Bought a J2300

ColbyG

I've decided to put the CCIE on hold due to the difficulty level of v4. Instead of sitting idle I figured I'd finally learn Juniper.

The model I picked up is J2300-1T2FEL-S-AC. I've never touched a Juniper device. I'm using this PDF:

http://www.systemssolutions.com/uploads/pdf/J2300_J4300_J6300%20Router.pdf

Judging by that, this is a basic router with 2xFE interfaces. Will a couple of these be sufficient for the entry-level Juniper cert(s) (JNCIA-ER, I think)?

Any advice for a Juniper newb?

chrisone

ColbyNA wrote: »

I've decided to put the CCIE on hold due to the difficulty level of v4. Instead of sitting idle I figured I'd finally learn Juniper.

The model I picked up is J2300-1T2FEL-S-AC. I've never touched a Juniper device. I'm using this PDF:

http://www.systemssolutions.com/uploads/pdf/J2300_J4300_J6300%20Router.pdf

Judging by that, this is a basic router with 2xFE interfaces. Will a couple of these be sufficient for the entry-level Juniper cert(s) (JNCIA-ER, I think)?

Any advice for a Juniper newb?

I havent worked on juniper equipment, but i guess with their version of the CCNA you can get by configuring most things since you have a CCNP and understand many generic protocols. As far as the CCIE v4 being hard, well its not going to get any easier by the time you pick it up again. I would say stay on the CCIE track since the CCNP is fresh in your mind. Its only going to get harder the more time you let pass by.

ColbyG

chrisone wrote: »

I havent worked on juniper equipment, but i guess with their version of the CCNA you can get by configuring most things since you have a CCNP and understand many generic protocols. As far as the CCIE v4 being hard, well its not going to get any easier by the time you pick it up again. I would say stay on the CCIE track since the CCNP is fresh in your mind. Its only going to get harder the more time you let pass by.

It's not about the it getting easier, it's about me getting more experience. I've only got a couple years of real Cisco experience, I don't feel like that's enough to get me by the new troubleshooting section. I've been going through the new INE workbook for troubleshooting, and it's strikingly apparent that I don't have enough real world experience with these technologies yet.

I'd rather work towards some other certs while gaining Cisco/networking experience through my job. I think branching out can only help me towards a deeper understanding of things and it will also make me more valuable. My current goal is to find a position with a service provider, getting Juniper experience can't hurt.

Aldur

ColbyNA wrote: »

I'd rather work towards some other certs while gaining Cisco/networking experience through my job. I think branching out can only help me towards a deeper understanding of things and it will also make me more valuable. My current goal is to find a position with a service provider, getting Juniper experience can't hurt.

You're right, branching out can't do anything but help your career. Hence why I've started down a Cisco cert path even though I work for Juniper.

If you goal is to work with a service provider then Juniper knowledge will be invaulable. Juniper owns about 1/2 of the core and is continuing to grow.

To your original question, yes a few J2300's will be more then enough to practice on to pick up a JNCIA-ER or JNCIA-M/T. Keep in mind that along with the 2 FE interfaces will be two other built in interfaces. Try to find J2300s with T1/E1 interfaces, this way you can make some t1 cables out of cat5 and practice mlppp, frame relay, etc.

Also check out the FastTrack program, this will have tons of good info that will help you study.

Juniper Networks Certification Fast Track Program - Enterprise Routing and Switching Exam Certification - Juniper Networks

HTH

ColbyG

Aldur wrote: »

You're right, branching out can't do anything but help your career. Hence why I've started down a Cisco cert path even though I work for Juniper.

If you goal is to work with a service provider then Juniper knowledge will be invaulable. Juniper owns about 1/2 of the core and is continuing to grow.

To your original question, yes a few J2300's will be more then enough to practice on to pick up a JNCIA-ER or JNCIA-M/T. Keep in mind that along with the 2 FE interfaces will be two other built in interfaces. Try to find J2300s with T1/E1 interfaces, this way you can make some t1 cables out of cat5 and practice mlppp, frame relay, etc.

Also check out the FastTrack program, this will have tons of good info that will help you study.

Juniper Networks Certification Fast Track Program - Enterprise Routing and Switching Exam Certification - Juniper Networks

HTH

I was hoping you'd post.:D

I actually did the pre-assessment earlier today:

Congratulations on passing the JNCIA-ER Pre-assessment Exam as you are one step closer to your next JUNOS certification.

I've got a couple Olives going in ESX and I've been reading through JUNOS Enterprise Routing (bought it a few months ago in case I ever decided to take this step). So far, I feel like I'm moving along pretty well. The hierarchical config of JUNOS is a bit daunting for me coming from Cisco. I'm having trouble finding Juniper blogs and examples to play with (this is definitely not Cisco, lol). All I've really done so far is try to get comfortable in JUNOS and done some tinkering with OSPF so I could get the Olives into my home network.

