Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches Reviews

A lot of our deployments are hybrid cloud that we do for clients. We are personally using an on-premises installation.  

Our clients' use cases for Juniper Ethernet Switches are pretty broad as far as the industries covered. There are clients that are urgent care facilities, physician's offices, legal offices, restaurants — it really runs across the boards as far as industries. The USDA has a number of Juniper switches that we put in for them.  

When you are doing switching for anybody — it could be Motorola or Sprint or a restaurant that is relatively small and has 45 employees — it does not matter. They all have the same PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance needs. If they are in the medical industry in urgent care — like Duke Medical System or just a freestanding office — they all still have the same HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliance. When we are configuring switches, we are not only looking at port density in terms of the number of devices that are hooking to it. We are also looking at the VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) configurations and a number of other things. Whether you are dealing with multilink, VLANs, being able to specifically control certain ports, control certain applications, or whatever, you are using almost every feature to some degree on every switch because the utility is valuable.  

One of the nicest things about Juniper switches is they work well with other vendor products. When you have to go into a situation where other vendor switches are present, you can make it work.  

Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small operation, you might have the same requirements for security features. There are security features related to Mac addresses that are present and high-end switches that lack some of the same flexibility in the lower-end switches. We may be talking about the difference between an EX2300 and an EX5500 model switch. It is the same manufacturer. It would be nice to have more of that security relevance in every level switch, regardless of the price tag or the model. It is just like the fact that you have the VLAN capability on all of them. I think the security features should generally be more available instead of scaled up and down with the product.  

Going into the future, you will probably see more fully meshed networks that have multiple internet-facing routes. These should go in an SD-WAN on a fiber-based VLAN. You may have coax services like Spectrum or Cox Cable providing internet avenues. Or you may also have a 4G or 5G modem doing the same thing in providing additional connection avenues. In the end, I think that the switching on that type of architecture and the routing needs to get a little more intuitive.  

Obviously, you can take care of the situation with routing tables and other methods. I think we are going to need to start seeing some kind of AI to assist with some of what we really want to accomplish from a policy standpoint to achieve better efficiency.  

I have been using Juniper switches for probably a little over 15 years.  

I love the stability of Juniper. I look for stability in this type of product. When I have to put my hands on something repeatedly because of problems — endemic or quasi failures, where the OS just kind of locks up and stops performing — I call them insanity failures. I rarely see that in Juniper or WatchGuard or any of those guys. I like that and that is why I lean toward using those products.  

Is there an end to the ability to scale Juniper? If there is, I have never seen it and I would know because I do data center design. Before I did what I am doing now, I was a director of new technology for Sprint PCS. We equipped to handle a lot of routing and I do not know if there is a scalability issue in the end.  

Our clients are a mix of industries that are small, medium, or large businesses. This product can service all of them. The scalability is really very good. 

You always end up using technical support here and there for something. I would give them a pretty high rating. Some of that technical support I reached out for has been in design implementation. I think once we did have a DOA (Dead On Arrival) switch. But things like that are rare and Juniper is very responsive. They are always pretty responsive. Overall it is a good company.  

I would give the technical support a nine. I do not know if there is any company that I know of whose technical support would rate as a ten-of-ten. I am saying they are a nine, but there really is nothing lacking compared to the competition.  

The installation of Juniper switches is pretty much straightforward.  

Juniper is less expensive than competing products and as much as 33% less than Cisco.  

Whether you are on the lower end of the business scale with a smaller portfolio, or whether you are a Fortune 500 or 1000 company, you can not go wrong with Juniper's back-end products. It is a cost-effective solution in comparison to the competition. I do not like to have to touch switches or routers or anything of that nature unless I am doing a new configuration or a firmware upgrade. The Juniper product helps me with that by having impeccable reliability.  

Saying that this solution is impeccable could be the entirety of my review.  

I have been a network architect for a long time. At one time in my career, I thought Nortel and Juniper were on par. They were the two best-engineered equipment supplier manufacturers out there from both a cost and performance standpoint. I had never been a big Cisco fan. The number one reason behind that is the per-port cost for Cisco is 30% higher than everybody else. Number two, they have too many proprietary protocols that are not friendly with what other technicians know. That is particularly true on their routers. I found that in practice, we had to reboot the Cisco products in enterprise and Fortune 500 company levels too many times. When you had 400 and 500 sites out there and you had to rebuild the routing tables, you were screwed. We did not ever have that same problem with Nortel or Juniper.  

