Cisco vs. Juniper overview

Juniper MX80 Features and Benefits

Unmatched Network Availability

Juniper MX Series routers ensure network and service availability with a broad set of multilayered physical, logical, and protocol-level resiliency features, including Juniper’s Virtual Chassis technology, which supports chassis-level redundancy while enabling users to manage two routers as a single element. Additionally, a multichassis link aggregation group (MC-LAG) implementation supports stateful chassis, card, and port redundancy, as well as subscriber and session persistence.

Application Aware Networking

Juniper MX Series routers use deep packet inspection to detect applications, and they consult with user-defined policies to determine traffic treatment on a per-application basis, enabling highly customized and differentiated services at scale. Working in conjunction with Juniper Networks Contrail Cloud Platform, MX Series routers can also steer into complex service chains and stream granular data to analytics engines and back-office systems to permit real-time charging and end-user engagement at the application and content level.

JunOS Continuity and Unified In-Service Software Upgrade (Unified ISSU)

JunOS Continuity and Unified ISSU features remove the downtime risks associated with implementing new hardware or upgrading operating systems.

  • JunOS Continuity eliminates OS upgrades and system reboots when adding new hardware to MX Series routers; a plug-in package provides the drivers and support files needed to bring the hardware online.
  • Unified ISSU reduces the risks associated with OS upgrades by enabling upgrades between two different Junos OS releases (major or minor) with no control plane disruption and minimal traffic disruption on the forwarding plane.

JunOS Telemetry Interface

The JunOS Telemetry Interface feature streams component-level data to monitoring, analytics, performance management, and visualization tools as well as to Path Computation Elements such as Juniper Networks NorthStar Controller. Analytics derived from this streaming telemetry can identify current and trending congestion, resource utilization, traffic volume, and buffer occupancy, which can be used to identify issues and make informed decisions on network design and investments.

Integrated Timing

Juniper MX Series routers support highly scalable and reliable hardwarebased timing that meets the strictest LTE requirements, including Synchronous Ethernet for frequency, and the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) for frequency and phase synchronization. Synchronous Ethernet and PTP can be combined in a “hybrid” mode to achieve the highest level of frequency (10 ppb) and phase (<1uS) accuracy required for LTE-Advanced, eliminating the need for external clocks.

JunOS Fusion Provider Edge

JunOS Fusion Provider Edge enables MX Series routers to act as aggregation devices for the Juniper Networks EX4300 Ethernet Switch and QFX5100 line of data center switching platforms acting as satellite devices while appearing to management as a single, port-dense device managed by a single IP address. Junos Fusion Provider Edge significantly expands the number of network interfaces on the MX Series router while keeping operations simple.

Automated Support and Prevention

Juniper’s Automated Support and Prevention consists of an ecosystem of tools, applications, and systems targeted towards simplifying and streamlining operations, delivering operational efficiency, reducing downtime, and increasing your network’s ROI running Juniper Networks Junos operating system. Automated Support and Prevention brings operational efficiency by automating several time-consuming tasks such as incident management, inventory management, proactive bug notification, and on-demand EOL/EOS/EOE reports. The Junos Space Service Now and Service Insight service automation tools are standard entitlements of all Juniper Care contracts.

Juniper Networks MX80 Universal Routing Platform

JunOS Automation Toolkit and Juniper Extension Toolkit

Included in Junos OS software, the JunOS Automation Toolkit is a suite of tools supported on all Juniper Networks switches, routers, and security devices. These tools, which leverage the native XML capabilities of Junos OS, include commit scripts, op scripts, event policies and event scripts, and macros that help automate operational and configuration tasks. Additionally, the Juniper Extension Toolkit (JET) provides a modern programable tool kit while maintaining a platform independent architecture, and includes support for:

  • OpenConfig/YANG
  • gRPC, Thrift, NETCONF
  • JSON/XML
  • API support for all modern programming languages
  • Rich on-box scripting support using Python
  • REST APIs

Together, Junos OS automation and programmability features simplify complex configurations and reduce the potential for configuration errors. They also save time by automating operational and configuration tasks, speed troubleshooting, and maximize network uptime by warning operators of potential problems and automatically responding to system events.