Cisco and Juniper

[new2net]

Hello there.. I was wondering what is the main difference when between vendors. I was speaking to someone the other day who told me his company is replacing existing Cisco stuff with Juniper stuff... Of course I asked him why??? After about 5 minutes of not getting a straight answer, it made me wonder why they would do this? Searching around the net, I discovered that Cisco has wayyy more marketshare. Just wondering what the main reasons might be for such move?

There are some articles on the net where people either be to support all Juniper or all Cisco with no clear reasons..

Just curious about your opinions...

This thread actaully made me more curious:
Advanced IT Jobs
as it referred to the JNCIA as the Golden Meal Ticket

[networker050184]

This thread actaully made me more curious:
Advanced IT Jobs
as it referred to the JNCIA as the Golden Meal Ticket

I'm pretty sure that was a joke in that thread.

It all comes down to the selling point most of the time. Juniper can offer X services for X price and Cisco can offer X service for X price. The company will make their decision depending on which meets their company's goals. There are other things to consider besides price also like trained staff, support, life cycle etc.

[RTmarc]

Searching around the net, I discovered that Cisco has wayyy more marketshare.

Just wanted to make the comment that superior market share does not equate to superior products. Cisco and Juniper are like Sam's Club and Costco. They both do the same thing just have different nuances. There are areas Cisco is better at one thing and there are others that Juniper is superior.

Bottom line, you can't go wrong with either.

[human151]

Just wanted to make the comment that superior market share does not equate to superior products. Cisco and Juniper are like Sam's Club and Costco. They both do the same thing just have different nuances. There are areas Cisco is better at one thing and there are others that Juniper is superior.

Bottom line, you can't go wrong with either.

Some things are proprietary to CISCO, which means you cant do them on Juniper. Ive nev er used Juniper but im sure they have some proprietary protocols as well.

[Pash]

Golden meal ticket. Nope.

Learn Juniper and Cisco equipment thoroughly and that will definitely set you on your way. In all honestly, if you get yourself in a shop where senior or management staff know your skills and you prove your skills to them, this is the type of quality that gets you noticed, not a JNCIA or a CCNA .

I am aware that most places require these certs to even get your foot in the door, but make sure you try to do as much hands on and reading as you can. A colleague of mine got his first job in IT by performing a password reset/recovery on a Cisco router in his interview, that type of situation may be rare but it does happen apparently.

Don't be afraid to pop by the boards and ask questions.

[mikej412]

I was speaking to someone the other day who told me his company is replacing existing Cisco stuff with Juniper stuff... Of course I asked him why???

If you follow the business news you would have seen that sales at both Juniper and Cisco were down because of the Economy -- if you've got the money you can get some great deals.

Juniper makes it easy and currently FREE to get Juniper Certified for a couple of the JNCIA & JNCIS Certifications. All you need to provide is your time, study effort, and hopefully some hands on practice. Juniper gives you access to FREE PDFs of the old Sybex Juniper Certification Books (check out the low Cisco CCIE # of the authors) and access to other online training.

There are fewer Juniper Certified Individuals out there -- but there are also fewer Juniper jobs listed.

[Kaminsky]

I have seen more Juniper jobs available here near London where a lot of people are migrating to Juniper from Cisco especially at the core. The salaries/hourly rates are very nice to due to the lack of Juniper operating knowledge out there right now. One I saw was offering £1000 a day for the juniper equivelent of a ccnp with relevent experience. A ccnp in the same area certainly will not command that price tag.

Personally, I like the layout of JUNOS and the way you interact with it. As for putting them side by side to say which is better at what, I wouldn't have a clue but Juniper routing and switching is definately coming on compared to their firewalls which arn't that great according to a CCSP work colleague.

I am not sure if the recent growth in interest in their routers and switches is because of quality, price, the quality of ongoing the company support or the fact that Cisco is just so huge now but large companys are starting to move over for whatever reason.

I certainly am going to be adding Juniper into my Cisco knowledge. The way it is going, it won't be very long before you will need to interact with both on a network.

[ChronusMaximus]

Juniper makes it easy and currently FREE to get Juniper Certified for a couple of the JNCIA & JNCIS Certifications. All you need to provide is your time, study effort, and hopefully some hands on practice. Juniper gives you access to FREE PDFs of the old Sybex Juniper Certification Books (check out the low Cisco CCIE # of the authors) and access to other online training.

I am a fan of free certifications! I looked it up but couldn't find anything about the free certification. Were you talking about the free resources or a free exam voucher like the Dream Spark program?

[kalebksp]

I am a fan of free certifications! I looked it up but couldn't find anything about the free certification. Were you talking about the free resources or a free exam voucher like the Dream Spark program?

Check out the Juniper FastTrack program. You have to pass a pre-assessment then they'll give you a voucher.

[ChronusMaximus]

Thanks! Sorry to hijack the thread. Back on topic...

