Juniper SRX Series Firewall Reviews

As a firewall in general, it is good.

As we are a solution provider and not product oriented, we give the best solution for our customers, with a good price. We are the number one company in the region, BTC, and operate in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia.

I've used Juniper products for over 10 years. Alongside SRX I also use Netscreen, SSG, and WXC. As a UTM, Juniper is 5/10.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

For me, the customer satisfaction, and awareness, is the most important thing. I usually train all my clients on their chosen system.

10/10

As we are a service provider, we offer various other products to our customer:

• Astaro ASG
• Avaya/Netscreen
• Fortinet
• HP Switches & WiFi
• Juniper SSG
• Juniper SRX 210 & 240
• Juniper WXC
• Sophos next generation SG, including RED, SG, and WiFi
• Telindus Crocus E1

For me, the installation and setup is simple. I work hard to do the simulation for the customer, and discuss all the requirements before implementation with the client.

Give us 10 minutes of your time, and we will show you the differences. When I do presentations, I give potential clients demo access to the solution(s) I am presenting.

We integrate these solutions with clusters, which are a risk to firewalls.

It has a very usable CLI.

It doesn't support SSL encryption.

I have been using Juniper SRX Series Firewall for three years.

It is a stable solution. We work it with clusters to two SRX firewalls for redundancy.

It is suitable for enterprise businesses.

The initial setup is complex and takes a few days to complete.

I rate the initial setup a six out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Customers always want cheaper solutions. Fortinet is a cheaper solution than Juniper.

It's difficult to implement when we have many policies and security.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the virtual on-premises in our data centers.

The reason that we picked Juniper SRX is for the scalability, the fit for purpose, the tools that are available, the ongoing support, and the ability to monitor, but particularly for the virtual routers in our data centers so that we can quickly upscale them when needed, when we need more throughput.

In the last year, we've started to roll out Juniper SRX for new sites. It has only been a couple, but we'll have about 10 to 15 sites within the next month in the new framework, and we'll also be putting a virtual SRX router at our gateway in our data centers as well.

We are using the latest version. It's not finalized to install yet. I expect it to be finalized next week in our city and Melbourne data centers.

So far they've been good in terms of stability.

The scalability has been very good so far.

We've got 420 staff using it, plus two of my internal team and two of my MSPs, four people,  working on the network stuff.

We have been in touch with support and they've been good. During the configuration stages, we had a couple of tickets and they were responsive to it.

The first configuration with my network experts took a little bit of time to work through the differences between their knowledge of the Huawei networking and the Juniper set-up and the change from all the Huawei to the Juniper and Sophos access points. The first install took a couple of weeks to configure the actual hardware, and then on site, what we expected to take half a day in the first instance probably took a week, but once we did one, we've been ok rolling out the next ones after that.

In terms of the initial setup being straightforward, that depends on your knowledge of the product. Juniper has been fairly responsive when my team has asked them questions. So it has taken us longer to install than I would've hoped, but that's one of those things when you change your products.

There is a component of monthly and yearly costs depending on the product.

Ongoing costs are something that we need to manage and make sure that we're getting value on. But with feeding the data back in and the capability, we're hoping that it will pay for itself in the monitoring tools and the ability to go past just the different baselines of stability and scalability to actually make sure that we're proactive in keeping our networks alive.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give Juniper SRX an eight.

The main thing is cost. Having said that, it's not ridiculous, but you're always looking for the best value, and them bringing out the virtual cores has been really good. The cost is more expensive, but you're getting a bang for your buck. They are very good value for money in their product.

The overall, ongoing costs of licensing has added to my budget, but until I get long-term experience and make sure that it's running as expected, I can't say it's everything that I expected.

Many customers of ours use Juniper firewalls — almost 30 enterprise companies in total. 

We have explored perimeter security; however, we have not had the chance to group all the security solutions from Juniper. In relation to perimeter firewalls, we have had a good experience. We have been working with Juniper for about 10 years now, and I think it's a good brand in the market in general. In the past, they had some issues involving integration with different products in the portfolio, but currently, I think they have solved that issue. Speaking about our experience with perimeter firewalls, we feel comfortable. We think they have a good interface, the operating system is good, it's robust. It has plenty of great features, and the relation between the cost and benefits works for our business.

They recently improved this solution. Currently, I feel comfortable with Juniper in general.

Support is good. We speak to them quite often.

The initial setup was very simple.

Currently, we plan on exploring more products and solutions geared toward cloud security.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Juniper SRX a rating of nine.

We primarily use this solution for data center segregation.

The features that are most valuable are the high-speed interfaces and MPLS.

The throughput when using features can be improved.

100-gigabit interfaces should be added into the next release because we'd like to adopt them.

The solution's stability is very good.

The scalability of the solution is limited.

We did use a different solution. The old boxes were at end of life.

The initial setup was complex because we have a complex network.

I find that the interfaces are okay. The big thing is performance. With all the features turned on it slows down.

The advice I would give to everyone is to specify a larger box than you think you need.

Due to the performance indications, I'd rate this product as a 7 out of 10.

Juniper SRX is solely used as a firewall gateway. We use it only for interfacing with the internet and for server farms, as a data center firewall gateway.

Most of our clients use it as a traditional firewall, blocking Layer 3 and Layer 4, blocking by transport.

We also use firewalls from FortiGate and Palo Alto and they're built with technology to make them next-generation firewalls. Juniper utilizes a router OS and includes enhancements to make it a firewall. But FortiGate and Palo Alto are full-on firewalls because they are built from scratch with features which are specific to firewalls. 

