Interest in Juniper rising

I see that Juniper is a competitor of Cisco systems, is it worth getting at some point in the future? I plan to stick with Cisco...but having Juniper on the resume might be a good idea.

Of course, I have never touched a Juniper device before, so I don't know how different the two are. I'll have to find a JN0-201 book in my free time and do some reading.

KG

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Megadeth4168

We just switched to a Juniper solution where I work... So I will have the chance soon to start getting my feet wet with it..... I know Juniper had a free study guide on their site which I did download.... I'm thinking about asking my employer to send me to a juniper class.... I think I have a good chance at talking them into it.

KGhaleon

Go for it. Free training can't be a bad thing.
I'll be going by a book store later, and I think I remember seeing some Juniper books there.

KG

seraphus

KGhaleon wrote:

Go for it. Free training can't be a bad thing.
I'll be going by a book store later, and I think I remember seeing some Juniper books there.

KG

Why? You can get the books free, right here:

http://www.juniper.net/training/certification/books.html

KGhaleon

Nice, I didn't see those. I suppose it's fine that these are a bit old(2003-04)?

KG

seraphus

KGhaleon wrote:

Nice, I didn't see those. I suppose it's fine that these are a bit old(2003-04)?

KG

I used the JNCIA book to pass my JNCIA (and I used the Boson exam).
There were no surprises.

seraphus

KGhaleon wrote:

I see that Juniper is a competitor of Cisco systems, is it worth getting at some point in the future? I plan to stick with Cisco...but having Juniper on the resume might be a good idea.

Of course, I have never touched a Juniper device before, so I don't know how different the two are. I'll have to find a JN0-201 book in my free time and do some reading.

KG

Probably should have tried to answer this first....

Juniper is just one of many competitors with Cisco, however, Juniper's niche'
market is with service providers (IMO).

I think it's always good to build your skill set. I'm biased, but I do think it's a good
idea to be familiar with Juniper/JUNOS. However, you're probably not going to
see much of it unless you work for an ISP.

rossonieri#1

seraphus wrote:

I think it's always good to build your skill set. I'm biased, but I do think it's a good
idea to be familiar with Juniper/JUNOS. However, you're probably not going to
see much of it unless you work for an ISP.

this is a good answer,
but to be familiar with many things will have you a broader knowledge. its a challenge.
there are foundry - extreme - brocade - linux - unix - microsoft - cisco - ibm etc,
if you can integrate these - then they will call you integrator.
nice to have that. not neccessarily to work in ISP to do a thing.
there are lower router class also in juniper like j-series.

cheers.

Pash

Juniper firewalls seem quiet popular here in the UK for small to medium businesses. I have clocked up a lot of time on configuring firewalls.

EdTheLad

Pash wrote:

Juniper firewalls seem quiet popular here in the UK for small to medium businesses. I have clocked up a lot of time on configuring firewalls.

As far as i'm aware, some of the ip guru's who worked for Cisco left the company to setup there own company,it's name Juniper. These guys tried to design a router taking into account the Cisco flaws at the time like cpu utilization etc. I've heard on the grape vine that Juniper is a better box but they dont have the same quality support as Cisco. One customer i knew preferred the Juniper over Cisco but gave the tender to Cisco due to maintenance and also to keep the network as a one vendor core.

Pash

EdTheLad wrote:

Pash wrote:

Juniper firewalls seem quiet popular here in the UK for small to medium businesses. I have clocked up a lot of time on configuring firewalls.

As far as i'm aware, some of the ip guru's who worked for Cisco left the company to setup there own company,it's name Juniper. These guys tried to design a router taking into account the Cisco flaws at the time like cpu utilization etc. I've heard on the grape vine that Juniper is a better box but they dont have the same quality support as Cisco. One customer i knew preferred the Juniper over Cisco but gave the tender to Cisco due to maintenance and also to keep the network as a one vendor core.

I didnt know that, thanks. I do love cisco scc, they are very helpful it must be said.

