Juniper’s enterprise switch could give Cisco pause

Network World tested Juniper’s first effort in enterprise switching, the EX 4200 and after doing so the

testers had this word of warning, “Cisco take note: Juniper’s new EX 4200 switch not only fills a hole in a leading competitor’s product line, but also represents a credible alternative for enterprise access switching.”

The test found the switch to be reliably fast, delivering line-rate throughput in every test case. Testers used the same benchmark tests against this switch as they used against seven other 10G Ethernet access switches they tested earlier in the year. But Cisco fans might rejoice in the fact that the switch wasn’t perfect. Multicast support wasn’t great and the tests uncovered some security concerns.

Meanwhile, Juniper is increasing the battle stakes the WAN application acceleration area, too. The company this week will unveil appliances that is says perform better but don’t cost more. These compete with Cisco’s Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) systems as well as Riverbed’s wide area data services (WDS) products, and devices from Blue Coat, Ipanema and others (Compare optimization tools).

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