September 3, 2010

Juniper Networks EX4200 Muli-Layer Switch Review

March 23, 2010 1 Comment
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juniper ex4200 reviewJuniper Networks EX4300 multi-layer Ethernet switches are fast, secure and reliable platforms providing compact standards based connectivity for branch office, enterprise networks and data centers. Yes, if you haven't guessed by now, we really like these switches.

Designed for the access and distribution layers, the EX4200 and EX3200 series switches allows Juniper to enter markets primarily dominated by the Cisco Catalyst line of switches.

The EX4200 series switches combine the high reliability of traditional chassis based systems with the economics and flexibility of stackable systems.  Available in both 24 port and 48 port configurations, these switches provide standards base 10/100/1000 Mb/s copper connectivity.  Also available is a 24 port fiber configuration for distribution and core deployments.

Why pay for a full PoE switch when you only have a hand full of PoE devices?

Full or partial configurations of Power over Ethernet (PoE) are available to deliver 15.4 watts of  class 3 power per port.  Why pay for a full PoE switch when you only have a handle full of PoE devices? This flexibility allows Juniper to stand out from the crowd and save you money.  The ex4200 standards based P0E configurations allow you to support converged networks for separate data, voice and video networks.

Optional front panel fiber uplink ports are available to provide connectivity to distribution layer switches or upstream routers.  These hot swappable modules come in either a 2 TenGigabit module or a 4 One Gigabit module configuration.

Juniper's Virtual Chassis Technology means you only have to worry about one software image, one config file and one IP address

The Juniper virtual chassis technology is another feature that makes the EX4200 very unique.  This unique feature allows up to ten switches to be connected into a single logical device.  This also means a single JunOS software image, a single config, and a single IP address for management.

Inter-connectivity is provided by a high speed non-blocking connection on the back of each switch.  This 128Gb/s back plane connection is cabled in a daisy chain fashion very similar to a Cisco catalyst 3750.

The virtual chassis technology also works over the front panel up-link ports allowing switches to be deployed on separate floors or in separate building across a campus.

In a virtual chassis configuration, the switches automatically elect master and backup routing engines to maintain the hardware forwarding table and routing protocol states. In the event of a master routing engine failure, a graceful fail-over to the backup routing engine occurs immediately to ensure continued operations.

The Chassis like features of the ex4200 continue with redundant hot swapable power supplies and redundant hot swappable fan assemblies too.

The EX4200 hardware easily competes with any of Cisco's multi-layer switching platforms and does so for a whole lot less money.  Coupled with the JunOS operation system, which allows for configuration revision control, and simultaneous config administration, the EX4200 switch is a must have replacement for all aging Cisco gear or new deployments.

Do you have any EX4200's in your network?  What is your experience with Juniper's enterprise class switching series? Leave a comment below and let know what your experience has been.

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Juniper Networks – A Great Alternative to Cisco

March 12, 2010 2 Comments
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juniper networksHow Can a Juniper Networks Infrastructure Benefit My Business?

By Derek Rogers

Does your company need a computer network infrastructure? If so, then you should consider Juniper Networks. Their products can create an environment for hastening the installation of applications and services over one network. Juniper can create outstanding solutions for expanding your company and catering to complex legacy networks.

Providing high-performance network infrastructures, Juniper can offer:

  • Fast installation and scaling of new applications and services
  • Operational upgrades to reduce a wide array of costs
  • Reliable accessibility to various applications and services
  • Safeguarding and recovery of applications and services against attacks

Since its creation, Juniper has been attempting to help businesses and organisations boost their productivity, by improving their IT infrastructures. Juniper remains a leader in the industry of network infrastructures, due to three specialties in network infrastructure: silicon design, unique network operation system, and architecture. Jupiter offers a wide variety of products in various specialties, including:

  • application acceleration
  • identity policy and control
  • management
  • routers
  • security
  • switching

Juniper Network's Infrastructure can provide several benefits to businesses. For instance, the Juniper Networks Data Center can lower the total price of computer network ownership. It accomplishes this by an outstanding line of products. These products function in increasing the speed and adaptability of computer networks.

