Juniper Networks Inc. has announced four security gateways and four Ethernet switches based on the Sunnyvale, Calif. vendor’s JunOS operating system.
The SRX gateways, which include firewall, anti-virus and intrusion prevention systems, are significant because they provide more than one function in one device, at a high throughput, said Jon Oltsik, Senior Analyst for Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group.
“These system have to do a lot at the same time and that requires a lot of horsepower,” Oltsik told Network World Canada.
Three of the gateways, the SRX210, SRX240 and SRX650, are available now. The SRX100, which costs $699, is scheduled to ship between July and September. They are essentially scaled-down versions of the SRX 3000 and 5000 series gateways.
The SRX100 has firewall throughput of 600 Megabits per second (Mbps) and intrusion prevention system throughput of 50 Mbps. The other three new SRX gateways have optional voice gateways based on session initiation protocol (SIP).
“We have the ability to build a basic SIP media gateway capabilities and basic PSTN capabilities into a single device in the remote location and provide enterprises with a centralized call manager type environment for their distributed locations with the essential survivability they need should the WAN link go down,” said Alex Gray, vice-president and general manager for Juniper’s branch business group. “We’ll have the ability to allow people to literally pick a connection type from your provider of choice and choose the call server or handsets of choice.”
The base price for the SRX210, which has firewall throughput of 750 Mbps and IPS throughput of 80 Mbps, is US$1,099. The SRX240, has firewall throughput of 1.5 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and IPS throughput of 250 Mbps while the 650 model has firewall and IPS throughput of 7 Gbps and 900 Mbps respectively. List prices for the SRX240 and SRX650 are US$2,999 and US$16,000 respectively.
Juniper is “looking to be competitive” with the ASA 5000 series security appliances, made by San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Systems Inc., said Andrew Braunberg, research director for enterprise and security networks with Current Analysis Inc. of Sterling, Va.
Cisco is the No. 1 vendor in the network security space, with 40 per cent market share, according to Infonetics Research Inc. of Campbell, Calif.
“Enterprise companies are more willing right now than I’ve seen in a while to look outside of the status quo and so when you look beyond Cisco, Juniper is a company that really stands out,” Oltsik said in an interview. “I think the enterprise market for them is a great opportunity.”
When Juniper was initially founded in 1996, its primary target markets were carriers and service providers, but it has increasingly been selling products to enterprises. Some products are attractive to both.
“When the SRX 5800 first came out, we thought that was a carrier beast,” said Tim Lambie, Juniper’s vice-president for Americas International, during a briefing to Network World Canada editors, separate from the SRX gateway product announcement. “But our first interest in it was from enterprise customers.”
Also announced Monday was Juniper’s EX2200 series switches, which are scheduled to ship next year, said Mike Banic, vice-president for Juniper’s Ethernet platforms business group. Both Banic and Gray made their remarks in a teleconference last week with Network World Canada, on the condition the information not be published until May 4.
He added they have a “much lower” cost per port than previous EX series switches and are suitable for open office environments because they are designed to be quiet.
The EX2000 comprises two 24-port and two 48-port switches, one version each with power over Ethernet. The EX2200-24T-4G and EX2200-48T-4G have 24 and 48 10/100/1000BASE-T ports respectively. The EX2200-24P-4G and EX2200-48P-4G are the power over Ethernet versions. The list price starts at US$2,400.
Both the SRX gateways and EX2200 switches include the JunOS operating system, which helps reduce cost and complexity compared to networks running multiple operating systems, Banic said.
“It’s not uncommon for us to talk to our large customers and find out they have either dozens or hundreds of versions of operating systems from the same vendor across the network,” he added.
Oltsik agreed many companies run multiple operating systems for network equipment.
“It’s a huge problem,” he said. “The way we’ve approached this problem in the past is throw a number of appliances at network security. Each one has its own operating system, each one has to be managed separately, and administered independently, and the more you have, the worse it gets. Because network security is so complex, typically companies have a lot of these things, so it really simplifies things to have some integration and that’s what JunOS provides.”
