Juniper or Cisco for Service Provider

I'd like to become certified in a service provider track. Should I be looking at Cisco or Juniper track?

I'm trying to compare the pros and cons

Juniper
Pros: 3 exams to complete professional level, including JNCIA, compared to 6 exams for Cisco
Cons: not sure how to get hands on practice. Also, can't seem to find any video training available for this track

Cisco
Pros: VIRL allows for hands on practice, video training is available
Cons: 6 exams compared to 3 for Juniper. The exams seem to not have been updated in a long time?

All said, was still leaning towards Cisco, but would love some advice.

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joshuamurphy75

Both make good products, but a quick indeed search for "Juniper Service Provider" and " Cisco Service Provider" shows almost 7 times the jobs for Cisco today. I'd do the Cisco ones first. If you do decide on the Juniper, they have a product called Junosphere, which is basically VIRL for Juniper. Pricing is based on every 10 devices for a consecutive 24 hours. So it might be wise to study books all week, and save the lab practice for days off. As far as training, it's pretty hard to find both in a service provider environment. If anything, I think this is the one track where Juniper might be easier to find resources for.

CE1028

thanks. I saw same thing with Indeed, as far as jobs. People that I know have been telling me that Juniper is big in Service Provider networks, like Verizon, CenturyLink, AT&T etc

CBT Nuggets has CCNA SP content, as does INE. INE has content up to CCIE SP level, so that's why I was leaning towards cisco.

I'm also curious is Data Center and SDN technologies play into the SP world as well?

Fadakartel

CE1028 wrote: »

thanks. I saw same thing with Indeed, as far as jobs. People that I know have been telling me that Juniper is big in Service Provider networks, like Verizon, CenturyLink, AT&T etc

CBT Nuggets has CCNA SP content, as does INE. INE has content up to CCIE SP level, so that's why I was leaning towards cisco.

I'm also curious is Data Center and SDN technologies play into the SP world as well?

They ain`t wrong I`ve worked in an ISP environment and I meet people from various tier 1 ISP`s and the main vendor they told us to go was Juniper for our core/aggregation and edge. Main reason was that Juniper is much cheaper and they provide good training materials unlike Cisco for their SP track.

CE1028

where does one find such training from Juniper?

Even Juniper says they are #1 in SP

https://forums.juniper.net/t5/The-New-Network/Juniper-1-in-Service-Provider-Routing/ba-p/316876

shednik

CE1028 wrote: »

where does one find such training from Juniper?

Even Juniper says they are #1 in SP https://forums.juniper.net/t5/The-New-Network/Juniper-1-in-Service-Provider-Routing/ba-p/316876

They provide a fast-track program for their JNCIA and all 3 JNCIS certifications which will give you a good jumping point to delve deeper into the SP track. They also release a lot of "This Week" & "Day One" eBooks that cover the topics that you will be tested on.

If you're a Juniper partner you'll also get access to additional training material which most ISPs are to some level.

CE1028

shednik wrote: »

They provide a fast-track program for their JNCIA and all 3 JNCIS certifications which will give you a good jumping point to delve deeper into the SP track. They also release a lot of "This Week" & "Day One" eBooks that cover the topics that you will be tested on.

If you're a Juniper partner you'll also get access to additional training material which most ISPs are to some level.

Everything I've seen on their site seems to require a login. I'm not currently a Juniper customer and i don't work for a partner

duta74

Juniper Training:
https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/martin-brown
https://www.cbtnuggets.com/it-training/juniper-training

Fadakartel

CE1028 wrote: »

where does one find such training from Juniper?

Even Juniper says they are #1 in SP https://forums.juniper.net/t5/The-New-Network/Juniper-1-in-Service-Provider-Routing/ba-p/316876

Yup makes me wonder how Cisco is gonna perform in the SP market within the next 5 years, they have a solid ASR platform but damm the lack of materials other than CCIE bootcamps is sad, especially with 5G coming many telecos gonna shun Cisco hard.

shednik

CE1028 wrote: »

Everything I've seen on their site seems to require a login. I'm not currently a Juniper customer and i don't work for a partner

You mean on the learning network? You just need to create a login for it, it's much like the account you make on the Cisco learning network. You don't need to be a customer to create an account.

shednik

Fadakartel wrote: »

Yup makes me wonder how Cisco is gonna perform in the SP market within the next 5 years, they have a solid ASR platform but damm the lack of materials other than CCIE bootcamps is sad, especially with 5G coming many telecos gonna shun Cisco hard.