So I got a bad taste in my mouth from Cisco many years ago. I spend a lot of time in cybersecurity and I find the Cisco IOS is one of the most vulnerable and most often patched by comparison to other high-end vendors, like Juniper. I have very few problems with Juniper products and they are easy to configure. They do a good job and they just continue doing it for a long time.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate this product as a ten overall for where they are in technology, their solid engineering, and the product. That includes the software and the hardware.  

Even the lack of a few features is not a point to knock them down to a nine because we are on a road where we are taking a trip. I do not care what the literature says, SD-WAN is still new. We are still pushing the envelope on how we want to use it and how we want to design our systems to work with it. I can not mark Juniper down for being on the cutting edge of innovation.  

We are using multiple EX4200 Virtual Chassis Stacks in an on-premises deployment.

The way we have it configured is that it is our core switch model that holds up our entire infrastructure.

The most valuable feature of this solution is reliability.

The ease of management through the command line interface is very good.

It would be nice to have a more available list of modules that you can get for this solution. One of the hardest things that I've found when I go looking for modules on those switches is actually finding a thorough list of them.

The stability of this solution is rock solid. The only time we've had an issue is when one of the redundant power supplies shorted out. I don't think that this was the fault of the solution. Rather, I think it was due to a failed power line, perhaps a spike in power.

This solution is extremely scalable. We had to add a new line module and we were able to do it while it was hot, so we didn't have any downtime.

This solution makes up the core of our network, so everybody in the company relies on it. We're predominately web-facing, so it supports our public-facing infrastructure. It is difficult to estimate the number of users that it supports.

We have been in touch with Professional Services. They are excellent, and they're always on time.

The responses are timely and they're very knowledgeable. If they're unsure then they will quickly consult other team members. The engineers that are dealing with it won't just sit there and try to figure it out themselves. They'll engage other members in their environment as quickly as they can. They get the issue resolved, so it's great.

We were using a solution from Cisco previously, but we were having issues with those, which is one of the reasons that we switched to Juniper. From what I can remember, the Cisco solution was not able to get the throughput that we required. Also, we required the ability to do hot swap-overs of the devices.

One of the main things with Cisco is that any of the changes that you made were instant, whereas, with Juniper, we can actually stage the changes before we apply them. Also, for the Cisco product, it was a really, really expensive product range. 

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward.

The deployment took one day at each of two different sites.

I was on-site for the deployments, but we had a consultant come in and do it for us.

The maintenance cost is approximately €2,000 ($2,200 USD) per year, including support, for our entire fleet.

We evaluated other options including some by Cisco and HP. 

If you're looking at this solution from an ethernet switching point of view, we don't use any of the in-depth features. We selected this solution for its reliability and ease of management on the command line.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to plan it out in advance. Other than that, they're relatively straightforward. There are no major issues or items that I could call out as a problem. It's just a case of making sure that you plan our your deployment before you start.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

In terms of performance, Juniper switches have a more user-friendly interface and more features than Cisco products. However, in terms of commands, Cisco is simple to use, and the command line is easier to use.

The only issue that we have with Juniper Ethernet Switches is the firmware because it is not stable.

When the power goes out, it's possible that it has become corrupted, and we couldn't continue because the switches stopped working. As a result, Juniper products were affected. Also, the power circuits may become corrupted after five years. It is, however, stable in Cisco switches.

We think it's popular. We prefer to use Cisco CLI commands rather than Juniper CLI commands.

I have been working with Juniper Ethernet Switches for ten years.

The product's stability after five or six years is less than that of Cisco.

We have approximately 200 users in our company.

I don't choose products by name, but we develop the technical specifications, and any vendor who can meet the technical specifications will be accepted. The tender, financial, and commercial processes will begin, and we will come to an agreement on the list price.

Our developers are in another department.

Technical support is very good.

Several times during the warranty period, we requested support. The response was very fast, they came to support us the next day. However, we did not extend the warranty after the warranty period had expired.

We are also working with Cisco Switches. Cisco Switches are more stable in terms of hardware and firmware. rather than Juniper Switches.

We only use these switches, the EX200 and the 20. We didn't use any other products with Juniper.

Juniper's initial setup was completed in collaboration with a partner. This happened about ten years ago.

It is sufficient for one technical person to install the switches and another to configure them.

The partner completed the deployment in one day for about 13 switches, making it very simple.

After the configuration, the partner brought his technicians to mount the switches.

We had a leakage in the support process and decided to end the product's life in order to purchase a new product with support. We did not renew product support as a result.

Juniper products are very stable. I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

I would rate Juniper Ethernet Switches a nine out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for our customers in the retail and financial companies. We are using the switches in data center operations for our customer environment. We are using Juniper for back-end switches.

