Juniper offers scalable network options

Juniper Networks on Monday, extended its range of network firewalls with two more options for scaling networks from the mid-range to the largest networks.

Aimed at the data centre but for use in networks from medium scale to high-end, Juniper Networks are intended to keep it ahead of its much bigger rival, Cisco, the company said.

Juniper has a hard task ahead since Cisco is far ahead in all round networking and it is planning a new product launch for Monday, themed, "Unified Computing".

Meanwhile, Juniper's new firewalls the SRX3400 and SRX3600 SRX series, extend the company's SRX3000 line of network and security products for the data centre. Juniper said that the gateway products can lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 65 percent but, perhaps more significantly, it said that the arrays need less rack space and can reduce power consumption.

The arrays have different footprints based on the types of services and number of input/output and services processing cards (SPCs) stocked on each array. The idea is that unlike single-purpose security appliances or traditional chassis platforms which will only handle one type of service the SRX Services Gateways can have a range of services at the same time.

The aim, said Juniper's solutions marketing manager for Europe, Gilles Trachsel is to offer a flexible network solution."With others you get one chassis, one network, one service, but with this solution you could have one chassis with multiple networks," he told ZDNet UK.

The idea is flexibility, Trachsel said. When asked how Juniper could compete with the largest company in the market, Cisco, Trachsel said, "They cannot offer the service level we have, and I think we score on network access control (NAC)."