Cheap Juniper Gear for Lab

Tue Apr 10 12:58:43 UTC 2012

On 10/04/12 14:31, Steven King wrote:
> I am tasked with replacing an old linux router setup with Juniper gear
> in the near future. Though I am a Cisco guy myself.
> 
> Does anyone know of any older cheap Juniper gear I might find on Ebay so
> that I may build a home lab without going broke?

A slightly more useful way of answering this then just pointing to eBay
is to give some candidates.

Routing/switching *config*, firewalling - Branch SRX / J

The lower end SRX, and J series devices are nice as they take nearly all
the config (except MX-type bridging, and some EX bits), including MPLS.

Switching - EX [34]200

The 4200 & 3200 are essentially the flagship, and if you can only buy
one switch for a lab make it one of those

Routing - M5/10/7i/10i/20

A bunch of the smaller and older M series kit is now fairly cheaply
available. These are still quite nice boxes, and support SONET and ATM
unlike the platforms above should you need them.

MX Routing - MX 80 (new)

The MX80 (or as locked 5/10/40 variants) is by far the cheapest way to
test the MX-specific ethernet services, as long as you don't want BRAS
functionality.

Juniper do have a bunch more lines, but those are the most common
(there's also the E/ERX BRAS boxes and ScreenOS firewalls, but both are
not long for this world).

If you just want one box to get to know the OS an SRX2X0 (or possibly a
100) is by far the most flexible way, and can be had for < $500 used).