• Network Infrastructure

    Free Junos

    For some time, Juniper has been agressively trying to win converts from Cisco. Not only in terms of sales, but also the hearts and minds of the engineers who influence purchasing decisions. Aggressively going after engineers has meant that for years, Juniper has made their certifications essentially free for those of us who were certified with Cisco. But now, they’re starting to cast their net a little wider and go after getting anyone and everyone certified for free, provided of course that you can pass the test. Juniper’s Junos is being offered for free for a limited time. If you’re interested in beefing up your security and/or networking skills, this…

  • Consulting,  Network Infrastructure

    WAN Acceleration Magic Quadrant

    WAN Acceleration has been a hot topic for some time.  But over the past couple of years the cost of acceleration technology has dropped drastically due to its emergence as a full-blown market.  Riverbed has jumped to the top of the leaders circle for a number of reasons, with Juniper, Blue Coat, Cisco, Packeteer, etc in its wake.  For the most part, all WAN accelerators are going to have a few things in common.  There are a pair of appliances, each with a disk that can cache files going between two points.  To some degree, the purchase of accelerator appliances should be driven by the protocols to be used.  For example, if you’re a…

  • Network Infrastructure

    The Changing Mac Switching Infrastructure

    No one ever got fired for buying Cisco.  But, I recently saw a shop where they went from Cisco to Enterasys (thanks for showing off your backbone Todd).  I must say that I really liked the Enterasys switches. I looked them up and they are about 1/2 the cost of Cisco.  They have great tech support and are very easy to configure, even though it’s a command line interface.  The only complaint I have about them is the web interface is good for reviewing your setup but inadequate  for configuration – but is good for looking at the switch configs. Maybe in time this will mature…  I don’t know if they can go to the 10,000+ environments…