Their pricing is just crazy. We priced out ASK9Ks vs MX 960s and there was at least a 200k different in the quotes. This was after "heavy" discounts from our account team as well.

I've also had the opportunity to speak with Juniper employees from the training and certification program on multiple occasions and they have been very receptive to all suggestions & comments.

Fadakartel

Yup soon all ISP`s are gonna be using MX series routers for their core etc.

networker050184

Certification wise, I always recommend Cisco first. It has the broader audience, especially if you end up leaving the service provider world.

CE1028

Thank you all for the responses. JNCIA has plenty of training available from vendors that you all have posted. The SP track, I don't see vendors offering much video training

@networker050184, I have cisco ccnp r&s. Do you still recommend cisco sp certification over juniper first?

I've never worked for a service provider, so not sure what to expect. What types of positions are there? I always said I'm interested in layer 2 and above

joshuamurphy75

If you already have CCNP routing switching, and go with Juniper service provider, expect to add MPLS, ISIS, and the Juniper CLI for what you already know about BGP and OSPF. The transition should be pretty smooth. As far as positions, I wouldn't know. The service provider I work for is pretty small, and we are mostly just "techs" and kind of do a bit of everything. We don't have as specialized positions as the bigger companies might have.

CE1028

thanks to all. I'm undecided about what's next to learn, but these replies were a big help.

shednik

Either track will help you overall honestly other than the specifics of each platform. I would just focus on learning the technologies while you decide which vendor to pursue. I personally prefer JunOS over IOS but I haven't had much exposure to IOS XR since Cisco's price points ended up way to high.

CE1028

Will do. I'm trying to decide if I'll even go SP, because I'm a little torn between going the SP route, or maybe looking at network virtualization like vmware's nsx, or ccna/ccnp security.

I don't deal with any of those technologies at my current company though.

Service Provider sounds good as I enjoy routing/switching, but I find I'm not really interested in being a field technician installing circuits

Fadakartel

CE1028 wrote: »

Will do. I'm trying to decide if I'll even go SP, because I'm a little torn between going the SP route, or maybe looking at network virtualization like vmware's nsx, or ccna/ccnp security.

I don't deal with any of those technologies at my current company though.

Service Provider sounds good as I enjoy routing/switching, but I find I'm not really interested in being a field technician installing circuits

You won`t be a field tech look up IP/MPLS engineer roles thats what the Service provider track is mainly for. As for VMware stuff I myself am looking to pursue this for cloud stuff. I used to be in the ISP world and I don`t think i wanna go back into that.

CE1028

Fadakartel wrote: »

You won`t be a field tech look up IP/MPLS engineer roles thats what the Service provider track is mainly for. As for VMware stuff I myself am looking to pursue this for cloud stuff. I used to be in the ISP world and I don`t think i wanna go back into that.

What was wrong with the ISP world?

Fadakartel

CE1028 wrote: »

What was wrong with the ISP world?

Horrible hours along with doing things that that wasen`t IP networking related (look up SDH/DWDM/OTN)

Most of my days were dealing with transmission systems rather than our Cisco ASR platforms.

chmod

Fadakartel wrote: »

Horrible hours along with doing things that that wasen`t IP networking related (look up SDH/DWDM/OTN)

Most of my days were dealing with transmission systems rather than our Cisco ASR platforms.

Depends on your role and the company you work for.

I work in the SP world but the company i work for implements most the projects for 3 SPs. There is a lot of work hands on, lost of consultancy and presales.

There is SDH-DWMDM-OTN but there ir a transmission and access team that specializes on those devices, we just care about the IP part 90% of the time. But this is a matter of the organization.

Off course if you work in the ISP directly is not that fun, usually engineers at the ISP have very limited exposure to do things, or for a small vendor that barely sale.

About the long hours, is true is a pain in the butt the amount of hours and pressure.

David_Will

With a decade of experience as a Cisco network engineer, focusing on CCIE enterprise and service provider networks, I am now venturing into Juniper networks. I am embarking on my JNCIE-SP journey and have compiled a list of useful equipment for this path. If you share similar interests, please feel free to reach out to me directly.