The most valuable feature of the solution is in the area of MC-LAG, especially for redundancy and backup.

Improvements can be made in the web user interface and web management. The management interface is based on Java, and it is a problematic application. I always use CLI due to black screen issues, but sometimes, I need more than user-friendly operations for customers. If the management interface improves, it would be good.

I have been using Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches for three years. My company has a partnership with Juniper.

It offers a very stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My customers are medium and enterprise businesses.

Only once in three years have I used the solution's technical support, and it was good. I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

Compared to Cisco, Juniper offers better stability and low prices.

The product's initial setup phase is not too easy compared to different vendors. We are always using Cisco's interface, but Juniper's syntax is different and sometimes it is difficult. If you are working on Juniper, the setup may seem easier.

If ten means very easy, I rate the setup phase a six or seven out of ten.

The time needed to deploy the solution depends on the project, and it may range between an hour to two.

The solution can be deployed on an on-premises model.

Time is very important for our customers. The switches are not purchased by our users. We operate a data center, and the owner of our old environment is Kindle. I work in the data centers. Directly, our customers do not buy any environment or infrastructure because all the infrastructure owners are Kindle. We offer services to customers, and sometimes we discuss with them which solution is best for them.

Juniper is not problematic and is stable. With the tool, one doesn't need to spend too much time on issues or corruption because the tool is not problematic. I spend time if I make any configuration changes. In other words, I don't spend too much time on issues or bugs.

I don't know much about pricing because I am from the technical side. I think the tool's prices are competitive with the vendors.

I recommend users keep using the tool. If people have experience with the tool, it's enough, but if they don't, I think they should work with people who have experience with Juniper.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

We are the company integrators, who provide solutions to our customers. I don't have much knowledge in this regard since I started in the middle. I have a lot of experience in Huawei and Juniper. It's because the configuration is an easier process and the transport from Juniper is also easy. They are currently using all these products for various purposes in the network which includes connecting to servers and Wi-Fi points. 

We have multiple cases of the customers trying to upgrade their network from Cisco, Aruba and Huawei to Juniper. They do this basically because they want to modernise their network and have an increased capacity. This shift improves their functionality because the Juniper Ethernet switches are more advanced. We provide them with assistance to configure switches, access points and Wi-Fi. 

There are multiple areas of improvement in Juniper EX series switches. In terms of speed and pricing, while Juniper provides good quality services, some clients still find the price very high compared to other competitors. Also there is a need for certain features to be enhanced like clear our configuration process which will help to make Juniper switches more stronger. However, there are also multiple challenges including understanding and configuration of certain aspects difficult without assistance. Despite these kinds of challenges, there have been multiple solutions and huge potential of improvement in Juniper. 

I have been working with Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches for more than 10 years. 

Juniper switches are stable and reliable which makes it efficient for day to day operations. 

In terms of scalability they are scalable, especially in the context of Ukraine's growing Ethernet provider market. I have observed instances where customers easily scale up their network capacities with Juniper and this has proved to be very beneficial for them. 

I have opened a ticket once or twice and I think there are not many changes that I would like to address. They explain the problem and help to get the solution 

Positive

I would recommend everyone to use Juniper at the organisations. I would rate it 7 out of 10. 

Juniper EX Series is part of the Junos operating system and has a candidate configuration feature, which means changes are not immediately applied. It has a consistent command structure across all platforms and can handle both layer-three routing and layer-two switching. Additionally, the Junos OS offers virtualization options and support for multi-chassis and fabric switching. Overall, the Juniper EX Series is a versatile and powerful solution.

One potential drawback of the Juniper EX Series has been that those without experience using a command-line interface (CLI) may find it intimidating. However, Junos is working on improving this by offering tools, such as Juniper Mist with Wired Assurance and Apstra. Additionally, the graphical user interface (GUI) could be improved as it has been considered lackluster across the board in Junos.

I have used Juniper EX Series within the last 12 months.

I rate the stability of the Juniper EX Series a ten out of ten.

I have not seen a Juniper EX Series massive failure. If there is a failure, it's going to be in their hardware itself, such as burned-out power. However, the OS, it's highly stable. I have customers that have been running these switches for 12 years without turning them off.

Juniper EX Series is highly scalable as switches. They have a high capacity for virtualization, supporting up to 64 or 128 nodes on a virtual chassis with a 48-port switch. They are well-suited for fabric and top-of-rack setups and can scale up exponentially. They are great solutions for connecting data centers.

I rate the support from the Juniper EX Series a nine out of ten.

