One of the reasons for the acquisition of our security portfolio is that we believe that the key enabler to making it all happen faster is that you have to trust the network to use it more. That is one driver. It not only has to be secure, but it also has to be assured--it has to be reliable and has to be able to deliver the quality for the video signal that I'm going to drive across it.

How will it happen? The way the Internet got to scale was simply by dividing everywhere--that way it didn't have to happen in any one place. Ubiquity will happen in the same way. Pockets [of IP infrastructure build-outs] are popping up and establishing themselves and they will all look to connect. Major commitments to rolling out IP infrastructure already include moves by China Telecom, NTT East and West, Deutsche Telecom, MCI and Verizon. This peer-to-peer nature of the arrival of the Internet is going to be exactly the way the next generation of applications that will build on top of it will come into existence. Then we can create some standards to put some order to the chaos.