Juniper needs to enhance the solution so that it is more powerful. They need to update the administrative tools to create an easier admin experience. An average administrator would find it easier to configure if they could use https rather than the command line interface to do so.

In addition, it would be more powerful if Juniper brought out a security product other than firewalls, like anti-spam, endpoint protection, etc. Customers who want to deploy security solutions are not just thinking about firewalls. They're thinking about security across their environment. If Juniper could give me a security solution, beyond the firewall, that integrates with the firewall, that would be helpful. Other products have built a security fabric. So if a customer already uses one of their solutions, like a firewall, they will be thinking about integrating with that vendor's other products. If there is more than just a firewall solution, they will use that same vendor's products throughout the security environment. A security fabric is more powerful than just blocking via network parameters.

Juniper should have an end-to-end solution, from the endpoint to the network level. It would provide a more powerful security solution to the customer. Customers are looking for a holistic security solution.

For one to three years it's stable.

If users want to scale up the firewall, they basically want the cheapest firewall that gives them powerful features. Most users choose FortiGate rather than Juniper. Technically, Juniper's scalability is good. But when customers look at the overall price, FortiGate will come out cheaper than Palo Alto or Juniper.

The technical support is good. The engineers help support our customers day-to-day.

The setup depends on the deployment, on what we have to configure. But from one firewall to another firewall, it's about the same. They're not really complex. We have experience using the command line and the user interface. If you ask me which one is easier to configure, I will answer that configuring through the user interface is easier.

The amount of time the deployment takes depends on the complexity of the solution. If the firewall is used as an L3 firewall or L4 firewall, for blocking by IP address and, it's going to be faster to deploy than deploying the firewall using Unified Threat Management. In that case, we need to carefully tune the VPN configuration.

The time for one of our customers to achieve ROI depends on the scalability of the product. It also depends on the type of organization. If it's a hospitality or government organization, it will take them more time to achieve ROI than an internet service provider, where using this product is in line with their business objectives.

In terms of pricing, Juniper is in the middle. The most expensive firewall is Palo Alto. If a customer wants the cheapest price they should go for FortiGate. Juniper is in between these products.

From experience, we like to use firewalls from Palo Alto and FortiGate because the solution is easy to configure with a UI to execute the app. If we use Juniper firewalls, we don't really use the UI because it is not as easy as the command line interface for configuration.

The VPN is different between Juniper and Palo Alto. As far as I know, Juniper does packet inspection in their VPN. Functions like anti-spam and antivirus are running step-by-step. Once the anti-spam processing is done, it goes on to antivirus scanning. But with Palo Alto, the technology is different. It copies each packet to each function. For example, if we activate anti-spam, antivirus, and another check, Palo Alto makes three copies of each packet and inspects them in parallel. This makes the system faster, compared to Juniper. This is the biggest difference as far as I know.

Juniper is good at the routing protocol. If you want a solution to protect your environment from the internet, I would propose a firewall gateway solution but ultimately it depends on what the customer needs.

We are partnered with Juniper, so if customers ask for a firewall solution, the first solution that we pick is generally a Juniper firewall. If a customer wants a firewall other than Juniper, we offer it. Usually, we will do a firewall like FortiGate or Palo Alto, if the customer has enough money, as Palo Alto is very expensive.

The primary use case is for protecting enterprise systems.

It allows users connecting from homes, who urgently need to log into the networks through a secure tunnel without using internet IP gateway, access using a SSL.

• It is highly scalable, stable, and can be easily updated.
• It protects from distributed denial-of-service attacks, DDoS attacks, with Screen Options.
• When you design your networks, you can put SSL Inspection as a gateway to make the systems secured, like IT systems.

The GUI needs to be easier and more helpful for users who don't have security experience.

They need to add WAF management to the tool, as competitors already have it as part of their offerings. This feature is future of protecting enterprise solutions.

It is very stable, but it needs an engineer on the system while it is running to monitor for attacks and when attacks are in process.

It is easy to expand.

The technical support is good, but there is a time delay between the support and attacks.

The initial setup was straightforward, but has since become straightforward with experience.

For example, with MX (not SRX), it needs to be specific when you export or import the subnetting or addresses that you want to block or filter out of your networks. This is why it is a complex process the first time and becomes subsequently easier

You have to be aware of Linux commands, which will make you able to use this device, like exporting file, saving file, monitoring your logs, and making a new script.

One solution is data center Firewall and also we use this solution for protection our service GI + Triple Play

It provides good routing and high performance of the data center. It solves protecting our datacenter, separate networks and protect data center with FW policies + DPI

The routing feature is most valuable, because SRX is the best enterprise router. SRX has complete MPLS service features with L3VPN, VPLS, EVPN. You can also combine Router and FW in one box, with selective packet filter to bypass flow engine and set traffic to packet mode.

Web management needs to improve. The web interface on Juniper SRX is just a short conversion from Junos OS CLI; this is not very suitable for users with little expertise.

But Juniper has complete MGMT for managing SRX devices and other Juniper devices. it' s called Junos Space with APP security director for security devices. It's good, but there is space for improvment.

There were some stability issues.

There are not many scalability issues experienced.

I would give the technical support an eight out of 10 rating.

Previously, we were using the old Juniper ScreenOS, we switched due to end-of-support. I have also expertise with Cisco ASA, Cisco Firepower, Checkpoint R80.10, Dell Sonicwall, Fortinet.

The setup was very complex, e.g., if you are beginner.

We implement is by our self with team in-house.

The prices are very good as compared to other vendors.

We looked at Cisco, FortiGate, Palo Alto

It is a very good router with firewall.