What needs improvement with Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches?

Their web GUI interface needs to be a lot better, especially when compared to HP. The command line is good, but you have to know how to get around it. The GUI is clunky and very slow. HP switches, in comparison, are easier to use because you can either have it as an options menu or you can actually just do command line, which is brilliant. When using Juniper and trying to do configurations on the actual switch, some of my team don't know how to do the command line. This solution is quite expensive compared to HP. Their support is also costly. A 1900 HP broker of Switch comes with a lifetime warranty compared to an EX 2300 which only has a five-year warranty on it.

Juniper Ethernet Switches could improve in the EX 2300 model because it does not support IPsec VPN. Only the models at 3400 or higher support it. Additionally, there is a need for support for Mac which is lacking. Some of their competitors, such as Cisco, support Mac.

If we're building a data center and have Juniper, we have hundreds of Juniper switches in a leaf and spine design architecture, and it's horrible. Sometimes after an upgrade, half of the even port can't be detected. They don't recognize third-party SFPs, and now they claim that they don't support that anymore. There are a lot of issues with the hardware and software. Juniper needs to get their code up to par because it isn't stable enough for a leaf and spine design. If you have over 10,000 VMs or Mac addresses, it doesn't scale. I would love Juniper to have more stable features, hardware, and code. We have so many tickets open with Juniper. The switch reboot doesn't detect the port. About 80% of my problems aren't engineering problems, but are Juniper's problems. In comparison, Arista gives me 10% of the problems that Juniper gives me when it comes to hardware and software. It's falling behind compared to Palo Alto because of its features. Juniper's campus switches and data center switches for the leaf and spine design for the overlay and underlay is horrible. I wouldn't recommend that anyone use Juniper fabric, because there are so many problems, issues, and features that aren't supported.

We would like it if there was more security added in future releases.

The operating system could be better. Sometimes it's not stable enough or has some sort of critical block. Support could be a bit better in certain regions.

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.

Juniper Ethernet Switches would be improved by upgrading the uplink port in EX2300 categories service from 10G to 25G.

The hardware could be improved, specifically adding more machine and safety features with the routers and switches. Additionally, more security could be provided, especially with the rising cyber-attacks in business organizations. For example, the incident that occurred with Cisco years ago. Therefore, I believe security is also an essential thing for many organizations.

The product is so-so. We are not very pleased with their performance. We are having some issues in managing their stack. We would like to have some advanced technology in stacking. They need to improve their stacking technologies. We contacted the principal as well, to open a case. We couldn't find the solution. That's why we are looking for replacing these switches with some other brand.

Juniper Ethernet Switches' operating systems get corrupted when the power fails. They have to improve this issue. I may have to use a newer version. In the next release of Juniper Ethernet Switches, they could provide SD-WAN compatibility.

Jupiter Switches' configuration is a little difficult to understand.

The packet channelizing feature is the main function that should be improved. Juniper is currently desegregated. I'd like to see a combined hub-and-spoke kind of functionality where the job is done through the configuration.

Of the current engineers that are working in Egypt, most of them are familiar with Cisco and not all of them used to work on Juniper switches. That's why those switches aren't very famous in Egypt. The stability could be better. We find, for example, Cisco, to be more stable.

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.

We had been introduced to MIST as a result or procuring 9 EX4600 switches and the associated MIST licenses. Unfortunately we found out that MIST does not support legacy switches, namely EX2200 which we have 100 Plus, so this requires us to invest time and resources in order to learn the opensource alternatives for automation, or plan for an upgrade of the EX2200 which requires a significant investment. Personally learning the open source alternatives is an extremely valuable skill to add to the toolbox, as well as move the District forward with automation.

The Virtual Chassis Fabric is kind of complicated to troubleshoot sometimes. On the MPLS side, they're good — they're fine for the pseudo-wires and stuff—but they need more work on the LAN. It is difficult to troubleshoot their LAN technologies like Virtual Chassis. I'm not sure whether EVPN-VXLAN DCI is supported today on these switches. If it's not, then that's something Juniper could add. They support EVPN, but I'm still not sure about the DCI part. I probably need to understand how that is implemented to figure out if it's supported.