How do they accomplish that goal? Juniper Networks streamlines the design of a network, by reducing the number of devices and connections within the network. Furthermore, they make the security system more compact, thus increasing the efficiency and the capability of platforms. Meanwhile, improving the abilities of the routers improves the security, accessibility and effectiveness of applications. On the other hand, Juniper implements a single management system and a single operating system. The result is that applications within the network's infrastructure become implemented faster and more effectively.

Recently, Juniper Networks introduced its next generational of Network Infrastructure (for the enterprise that is distributed). This included new models of Gateways and Ethernet Switches. These machines will be capable of providing more security at a lower cost. Thus, at locations of varying sizes, customers can create and install effective computer networks for a lower cost.

Why are these capabilities important? Organisations must provide sufficient business services to personnel who are located in a widespread geographic reason, without increasing risk, providing fewer choices, etc. Due to globalisation, today's companies continue to become more widespread geographically. Thus, the numerous benefits that Juniper Networks is providing can be of great assistance to any IT organizations.

Finally, one of the major benefits of choosing Juniper Network's infrastructure is its JUNOS Software. This software is easy to operate, yet extremely reliable as well. Juniper Networks' JUNOS uses a modular architecture that helps to prevent an entire computer network from crashing.

When selecting computer network infrastructure, you should certainly consider Juniper Network. Juniper has become an industry leader, and can provide the best solutions to your networking infrastructure issues. When choosing a company to handle your networking infrastructure, choose the one named after the evergreen bush with purple berries: Juniper Networks!

Derek Rogers is a freelance writer who writes for a number of UK businesses. For information about Network, he recommends Prodec Networks, a leading provider of Juniper Networks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Derek_Rogers

Filed Under: Juniper Networks

Review: WAN Optimization Solutions

March 10, 2009 6 Comments
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I recently had the opportunity to test out and implement some of the top WAN optimization products on the market today. I was amazed at the science behind these awesome devices and how they were able to "speed" up long distance data transfers.

WAN Optimization has been a bit of a buzz word for the past several years. The need for faster information, bigger pipes, and the need to reduce circuit costs has spurred a need for devices that will make all of that happen.

I had the pleasure of reviewing three different appliances that were designed for WAN Optimization.  Our test scenario was to move an entire data center from Sterling, Virginia, USA to Austin, TX.  The media we used was a 40Mbs TimeWarner metro ethernet circuit.  This was a straight layer two circuit, with no routing. This essentially enabled the two locations to act as one virtual location via the switched metro-ethernet.  We invited three vendors, Juniper, Cisco, and Riverbed, to bring in their appliances for an unofficial bake-off.  Each vendor was explained the architecture, were to provide two units, one for each end of the circuit.  All said their product could do the job the best. Lets see how they do...

Juniper

First to the gate was Juniper who brought in their WXC Wan Accelerator.  The Juniper Sales Engineers were top notch, came on site and helped us get the WXC installed and configured properly. For our scenario the appliance would need to be in-line with the traffic.  Juniper Engineers explained that they were more accustomed to being in a routed environment but assured us the WXC would accelerate only layer 2. Needless to say after weeks of tweaking, we saw little acceleration in our given layer 2 environment. The final suggested solution from Juniper was to create a layer 3 routed segment for the WAN.  This was not an option so it was on to Vendor #2.

Cisco

Cisco is amazing.  During our initial conference call with them, Cisco totally understood the test scenario, was extremely knowledgeable and immediately on the ball to determine our sizing requirements for testing the  Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) .