Paul Boz

Juniper Networks builds amazing products that interoperate with Cisco devices very nicely. I wouldn't pursue a career track in Juniper unless you work for a company which already deploys their stuff though.

milliamp

I sort of like Juniper stuff

opers13

EdTheLad wrote:

Pash wrote:

Juniper firewalls seem quiet popular here in the UK for small to medium businesses. I have clocked up a lot of time on configuring firewalls.

As far as i'm aware, some of the ip guru's who worked for Cisco left the company to setup there own company,it's name Juniper. These guys tried to design a router taking into account the Cisco flaws at the time like cpu utilization etc. I've heard on the grape vine that Juniper is a better box but they dont have the same quality support as Cisco. One customer i knew preferred the Juniper over Cisco but gave the tender to Cisco due to maintenance and also to keep the network as a one vendor core.

Few months ago I was talking to a CCIE who does a ton of beta testing for Cisco...he said that back in the days.... some Cisco Engineers had a project to build a 10Gig backplane chassi and Cisco wouldn't give them the budget for the project....so they quit Cisco sold their stocks and Juniper was born....

hhisgett

I have used the Netscreen firewalls even before Juniper bought them. I like them much better than the Cisco PIX or any other enterprise level firewall. I helped install the ISG1000 about 8 months ago at the school district where I work and we have hardly ever touched it since.

Paul Boz

milliamp wrote:

I work for a company that uses both Cisco and Juniper routers (we have lots of traffic). Most of my first experience was with Cisco, but there are many things I like more about using Juniper.

For high capacity carrier class routers, Juniper T series is probably a better box than Cisco CRS (hence the reason many ISP's use them).

Juniper tends to do one thing and do it well, where Cisco may not have the fastest core routers powering the internet, but they offer a solution for everything.

I work for an ISP that uses M10's for BGP and they're flawless boxes. In the four years I've worked here I've never seen one of them have trouble, short of a faulty line card that was damaged by a former employee upon installation. The packet flow capability of the M10 vastly exceeds even OC12 requirements.

opers13

I just came across this, Internet2 core routers......pretty cool:

http://abilene.internet2.edu/services/core.html

larkspur

I must add after visiting a few SP CO's I've seen cisco 6500 series handling the labeling\vrf part of MPLS and Juniper doing the routing....

very nice core routers, they must be some packet slingers

JohnDouglas

KGhaleon wrote:

I see that Juniper is a competitor of Cisco systems, is it worth getting at some point in the future? I plan to stick with Cisco...but having Juniper on the resume might be a good idea.

Juniper seems to be popular as part of the backbone of large networks. The general perception I've got is Juniper (M40s, T640s) are excellent at shifting huge amounts of traffic. But Cisco has the edge for customer connections (numerous small boxes) and smaller in-country networks eg cisco12000 series.

So, unless you're working for a backbone team it may not be much use learning huge amounts about Juniper. From what I've seen backbones are run by old timers. Not that many companies ahve massive backbone networks - so not much job variety. All teh decisions are made in the US as well in general - of course not a problem if you're based in teh US! Enterprise is where the dynamism and opportunities are. So, at least for me, maybe a few Juniper bits to make the cv stand out. But Cisco is perhaps the better long term employment ticket.

Still, I haven't been around long. I'm happy to be corrected. Maybe the US is light years ahead of EMEA networking.

Naturally if you become really specialised in Juniper (to ccie eq.) then you don't have any competition for the few Juniper jobs there are!

bowlersp

opers13 wrote:

I just came across this, Internet2 core routers......pretty cool:

http://abilene.internet2.edu/services/core.html

yeah, thats cool. T640 = 640 gig throughput. T320 = 320 gig throughput and so forth. i work in the ip noc here at disa conus and we have many T640's across our backbone. I get to use T640's, T320's, M40e's, M10's and M7's everyday! Thats why the JNCIA-ER track and M series track are valuable to me. The ER track to get me use to Juniper and the M track to expand the knowledge that I already have in the M series routers. We rarely see problems with our juniper routers. they only prominent problem i've seen is when a routing engine fails and the secondary routing engine does not automatically failover like it should. however this is an easy fix! anyway, I really appreciate Juniper Equipment and the JUNOS.