Positive

The setup process of the Juniper EX Series can be relatively simple if you have the Juniper Mist with Wired Assurance tool. However, if you do not have this tool, it may take some additional research and familiarity with the platform to properly configure it.

The setup process for the Juniper EX series is entirely done through the command-line interface, there is no user-friendly setup wizard available. The configuration requires running specific commands to get it to function.

The solution has a long lifespan and the upfront investment cost may be high, but the return on investment is worth it in the long run as it reduces the need for frequent upgrades to the infrastructure.

The initial cost of the solution can be expensive.

I would recommend this switch over any other switch on the market today.

I rate the Juniper EX Series a nine out of ten.

I use it for my customers. 

The solution works well overall. 

It's a switch. Everything which I'm expecting from the switch is on the Juniper EX series.

It is stable.

You can scale the product.

All Juniper products that you use in internet service provider equipment. They start from flash, et cetera. If you don't stop them properly, you have some problems with flash memory.

The setup, if you don't have your own configuration, can be a bit difficult. 

All Juniper documentation is terrible. If you are familiar with Cisco documentation, you have everything you need and you have a good overall picture. In Juniper, you have a lot of text and you have to figure out what they are saying as opposed to just seeing a picture and understanding what's happening. Cisco documentation is much better than Juniper.

I've been using the solution for seven years or somewhere thereabouts. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is scalable. You can scale with more equipment, more cards, more interfaces, et cetera. In the case of switches, you've got upwards of six so you can scale the solution for your needs.

I tend to work with medium-sized organizations. 

The solution's support is typical. It's not quite different from others. I fid it similar to other vendors. For example, I see no difference between Cisco and Juniper.

I'm also familiar with Cisco. I prefer Juniper's switches to Cisco. The price is good. 

I have to stop the initial configuration, then I have to remove all defaults and start from scratch. In my opinion, it's easier to start with my own configuration rather than going through the initial set up. 

The solution is reasonably priced if you compare it to Cisco.

The exact price depends on the model, the software you are going to implement, and the features you want. In the case of Juniper, you can use its recommended vendors, SFPs, et cetera. 

At one point, I was a Juniper partner. I just use the solution right now. 

I'd advise potential new users to start with Junos. That's the name of the operating system for Juniper stuff. If you are familiar with this, you can do everything. However, if you are not familiar, it could be very, very difficult for you to start with Juniper.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We use the layer three switches. We use it for routing, separating the VLANs, and for inter-VLAN routing. Also, we use the product's firewall filters.  

It gives us another, better option for clients in switching technology.  

In general, and when I am talking about the Juniper SRX switches that have the Junos operating systems, I find that the admin features are very flexible. For example, the rollbacks or commit confirmed work very well. Fifty configurations can be saved and restored easily. These things are very good for us because it helps us to troubleshoot or to maintain the system. When we have remote access to a device, we can be sure that a process does not get disconnected.  

When you want to change a lot of parameters in a configuration, you make your changes and then you can initiate a commit and all the changes will be saved and will be enforced when the device is activated. These features are available in the Juniper switches with the Junos OS. They are very wonderful and powerful capabilities that are unique to the Juniper switching solution. For example, Cisco or FortiGate do not have similar features or they are not very good with these capabilities.  

To make the product better, I think that the company needs to do more testing before releasing versions of the operating system. In many versions, there are bugs in the Junos OS. For example, with some versions of the Junos OS, a specific function or some functions do not work correctly and you have to then change to another version to get the functionality back or make the product stable. Some versions of the Junos OS can create problems in integrations with Citrix and of course in other platforms because the OS has some bugs that cause instability. When you are using or when you find a stable OS, everything works okay. But I have had many experiences with some versions of Junos OS that have bugs and I am forced to migrate to another version of the OS either as an upgrade or even a downgrade. It will work in the end, but it should not be necessary to discover if an OS version is good or not.  

Something that I might like to see added to Juniper switches is the opportunity to use some NAT (Network Address Translation) features with it. I am not sure if it is possible or not. But having some NAT features would be nice and offer some other kinds of flexibility.  

We have been using Juniper Ethernet Switches for a little less than two years.  

I think for the most part it is a really a very stable product. When I use a stable Junos OS the stability is okay. Some of the OS versions are not so good because they have some bugs, and this can cause some issues with stability. But these are only temporary issues that are resolved by choosing which OS version to use and which to avoid. We have some devices on Juniper that have been running for more than one or even two years without any downtime. We have not had stability issues and we have not had to restart. It really demonstrates stability when you have examples where we have uptime of more than two years without any problems.  

I think Juniper is scalable in some ways. Really as far as this capability, I would say it is good, but that scalability is in the middle in the category of switches.  

