Junos® OS For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Choosing a Management Interface

To manage the Junos OS without being physically present, your fundamental requirement is to create an interface through which you can communicate. Although you may think the question is which interface to use, the question is actually which interface can you use. You have a couple of choices, depending on how you want to manage your networked devices. Of course, you have choices depending on your management requirements and the type of device you're using.

Making these choices boils down to answering two decisions: determining whether you want to use your network-facing in-band interfaces or a specialized management interface (out-of-band management), and determining whether you need to access the router with root permissions (in-band management). To make the decision, you need to know the differences between the two options.

• Out-of-band management: Identifies remote management through a network that is separate from the traffic-carrying network on which the device is deployed. Put simply, out-of-band management uses an interface that carries only management traffic, whereas the other interfaces on the router carry LAN/WAN traffic. (In Chapter 6, you configure the management interface as part of your initial device configuration, but that doesn't mean you must use it for all management!)
• In-band management: Is remote management where one of the LAN/WAN interfaces is used to manage the router. That is to say that you use the network to carry both ...