Juniper SRX vs. NETGEAR ProSafe Managed Switches

SRXs seem to be well suited at the enterprise level for plain routers, firewalls, and IDP/IDS. They work well on MPLS and Ethernet, including Internet. I have 3 SRXs also performing edge duty, with 2 in a high availability (HA) cluster. The Juniper line of SRXs provides a good range of scaling from small business to extremely large enterprise. Wire speed is a common comparison factor and Juniper shines in that area.

Incentivized

Well suited for a small business with minimal IT capital.

Incentivized

• Edge Device (Tunneling & Routing)
• Routing Instances
• Zone Based Firewall
• L3 Gateway/Vlan termination
• DHCP Server & DHCP Relay
• Good support community & Good available documentation
• Good support by the Vendor

Incentivized

• The switches met the data transfer needs of a small business with about 30 users and 4 servers.
• The web interface was adequate for a business that didn't have the need to dive into a device with a CLI.
• These were wall mounted. Not the best network design, but small businesses cut corners. The mounting holes helped with this "solution".

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• My only real criticism of the product is that it's hard to figure out how to upgrade the firmware from the CLI via TFTP via the docs, but it works great once you get it sorted.

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• Both switches were the same model number, same firmware. One switch needed to be rebooted about every 5 weeks. This problem was never resolved.

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This is the one area where I have a beef with Juniper. When I called into Cisco TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I spoke with was able to resolve my issue. With Juniper TAC, 90% of the time, the first person I speak with is not able to resolve my issue, seems to almost be reading from a script, and must escalate my ticket. All of which takes time.

Incentivized

Juniper SRX stands tall compared to all these products for Large Service Provider Networks, where traffic volume is larger. Also, cost comparison with SRX's few other products can also be another contributing factor while selecting this. As well as Juniper Routers, Switches, and multiple products from the same vendor to maintain one single vendor environment. As well as Juniper Support is also really good.

The NetGear switches are definitely entry-level switches. They don't have the functionality (or cost) of Dell, HP, nor Cisco. But for the money, a business that is just starting out can't complain.

Incentivized

• It is a workhorse for our field operations. It provides the last touch for an ISP to the customer. The customer has no view of the device, but with the repeatability of the device, they do not need to.
• The ability to roll out a dynamic routing protocol attached to a security zone allows elasticity to the environment that supports growth.
• VLAN support on the inside interfaces allow this to be the only device in some smaller deployments we install these in.

Incentivized

• The NetGear switches made a positive impact as entry level switches for a startup company.

Incentivized