[luke_bibby]

There are vendors OTHER than cisco???? Crazy!

[Kaminsky]

Finally found the free JNCIA study guide on Juniper site. Think it might be old but I have looked through it and it covers most of the material in the course I was sent on a couple of months ago.

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/trainin...studyguide.pdf

[wbosher]

We've got a strange set up where I work. As I've mention before, I work for a Telco/ISP. When we set up a new corporate client, we set them up with Cisco gear. All of our clients (I think with the exception of maybe one or two) are using Cisco for their private networks, yet our core network (the Telco/ISP) is Juniper.

I have asked a few people why this is but no-one has been able to give me an answer.

[tiersten]

After about 5 minutes of not getting a straight answer, it made me wonder why they would do this? Searching around the net, I discovered that Cisco has wayyy more marketshare. Just wondering what the main reasons might be for such move?

Some Cisco product ranges are better than Juniper product ranges. Some Juniper product ranges are better than Cisco product ranges. In other ranges, both might not be great and you need another brand.

At the end of the day, what brand you use is what one is preferred by whoever designs the network and budget. Both are good and should work well.

Its like asking why people buy cars from a manufacturer which doesn't have the largest marketshare.

[Mark Knutson]

Not seeing inexpensive junipers on ebay to practice on, though...

[dynamik]

Not seeing inexpensive junipers on ebay to practice on, though...

I don't know if there are any. Look into Olives.

[tiersten]

Not seeing inexpensive junipers on ebay to practice on, though...

Yeah. There doesn't seem to be a large supply of cheap Juniper equipment on eBay for some reason. You'll have to do what dynamik said and make an Olive and deal with the limitations on it. Thats your best option if you want Juniper/JunOS experience.

[trackit]

I think that if you have already studied for cisco certs then its not that hard to learn juniper and vice versa. I mean, the technology is mostly the same, the protocols are mostly the same. You already have a good knowledge in networking theory. Its just the way you configure it what differs. So i wouldnt worry much about studying for "right" certs ie choosing "should i go for cisco certs or juniper certs"... just do what you find more appealing or for what you have more recourses/hardware etc availible to get hands on.

[Mark Knutson]

Yeah. There doesn't seem to be a large supply of cheap Juniper equipment on eBay for some reason. You'll have to do what dynamik said and make an Olive and deal with the limitations on it. Thats your best option if you want Juniper/JunOS experience.

I speculate there are 3 reasons.

First, they are concentrating on the more profitable high end of the switching market, so no inexpensive models floating around.

Second, they haven't been around long enough with enough market share to have a bunch of old hardware floating around.

Third, maybe they don't keep the same dos-like OS interface for over a decade like cisco.

[curtisdaley]

I have seen many Juniper jobs popping up, with good pay just like some of the cisco job, like what people have said, its what the best of the given application, i've seen many jobs what are purely cisco and other what are purely juniper but i've also seen jobs with a mix, ie cisco routers and juniper firewalls, i hadn't seen juniper jobs for 1000 but for 500-550 but that was JNCIA and not JNCIE!

[Forsaken_GA]

As others have said, Juniper does some stuff really well. And if you Cisco experience, it's not really that hard to move between the two. Network concepts don't change just because the vendor does, it's just a matter of syntax at that point.

Another vendor to keep an eye out for is Force10. They make some really nice gear, and at a much cheaper price tag than Cisco. Like Juniper, the OS is BSD based, but the interface is very very similar to IOS, a Cisco Certified person would feel quite comfortable working on Force10 equipment, there's just small syntactical differences here and there. Force10 did this on purpose, as they're well aware of the number of Cisco Certified individuals out there, so they're reaping some benefit of Cisco's certification programs without having to implement their own

[tiersten]

Third, maybe they don't keep the same dos-like OS interface for over a decade like cisco.

How does Cisco having the same CLI for a long time have anything to do with this? Technically, JunOS has a CLI that has been around for even longer since it uses BSD.

[new2net]

Thanks for all these replies. I wasn't clear on what the differences were between vendors. I wasn't sure if Juniper had a different way of doing things (such as different routing/routed protocols ect.) but reading through this thread it seems that the fundamentals are the same, with the exception of syntactical differences. I mean, Juniper still uses TCP/IP/Ethernet ect, right?

[networker050184]

Thanks for all these replies. I wasn't clear on what the differences were between vendors. I wasn't sure if Juniper had a different way of doing things (such as different routing/routed protocols ect.) but reading through this thread it seems that the fundamentals are the same, with the exception of syntactical differences. I mean, Juniper still uses TCP/IP/Ethernet ect, right?

Yep. All vendors routers/switches are there to carry the same traffic.

[dynamik]

Each might have proprietary protocols or functionality though.

For example, I hear that Juniper slowly brainwashes you. A process that is complete when you obtain your IE and you are compelled to relocate to Canada to work for them. Just something to keep in mind...