What kinds of things should I do to prepare for the JNCIA-ER? The blueprint is pretty basic. I feel pretty good about most of the requirements. NAT seems like a ***** with JUNOS and I can't get J-Web working with my Olives, but other than that it seems pretty straightforward.

hoogen82

I know 2350 or 2320 would be a little expensive.. but I think it would help in case you decide to do Juniper certs in the security side... They can also very well perform all operations required for the M/T series or the ER..

I would say getting more practice on the J-Web is important... I think the rest would be easy...

ColbyG

hoogen82 wrote: »

I know 2350 or 2320 would be a little expensive.. but I think it would help in case you decide to do Juniper certs in the security side... They can also very well perform all operations required for the M/T series or the ER..

I would say getting more practice on the J-Web is important... I think the rest would be easy...

Cheapest I can find on Ebay is ~$2k for a 2320. That won't work for me, hahah.

ColbyG

I'm getting more comfortable in JUNOS. I still prefer IOS, but I don't hate JUNOS as much as I did two days ago, haha. So far:

Two working Olives
OSPF between Olives, 3560 and 7200 (home network)
eBGP between Olives (this is faaar more difficult in JUNOS than it is in IOS, more config is needed)
Played with multiple interfaces
Played with static routes

I really need to tackle NAT, I keep putting it off. Not sure what else I need to practice for the JNCIA, any suggestions would be great. BGP seems to be too advanced for this exam, but I wanted to get as comfortable as possible in JUNOS.

hoogen82

The student guide is a very good resource https://learningportal.juniper.net/juniper/user_fasttrack_home.aspx I assume if you have gone through that. For me it was J-Web that hit me hard since I don't work with the GUI... Apart from that know some details of Juniper hardware... You are most likely to get more configuration related stuff in the JNCIS...

Well until you get a hang of it.. you might be like what the heck.. But once you do you will realize how much more simpler it is to do a lot of things on Junos than on IOS... I have done both and now I hate to work on the IOS..

Hoogen

Aldur

ColbyNA wrote: »

I actually did the pre-assessment earlier today:

Sweet, congrats man, seems like you're on your way!

ColbyNA wrote: »

What kinds of things should I do to prepare for the JNCIA-ER? The blueprint is pretty basic. I feel pretty good about most of the requirements. NAT seems like a ***** with JUNOS and I can't get J-Web working with my Olives, but other than that it seems pretty straightforward.

Definitely follow the blue print in the book. Harry and Doug do a great job at presenting the material.

Yea, NAT is somewhat troublesome to get your head around but once you get your head around it works quiet well and offers alot of flexibility.

ColbyNA wrote: »

Cheapest I can find on Ebay is ~$2k for a 2320. That won't work for me, hahah.

yea, the J2320's are a little pricey for home lab use but Hoogen does have a good point. With the J2320/J2350's you can also do the security related flow stuff.

ColbyNA wrote: »

I'm getting more comfortable in JUNOS. I still prefer IOS, but I don't hate JUNOS as much as I did two days ago, haha.

hoogen82 wrote: »

Well until you get a hang of it.. you might be like what the heck.. But once you do you will realize how much more simpler it is to do a lot of things on Junos than on IOS... I have done both and now I hate to work on the IOS..

I'm currently in the middle of some Cisco studies and I am pulling my hair out with how the syntax/hierarchy is setup. I suppose it all really boils down to what you are use too but much like what Hoogen said I know alot of people who know IOS and JUNOS and I've never meet anybody who prefereed IOS over JUNOS once they've come to know it.

ColbyG

Thanks to both of you for the great info!

I'm surprised anyone likes JUNOS better than IOS . Maybe I'll feel the same after I get some real experience with it.

I've been going through the student guide and tinkering more. I really wish we used some Junipers in production so I could get some actual experience with them.

mumulox

ColbyNA wrote: »

Cheapest I can find on Ebay is ~$2k for a 2320. That won't work for me, hahah.

You can use an olive with a jseries image installed to practice some features that are not available in M/T.

TheShadow

Aldur wrote: »

yea, the J2320's are a little pricey for home lab use but Hoogen does have a good point. With the J2320/J2350's you can also do the security related flow stuff.

