Junos OS

Hi J-team,

 

I just passed my JNCIP, and started working on my JNCIE.  I have seven J-4350 routers (the old series) to practice with.  I only have 4 Ethernet interfaces installed in each, plus the 2 that comes with the box by default for a total of 6 interfaces.

I see multicast, tunneling, VPN, etc in the JNCIE book.  Does any one know what are the limitations for these boxes to practice for JNCIE?

 

Thanks,

Reza

To me, the biggest limitation of the J-series is lack of logical-router support.  However, since you have so many real routers, that may not be as big of a deal for you.

 

I believe that the J-series will do most of the things you mention, but some features will require additional licenses.  For instance, regular vanilla BGP is standard, but I believe VPN PE configurations will require and advanced features license.  I'm not an expert in licensing, but if you don't have the required licenses you may need to go back to your source for the routers and/or JUNOS to aquire them.

 

And of course you won't be able to practice interface-specific commands, such as NBMA on ATM.  Personally, I think practicing the ATM and FR parts is overrated anyway as long as you can remember the ramifications of such topologies.  Since you got it right (or close enough) in the JNCIP, you likely won't have much problems memorizing it for the JNCIE... or at least memorize where to find it in the reference material.

 

If your concern is the number of interfaces to interconnect the boxes, use a hub and VLANs.  This may be a good idea anyway if you have your boxes separate from the room where you actually study (which is especially likely if you are in a hot weather area like I am).  This way you connect all of your boxes physically to the hub, then provision VLANs as you need them without having to re-cable.

 

Another thought is that if you are following the study guide, most of the examples of the advanced topics only use a few routers at a time.  That is, the first large part of the JNCIE is similar to the JNCIP with a huge network to troubleshoot, but the MCast, VPN, COS parts of the book generally only use about 3 or 4 routers at a time.

 

-Jeff

#J-Series
#study
#JNCIE

Jeff,

 

Thanks for the input.  I will jump to the last chapter of the book (VPN) to see if I can find the limitation you mentioned regarding VPN PE.

During JNCIP practice, I noticed that you need an extra license to run BGP Route Reflectors, but in reality every thing worked fine when I configured the router.  It is just cosmetic error in the config. After consulting our SE, he mentioned that Juniper was planning on elimination extra licenses for enabling features.

 

Reza 

I'd like to add that you don't have prefix-specific policiers in J-Series, which is, I guess, a topic of JNCIE-M/T. But it's not that hard issue, I think.