JUNOS Enterprise Routing

Why Is Routing So Important?

Routing is the hub around which all of IP connectivity revolves. At the simplest level, routing establishes basic internetwork communications, implements an addressing structure that uniquely identifies each device, and organizes individual devices into a hierarchical network structure. Traditionally, routers have also served as the media adapters that have connected remote offices to the headquarters via a WAN. The most recent trend, though, is to see routers as the integration platforms for a wide variety of network enhancements such as security, policy, and services that extend the capabilities of IP to support telephony, video, legacy service integration, and other applications over a converged network.

This means the router has become the primary control point in the increasingly complex network environment, holding responsibility for service quality and security, monitoring and efficiency, and other attributes that allow networks to add value. If you control the routers, you control the network. This is true in a static network, of course, but even more so in today’s typical case of a rapidly evolving enterprise, where migration to fully IP-based services is underway. This book will show you how you can use Juniper routers to ease this migration and arrive at a more successful outcome with less work than other platforms would require. This is important because although the basics of routing remain somewhat the same, the more advanced aspects are under constant development, and the authors have done a great job of showing you how to address the continually changing enterprise network environment.

Juniper has long understood that constant change is a fact of today’s networks, and has worked to bring new levels of performance, dependability, and scalability to routing platforms and the software that runs them. CIOs and IT departments realize that by deploying a more powerful, flexible tool at their networks’ control points, they enable their networks to address new challenges more easily and economically, and that’s the best way to support the competitiveness of their company.