Aldur answer a question for me when you have a minute. I am almost caught up with my Win 7 stuff and preparing to get back to Juniper. Tell me friend can I get down the full path with two hardware Olives (nokia ip330's), three J2300's and only a single j2320 or do I need a pair of them? J2300 are reasonably cheap being end of life but 20's and 50's are damned expensive. However so are Cisco switches and ISR's

Aldur

TheShadow wrote: »

Aldur answer a question for me when you have a minute. I am almost caught up with my Win 7 stuff and preparing to get back to Juniper. Tell me friend can I get down the full path with two hardware Olives (nokia ip330's), three J2300's and only a single j2320 or do I need a pair of them? J2300 are reasonably cheap being end of life but 20's and 50's are damned expensive. However so are Cisco switches and ISR's

2 olives, 3 J2300s and a J2320, sounds like you have a sweet lab going there. What I would recommend is setting up the J's as your edge routers and putting the olives in the middle as your core routers, all the magic happens on the edge anyhow

Something else handy is that since the olives will be running M series software you have the option to use logical routers. This means you can break 1 olive up into 16. This makes it nice to expand your core and get some good routing in. Even though I have 8 J's and 2 SRX in my home lab I still keep 2 olives around for this purpose. With the logical routers capability I can use these routers are core or customer/peering routers.

Something else that people find a little lacking, especially with the old J's is the lack of ports. It doesn't seem like you can do alot with just 2 FE ports but if you throw a switch in there you can virtually have more ports then you know what to do with. In my home lab I have all of the J routers fe-0/0/0 port plugged into a cisco 2950 switch. Then on the fe-0/0/0 port I slice it up into vlans. Soo I have fe-0/0/0 unit 1 in vlan 1 which goes through the switch and connects up with another J on fe-0/0/0 unit 1 which is also in vlan 1. This way I can have as many point to point connections as I want coming out of one port as long as each point to point link has it's own vlan. As you can see it's all up to your creativity here

HTH

TheShadow

Great Aldur you answered all my questions, just have to get my taxes filed and see what is left in the slush fund to buy one more j2300 and that j2320 to complete the lab. I have a spare cisco 2950G sitting around so that should fit right in the scenario. I appreciate the advice and hopefully I can get back to this journey in a couple of months.

ColbyG

I passed the JNCIA-ER today! Wooot.

networker050184

Congrats!

mikej412

ColbyNA wrote: »

I passed the JNCIA-ER

Congratulations!!

Bl8ckr0uter

ColbyNA wrote: »

I passed the JNCIA-ER today! Wooot.

Awesome.

TheShadow

Outstanding congratulations

seraphus

ColbyNA wrote: »

I passed the JNCIA-ER today! Wooot.

Again, congrats!!!!

ColbyG

Thanks everyone!

Aldur

big congrats man!

So now on to the JNCIS-ER?

ColbyG

Nah, I think I'm going to focus on the CCIP, then maybe go back to the darkside.

So I got my J2300 today and it doesn't f*cking work! I'm pissed. The seller says he didn't test it before sending, but it was pulled from a working environment. I see no console output at all.

Aldur

Ouch man, that really bites. And I take it there's a no return policy either

Does the box power up at all? If so do you see any light on the interfaces? If so it could be that the console port is bad. Might be a good idea to hit the reset button found on the front of the router and then hook up a PC to the fe-0/0/0 port.

Have a look at the following doc for reference.

Basic Connection and Configuration with the J-Web Interface - J-series Services Router Quick Start

And let me know how it goes.

ColbyG

Oh, there's a return policy. He had a 30 day guarantee and I'm getting my money back before I ship this thing.

Yea, it powers up, just no console. I've held the reset for 15 seconds (much longer a few times, the little light doesn't come on like it's supposed to) and I still get no output on the console. Also, no lights on the FE ports, I've connected with patch and crossover cables, no link lights with either (on my laptop or the router).

I've been Googling around for things to try that I didn't learn with the JNCIA prep. Haven't found anything that brings it to life yet. I went as far as moving the RAM to the other slot and everything. Nothing has worked. Bleh.

Aldur

hmmm... yea the box is more then likely dead. The interfaces lights on the FE and T1 ports should light up red when the link is down.

Possible could be a bad compact flash, you could flash it with the jinstall media. Although even at that point I'd expect to see something come through the console screen.

Best get your replacement on its way.

ColbyG

Hmm, I'll look into that. Though I figured even with a flash issue I would still see something at the console, like you said.

The guy has given me most of my money back, looks like he's trying to keep the cost of shipping. We'll see about that, lol..

Not sure what to do now. I really want a Juniper for my lab, but I don't want to spend $475 on one.

Aldur

yea, I wouldn't worry about trying to flash the CF actually. You'd definitely see something in the console if that was the problem.

*sigh* man, that's the part that sucks about ebay, for some reason sellers there think it's ok to not refund the shipping if they send out a faulty part...

Good luck there and hopefully you don't have to pay the return shipping.

Also, who was the ebay seller, I've bought quiet a few j2300's off of ebay and so I'm curious if it was the same guy that I bought mine from.

ColbyG

Seller was vplus. He had good feedback. I've been refunded all of my money. Still pissed though cause I have to decide if I want to spend the extra $200.

Anyone want to trade for some Cisco gear? Haha.

Aldur

Spend the extra 200$?

If you got all of your money refunded then whats the 200$ of extra spending for?