Juniper this week is expected to unveil enhancements to its routers designed to enable the devices to better manage bandwidth for video applications.

Juniper has added a feature called dynamic bandwidth allocation to its E-series routers, and another to its SDX Network Resource Manager system to control video distribution. The extensions are designed to ensure user quality of experience irrespective of the source or nature of their video content.

According to market tracker In-Stat, 32 million subscribers will be watching TV provided by telecom providers in 2009, up from 1.6 million at the end of 2004. Most of those viewers will be in Asia and Europe, two continents where telecom providers already offer service.

Juniper hopes the bandwidth allocation feature on its E-series routers makes a compelling service infrastructure component for providers. The enhancement adjusts service bandwidth based on subscriber activity, and distributes unused bandwidth to queues in the same traffic class before distributing outside the class.

The benefits of these capabilities are that each subscriber gets the maximum bandwidth available while ensuring fairness to all subscribers, Juniper says. This translates into ensured quality of experience and reduced expense for services providers by avoiding additional customer premises equipment functionality, and simplified service modification.

The additions to the SDX Network Resource Manager, which is a policy administrator for Juniper routers, provide dynamic, end-to-end construction of MPLS paths from the video source to the network edge. It also enforces dynamic bandwidth management and reassignment per label switched path, enabling service scaling without customers' experiencing load problems, Juniper says.

Analysts say the enhancements may help Juniper differentiate itself from competitors Cisco, Alcatel and Redback Networks.

"This announcement shows that vendors have to find differentiation any way they can," says Mark Bieberich of The Yankee Group. "What we see from Juniper is a sign of increased competition. They're looking to gain a competitive edge and I believe that this particular feature is compelling, but it's part of a very complex mix of capabilities that have to be proven."