The number of users who are using this solution is harder to estimate for our clients than it is within our own company. If we are talking about Juniper Ethernet, one client project that we have has between 200 or 250 people. Nearly 40% of the users are going to be systems engineers.  

There are a variety of user and organizational types. Some of the users are office workers and some of them are engineers. Some of them work in financial jobs and some of them are more on the business end. There are a variety of people using the products.  

I have not personally really had a reason to contact Juniper's technical support directly. There has been no need because most of the time — it is really 95% of the time — I can say our problems are easily solved by the knowledgebases or forums or by just changing the Junos OS.  

In our company, someone had to contact support because we had some problems with some of the licenses. In that case, we did get support to help us to fix the problem. It was not really a problem with the product, it was about the license only. I do not know about the technical support services directly but I do know the issue was resolved.  

In our location, there are not so many companies using Juniper Switches. The use of this brand is somewhat limited here because Juniper is not so popular and is unfortunately not as well-known as other product brands. Cisco switches are much more popular and I have used Cisco switches a lot — more than any other brand — for our clients. I also have experience with Tricom Switches and also with Extreme Networks switches and some experience with Fortinet solutions. We could use any of these depending on the client and the situation. As far as switching from one product to another, that is not exactly what we do. Because we are a reseller we have to have various solutions available, so we keep them all as opportunities for our clients as long as we have tested them and they are good solutions.  

When it came to Juniper, while we had other options, we were really interested in checking out the product and examining how the Juniper switches worked in comparison to the other more popular brands. Because our tests and experience with the product confirmed that it was a good option, we have tried to convince our customers to buy the Juniper solution because it is a good solution and works well even if it was not so popular. We somehow have convinced a few clients to agree to buy the Juniper Switches to this point. But even though we are promoting Juniper, most of the time our clients are gravitating to what they are familiar with and that means purchasing Cisco because they think that the Cisco solution is better just because of the name.  

Another reason that the clients would think the Cisco products were better for them is not only because they do not know the Juniper brand name. One of the other main reasons is that a technical people who have experience in working with Juniper devices are much more scarce than technical people who know how to configure Cisco switches. The product and the name might not be the problem but finding technicians who could work with the solution is the problem instead.  

The initial setup is not complex. It is usually easy. It depends. If you understand the concepts of working with the product — if you already have some experience with it — it is easy to work with it. But if you do not have the experience and do not get the concept, it might seem to be unfriendly. If you can work with it a little and get the concept of how it works and how you should configure it, then it becomes a really friendly format.  

I think it took about one week to configure and deploy the switches. Of course, sometimes we were not working just on that for a whole day, so the number of hours working just on that deployment is something I can not say exactly. But in about one week the deployment was complete. It could have been done faster if it were the only thing that we were concentrating on.  

Most of the time, I do the deployments by myself. But when I have some problems, we have a team that can help out. I might ask them, or I might use the knowledgebases on the internet or search on Google to find solutions. Most of the time there are good, long articles on Juniper's site or in one of the forums that can help me to resolve any issues. There is a lot of knowledge that is readily available. Juniper takes care to publish many good articles. 95% of the time, it is not really hard to solve a problem. If I just go and do a little searching, I can find the information I need to resolve any problem.  

The exact licensing is not something I know about, but I do know that Juniper is a less expensive solution when compared to the competition.  

Because of some limitations as in regulations or client business requirements, we can not always work with cloud solutions or solutions that run on VMs. There are some solutions I might like to consider, but for the most part, our market will not accept certain solutions. Often we have to work with on-premises hardware and that makes a difference in availability.  

We are continuing to evaluate other solutions in order to be able to meet our clients' needs. The regulations and perception of products may change over time. We use Juniper in our company because we think it is the better solution and we do not have restrictions.  

My advice to people who are considering using Juniper switches is to try them out because the Juniper brand is very good. I myself really like the Juniper devices because, in comparison to other products in this category, they are a very good value and are worth much more than the cost. These switches are much more stable and you have better performance than the other guys, so long as you are aware of the potential issues with the OS. I think I can say this in one sentence: you can have better performance at a lower price if you choose Juniper.  

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Juniper Ethernet switches — besides the fact that the most popular name is not always the best product or the best solution — is that using the commit confirmed feature instead of just committing is very valuable. It can help you to be sure your commit is successful. If it is not for whatever reason, the product deals with the issue. After a certain amount of time, the product can roll back automatically if something did not commit successfully. Not all products have anything like this feature.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Juniper Ethernet Switches as a nine overall. It is a nine and not a ten because there should always be room for product improvement.