Juniper Networks Warrior

Chapter 6. Service Provider Engagement

It used to be that Juniper Networks was a service provider networking vendor. That’s not the case any more, as this book makes evident, but the Junos OS was created for SPs, and the hardware was built for very large networks with lots of physical interface cards (PICs) and interfaces. In the early days, we warriors were SP guys. We lived in Network Ops. We got the right certifications, and the enterprise jobs were a means to fill the gaps between bigger service provider gigs.

Today, service provider warriors come in teams—maybe tribal nations, if we stay true to the warrior concept. And this is a necessity. From data centers to clouds to the large carriers, you need a total solution and you need a team of bright people with special skills in various areas. Service provider warriors are a special breed who can think in next hops of thought clumps to the final logical outcome, do algorithms in their heads, and speak using no less than a dozen acronyms per sentence.

For the following engagement, the tribe consisted of a seasoned professional services engineer (me), a talented Juniper Networks sales engineer, and a very bright engineer from the customer’s office.

Company Profile

This engagement was an opportunity to assist an independent telephone company in upgrading its infrastructure. The company was installing Juniper MX edge routers and Juniper EX switches in support of its digital subscriber line (DSL) and voice customers. The task at hand was ...