Riverbed

While waiting for Cisco to determine the "sizing requirements" we decided to give Riverbed a call.  From our experience it would take Cisco a few days to come up with a demo unit for us to test.  For Riverbed however, one phone call and we had the regional sales guy at our offices the very next day. We then had a demo unit, a Steelhead 6050,  in our racks 3 days later with another one shipped to the distant end in Virginia 3 days after that.  The speed in which Riverbed was able to get product into our hands was amazing but could they actually do the job?

riverbed-diagram-sm

This test would be another in-line test as our architecture was layer 2 only.  During the next change window we got both units in the traffic path and turned them both on. Immediately we saw a dramatic improvement. One of the tests we ran was to transfer a 1Gig file across the WAN without optimization. We used FTP as the file transport method. This I believe took approximately 40minutes.  With Optimization enabled - it took 8 minutes.  (I should have a disclaimer here - our tests were not scientific in the least - it was extremely late and these times are not exact - however the increase in perceived throughput was this dramatic) .

Over the next month we were able to completely transfer all of the data from the servers at the Virginia location to the Austin location. Hands down the Riverbed stole the show.

Oh, and Cisco?  Yeah, they never called us back. Finally after several attempts to contact them we were told that the WAAS would NOT function in a layer 2 only topology.

FREAK!!!

Filed Under: Product Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Review: Cisco ASA 5500

November 26, 2008 Leave a Comment
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Today we review the Cisco ASA 5500 series firewall/vpn/ips/security device.  For those who don't remember the Cisco ASA series is the replacement for the PIX as well as the VPN concentrator.  Along with the new line of ISR routers, Cisco is moving swiftly on all fronts to devices that can serve in multiple areas within the network.  The Cisco ASA is no exception.

The Cisco ASA 5500 family is the industry's only product line that can provide both full IPsec and clientless, portal-based and client-based SSL VPN remote access capabilities. When combined with the core functionality of the Cisco ASA 5580 Series high-performance firewalling, the platform provides a single security appliance that protects a distributed enterprise's central datacenter sites as well as remote locations and mobile users. The Cisco ASA 5500 Series Business Edition is an enterprise-strength comprehensive security solution that combines market-leading firewall, VPN, and optional anti-X capabilities, so you can feel confident your business is protected. This easy-to-use solution lets you control access to network resources to protect business data and maximize network uptime. The Cisco ASA 5500 Series IPS Edition protects an organization's servers and infrastructure without compromising its ability to use the network as a business tool. With its solid firewall and advanced application security capabilities, the Cisco ASA 5500 Series IPS Edition provides robust and stable policy enforcement.

The Cisco ASA 5500 Series enables standardization on a single platform to reduce overall operational costs for security. A common configuration environment simplifies management and reduces training costs, while the common hardware platform of the series reduces sparing costs. The Cisco ASA 5500 series are supposed to be the upgrade to the cisco pix firewalls. They also introduced the mysdn.com site that provides an essentail security bulletin board system for current threats. The Cisco ASA 5500 Series delivers a powerful combination of multiple market-proven technologies in a single platform, making it operationally and economically feasible to deploy comprehensive security services to more locations. And its multifunction security profile virtually eliminates the difficult---and risky---decision of making trade-offs between robust security protection and the operational costs associated with multiple devices in numerous locations.

The Cisco ASA 5500 Series delivers a wide range of network containment and control services to give businesses precise control over application access and network traffic flows. As a secure foundation, Cisco ASA 5500 Series appliances provide rich stateful inspection firewall services, tracking the state of all network communications and preventing unauthorized network access. The Cisco ASA 5500 series brings a new, advanced level of integrated security performance and speed to the Website Source network. The Cisco ASA 5500 Series delivers a powerful combination of multiple market-proven technologies in a single platform, making it operationally and economically feasible for organizations to deploy comprehensive security services to more locations. The comprehensive portfolio of services within the Cisco ASA 5500 Series enables customization for location-specific needs through tailored product editions for small to medium-sized businesses and for enterprises.

