Juniper EX 4200 Switch Aces Network World Test

Extracts from Network World Article, 14/7/08; by David Newman



"Cisco take note: Juniper's new EX 4200 switch not only fills a hole in a leading competitor's product line, but also represents a credible alternative for enterprise access switching.

In Network World's exclusive Clear Choice test, we subjected the EX 4200-48T switch to the same rigorous battery of benchmarks we used to assess seven other vendors' 10G Ethernet access switches earlier this year.

The verdict: This is one fast box. The EX 4200 delivered line-rate throughput in every case, the only switch we've tested this year to do so. What's more, 10G Ethernet latency is the lowest we've ever measured. We also were impressed by the EX 4200's feature set and powerful JUNOS command-line interface (CLI).

Other highlights of the report include:

With Juniper's EX 4200, there's no need to say "nearly". Even under the heaviest loads our Spirent TestCenter traffic generator threw at it, the switch delivered line-rate throughput in every single unicast and multicast test, both in layer-2 and layer-3 configurations. No other switch did that.

Latency – often a more important metric than throughput, especially for time-sensitive voice and video traffic – was low and consistent across all tests. Measured at line rate, the Juniper switch delayed 64-byte frames across 10G Ethernet links for an average of 1.96 microsec and a maximum of 2.01 microsec.

Those are the lowest latencies we've ever recorded in an Ethernet switch. In fact, even the maximum latency of the EX 4200 is less than the lowest average result we measured in the previous round of tests."

You can find the full testing report on the Network World Website.

To see a full range of Juniper products please visit Juniper Technology.