JUNOS Enterprise Switching

CLI Overview

Hardcore engineers always prefer a CLI as opposed to a fancy-pants GUI web-based frontend thingy. The odd thing is that even novice users often quickly learn to prefer the JUNOS CLI, given that it’s one of the most user-friendly and feature-rich interfaces ever invented.

The remainder of this chapter focuses on the CLI, but gives an honorable nod to some slick user-friendly features as well. Generally speaking, the GUI makes things so easy, as long as you know what you want and why it’s used, it’s a cinch to click your way through it. Using the CLI provides direct access to all of the features of JUNOS, and it takes much less time and page space than dealing with GUI screens. As such, biting a bit of the CLI bullet really is the best way to learn JUNOS.

J-Web and EZSetup

When Juniper decided to reach into the Enterprise it understood that it would be encountering a new audience, one that is often familiar with the IOS CLI but in many cases may be brand new to networking, with little to no CLI experience. To address this concern, a web-based GUI interface was developed. The J-Web interface was first released on the J Series products, and was updated and enhanced to support the EX Series as well.

Figure 2-11 shows the main screen for the EX J-Web interface.

Yes, the J-Web interface is pretty slick.

J-Web supports both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, provides clean operational status displays and configuration (which includes wizards that help get you up and running), and performs ...