In an upcoming release, Juniper Ethernet Switches could improve by having more microservices.

The price is in the intermediate range. It is not overly expensive, but also not cheap. It could stand improvement.

The negative of Juniper is that their command-line coding is a lot different than any other vendor, so there is a fairly steep learning curve to it. The initial setup for Juniper switches is complex. Juniper has a new program that solves that problem a little bit, but it is expensive, so I don't use it. It is Juniper Mesh, Juniper Wire, or something like that where you plug in a switch, and it goes out to their cloud, finds a config, and brings it down. So, you can do everything cloud-based, but there is a fee for that. It is expensive, so I've never used it. If we were starting, we would try to do something like that. It is more for a large enterprise for managing hundreds of switches versus what we're doing. They should make its price more cost-effective or include it for new or smaller companies. One advantage that Cisco has is that there are a billion people who use it, so there are a lot more publications or books, whereas, with Juniper, you really can't find a current book. Everything that you have is from their website. They have a lot of documentation on their website, which is good, but if you're a person like me who likes having a hardback book, you're not going to find one that's current. If I wanted to be at home and learn something and read about it, I won't be able to do that. It is going to be a PDF, so you either have got to print it out, or you have to read it online. Sometimes, being older and having bad eyes, that's not good.

The problem is with Juniper is the OS. Not everyone knows about Junos. If they are comfortable with using Junos then it will be the best switch. More people are accustomed to the Cisco platform, especially with the CLI or the graphical interfaces. Juniper has its own operating system called Junos. I would like the ability to integrate with other operating systems.

Stability could be better, especially during a reboot. We have had some issues recently with the software getting corrupt on reboot, which causes a lot of downtime.

Stability is an area that needs improvement. They could improve the code, as there are some issues with it. Marketing could be better.

The upgrade procedures could be better. The upgrading of the system should be simplified and made faster. In the next release, I would like to see them maintain the stability.

Wireless and monitoring definitely could be improved. I would like to see better monitoring in the next release.

The management platforms for the network need improvement. The pricing for support needs to be reduced, and the lead time for the switches should be lower. They may already be working on this but I would like to see improvements with visibility, analysis of the traffic, and similar features. When you compare with other manufacturers, they have to work in these areas more.

Its distribution channel and the ease of availability should be improved.

The interface could be better. It needs improvement. We do everything in configuration files and it is not simple. It is quite complicated when you configure some rules for the firewall because it has several firewall levels. In some switches, at times we have some issues, but it's on the infrastructure part and it's not the latest hardware. In the future, I would like to see more standardized software. For example, some of the switches use some features that should be implemented in Juniper. The software should be more stable.

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.

There are no weaknesses that I know of with Juniper. When it comes to Juniper and other vendors such as Cisco, it comes down to pricing. Customers want value for the least amount of money. Some areas of technical support could be better.

The configuration could be made simpler.

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 don't have any issues with the product and as long as they continue giving good service it's fine for us. The price is competitive, and we use our online interface only and don't go through a GUI. We don't have any pain points.

The power stability needs to be improved. Technical support is in need of improvement.

In the next release of this solution, I would like to see better integration with software-defined networking. The coding can be simplified a little bit.

We're currently in the process of switching to Cisco as we haven't been too happy with Juniper. We are undergoing a migration to software-defined networking. Different vendors have to integrate with each other and we are not seeing this type of capability within Juniper. We are getting left behind in this technology trend by staying with this solution. Juniper is also losing a bit of market share because of this.

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 protocols can be tunneled, but on a global basis, not on an interface, and this is a feature that should be added. I would like to see all of the features unified between platforms, families, and models. This would make it easier to upgrade later, without having to change the configuration.

They need to have more marketing in Egypt. The technical support in Egypt needs to be improved because I was struggling to get technical support. Having documentation provided in Arabic would be nice, but not necessary, as most everyone speaks and understands English well enough. I would like to have customer support on the ground.

Updates and management tools: * The updates are constantly broken, which has been a problem for years. You definitely need to read the release notes to understand the whole situation before upgrading. * The management tools are nice, but they are limited in their abilities. The tools suffer from upgrade problems.