Adtran NetVanta Routers and Switches vs. Juniper MX Series

Adtran NetVanta series switches are a very desirable switch set at a reasonable price point with a large amount of configuration ability for both L2 and L3. They are best suited for medium to large institutions that are not Cisco Dependent. They work well for small businesses as well but may be too high of a price point and too large of a feature set needed for a SOHO type set up which may turn away customers in that range. The 1531/P series does offer a smaller switch with the option of PoE in the P model and gives a total of 12 individual ports between the 8 PoE ports, 2 non PoE ports, and 2 SFP ports capable of Gigabit or 2.5Gbps with Adtran's interconnect cable. This may be more suitable for a SOHO set up but again may offer more than many small businesses need and may seem daunting.

Incentivized

It is well suited as a WAN/Internet Edge device. It is easy to configure BGP, contexts and routing instances. Its suite of tools has saved our organization money by being able to provide services (tag stacking, for example) that our provider would normally charge us more for. Due to interface cost this would not be appropriate as a LAN aggregation device.

Incentivized

• In industrial environments, Adtran NetVanta switches are robust and have a very long lifetime.
• In office environments, Adtran NetVanta switches are low profile and easy to install.
• Adtran NetVanta switches have multiple options for mounting, racks or wall mount are equally simple and well implemented.

Incentivized

• It's a robust platform, very resilient. It handles large traffic flows well.
• It's a flexible architecture, it can be configured with provider or enterprise options (or both!)
• It has an excellent versioning system, simple commit/confirm/rollback procedures!

Incentivized

• PoE can be a little slow to initiate as the switch communicates with the device to determine the proper power level.
• 1550 Series seem to come flashed with a non-standard Firmware initially that must be upgraded before any configuration can be done.
• USB Driver for 1550 Series USB Serial connection is a non-standard driver that must be downloaded from Adtran vs Windows Plug and Play.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I wish that documentation was more robust, complete, though this has been improved of late.
• It would be nice if netflow was easier to configure.
• It would be nice if the platform was cheaper.

Incentivized

We have used everything from Foundry/Brocade, to Cisco, to Extreme, and nothing lives as long and performs as well as NetVanta switches.

Incentivized

We preferred Juniper over Cisco for our WAN/Internet routing needs for a number of reasons. First was the price, the Juniper offering was much more competitive than Cisco's. Secondly, was feature set, Juniper's implementation of routing protocols, routing tables, and forwarding options are better thought-out than Cisco's (not to mention Juniper's longstanding use of commit/confirm/rollback features, which Cisco has only started to use recently, and only on some of their products).

Incentivized

• High Performance and reliability have allowed for a 'set it and forget it' type installation, giving greater customer satisfaction.
• The price point of the switches, while higher than other models such as HP or Dell potentially, is in line with their reliability and functionality and comes in less than Cisco much of the time.
• Having a long time relationship with Adtran as a company has allowed us to quickly assist customers with their needs, saving everyone time and money.

Incentivized

• Its flexible architecture and configuration styles has saved our organization money by providing feature we would have otherwise needed to purchase from our ISPs.
• It has a long and healthy lifecycle, with potential upgrades for more performance if needed. (This helps alleviate the downtime associated with chassis replacement.)
• The only drawback is some of the highest throughput interfaces are expensive.

Incentivized