JUNOS® FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter 10. Setting Up the Switches

You may think that routers and switches are the same because you use them to connect to the Internet or to a network in your office or campus. But from a technology point of view, they're different.

Routers, routing protocols, and the Internet Protocol (IP) operate at Layer 3, the network layer, of the OSI protocol stack. They use IP addresses to route traffic, and — for Ethernet networks — to map these addresses to each network device's media access control (MAC) address, which is the Layer 2 hardware address of the device. Switches operate at Layer 2, the data-link layer, of the OSI protocol stack, so they use only the MAC address to forward traffic through the network.

In this chapter, we set up the switch.

Setting Up the Switch

Juniper switches ship in individual shipping crates. The EX 3200 and EX 4200 devices come in cardboard boxes, and the EX 8200 device comes on a wooden pallet.

The EX 3200 and EX 4200 are 1U boxes (about 1.75 inches high), weighing about 22 pounds (10 kilograms) each, so unlike some of the larger Juniper routers, you can unpack and install these switches without forklifts or other mechanical aids.

The EX 8200 models are much larger — the smaller one is about 24 inches high and about 250 pounds, and the larger model is about 38 inches high and about 400 pounds — so to install these switches, you'll need mechanical moving and lifting equipment and a team of three people.

Racking the switch

You can install EX 3200 and 4200 switches ...