The world of enterprise routing with Juniper Networks devices is getting very exciting—new technologies, products, and network developments are making the enterprise network environment one of the most dynamic places to be. However, we, the authors, hope to focus that energy by providing you with a detailed and practical foundation that ensures effective use of JUNOS software in your day-to-day job.
Because we are also involved in the development and testing of certification exams, including those for enterprise routing, this book does double duty. It is both a field guide and a certification study guide. Readers who are interested in attaining a Juniper Networks certification level are wise to note that we discuss and cover topics that are relevant to the official exams (hint, hint), and the end of each chapter provides a listing of examination topics covered as well as a series of review questions that allow you to test your comprehension.
Regardless of one's certification plans, this one-of-a-kind book will not be obsolete just because you pass an exam. In fact, we wrote this material to serve as a field guide to be useful almost anytime you log on to a Juniper Networks router. The extensive use of tutorials, samples of actual command output, and detailed theoretical coverage go well beyond any certification exam, to provide you with something that can't be tested—getting things to work the right way, and on the first time. When plan A fails, the material also provides the steps needed to monitor network operation and quickly identify and resolve the root cause of malfunctions.
As trainers who deal with large numbers of both experienced and inexperienced users on a regular basis, we have seen it all. Within this guide, you will find the many pearls of our accumulated wisdom, any one of which can easily pay for this book many times over in increased network uptime and performance.
Some of our chapters tend to be on the longer side, simply because they are packed with detailed information regarding theory, configuration, and troubleshooting for each topic. Rather than create more chapters, "soft breaks" and summaries within the chapters are used to identify boundaries within the material that afford a convenient place to take a breather, or as we often provide in our training classes, a "biology break and stretch." Dog-ear the pages, write notes in the margins, augment the topology illustrations with something more akin to your network—just remember that this is a beastly JUNOS book: part exam, part training class, part knowledge base. It's meant to be used, abused, and put to work. Let's get going.