The Cisco ASA 5500 Series VPN Edition offers flexible VPN technologies for any connectivity scenario with scalability up to 5000 concurrent users. Providing easy-to-manage full-tunnel network access through both SSL VPN and IPSec VPN client technologies, advanced clientless SSL VPN capabilities, and network-aware site-to-site VPN connectivity, the VPN Edition enables businesses to create secure connections across public networks to mobile users, remote sites, contractors, and business partners.

With one product able to perform so well doing so many different security tasks, the Cisco ASA 5500 series is highly recommended. Folks who know the PIX will easily be able to configure the device and have a very powerful solution to any security upgrade.  For VPN solutions the ASA can do both SSL VPN as well as IPSec making it stand out above other SSL VPN solutions that can not do IPSec.  And finally, Cisco has kept the price competative with other vendors to ensure they stay in the enterprise.

Filed Under: Product Reviews

MPLS in the DataCenter?

October 14, 2008 Leave a Comment
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MPLS in the DataCenter? According to Juniper, they say "HECK YEAH!" and I can totally see why. Most data centers have a nicely redundant, fully meshed switching architecture. Most host servers are multi-homed (or connected to two separate switches for redundancy) and the access layer switches are multi-homed to the core to provide a fast spanning tree for all layer two traffic.  And this is great for switching, but move up a layer and more times than not the routing occurs in more spot, at the core on two dedicated routers operating in some sort of failover configuration (HSRP).

Switches have come a long way and even your rack level or IDF closet switches can now route.  However, most still switch frames up to the core router to be routed.  Most facilities have  switches deployed through out the data center that have the ability to route but are just not used.

Wouldn't it be great if the routing decisions could be made right at the edge? Well Juniper has a clever way to wake up your sleeping routers and begin to add more intelligence between your layer 2 switching and your later 3 routing. Best of all you're probably using it on your WAN circuits now.  It's MPLS!!

By using MPLS to overlay on top of your OSPF routing protocol within the DataCenter you greatly increase the intelligence and security of your OSPF routing to better optimize  your interior data center traffic. I personally don't fully understand all of the details in how MPLS integrates with the layer 2 protocol such as Spanning-Tree is or how Juniper provides its ciruit to packet resiliency.  It could be just vendor fluff, but  one thing is for sure, Juniper has been doing provider level services such as mpls and ipv6 for a long time and doing it very well.

I know, I know.. Your saying "Your switches and routers in the data center don't talk MPLS".  Well with Juniper Network's EX 4200 Series Ethernet with Virtual Chassis Technology they can! And they're are listed at a great price point! Between $10-$11K list means you should be able to pick one of these puppy's up for around $5-6K depending on quantity and your relationship with your VAR.

The EX 4200 series switches offers a full suite of layer2 and layer3 switching capability to satisfy a variety of high-performance deployments including branch and data center locations.  This is the same performance that we've come to enjoy in other switches like the  Cisco 3750 line.  But the Juniper EX 4200 goes one step further.

Every switch is PoE. No need to worry about future upgrades for VoIP or wireless AP's that need PoE power. Every switch enjoys the Juniper Networks Virtual Chassis Technology with allows up to 10 EX 4200 series switches to be interconnected over a 128 gigabit backplane (I believe Cisco can only do 64 gig).  Port density will scale from 24 ports on up to 480 10/100/1000 ports.  And every switch has the capability to have either Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet uplink options for high-speed connectivity to your aggregation or core layer switches.

All Juniper EX 4200 switches include HA features for redundant, hot swappable internal power and fan trays. Plus the full gamut of JUNOS routing protocols to allow for any standard dynamic routing configuration you can think of.  But best of all these little babies will run MPLS to totally hyper charge your data center traffic and bridge your layer 2 and layer 3 protocols for optimum data flow.

I got one of these EX 4200's to play with and will be writing more later.  If these are even close to what has been promised I expect to see phenomenal things.

FREAK!!!

Filed Under: Product Reviews
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