Juniper Networks EX3300 Series Switches Overview

The Juniper EX3300 Switch Series provides the high performance and bandwidth needed in today’s modern network architectures. This switch series is flexible, durable and scalable, capable to support the Juniper Networks Virtual Chassis technology, allowing up to 10 switches to be interconnected over uplink ports and managed as a single logical device. It is an optimal solution for installation in campus and core networks and it can support various technologies like voice over IP (VoIP), video and the conventional high speed data traffic.

This switch series can be distinguished by a number of key features it provides:

• You can select a version with either 24 or 48 10/100/1000BASE-T ports and four dual-mode Gigabit Ethernet/10 GB Ethernet SFP/SFP+ uplink ports. The uplink ports can be configured as Virtual Chassis interfaces and connected via standard 1GB Ethernet or 10GB Ethernet optics interfaces
• This switch series is unique by the cooling style which is optimized for Datacenter deployments. You can choose both front-to-back and back-to front airflows depending on your needs
• It has been developed to enable flexible deployment options due to its compact, 12-inch deep 1U body
• It provides the same modular operating system, JunOS, as any other switch from the EX series. This provides configuration and management simplicity
• Support for every important protocol from the networking world including BGP. MBGP, OSPF v2, IGMP v1/v2/v3, PIM, VRRP, Q-in-Q , BFD, Virtual Router and RIP as well
• Support for Power over Ethernet with a certain version of the EX3300 Switch Series (optional)

This switch series offers a couple of different models you can select. Even though each of them have some unique features, most of the features are common between them. Every model with its most important features is shown in the table below:

The EX3300 Switch Series will guaranteed give its maximum performance if deployed correctly. However this switch series is optimal for creating converged LAN network architectures which demand high speed converged data, voice, and video traffic transmission. With this in mind, as the table above indicates, both EX3300-24P and EX3300-48P provide Power over Ethernet which deliver up to 30 watts of power per port to support networked devices such as telephones, video cameras, IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN (WLAN) access points and video phones. The 24 port version has 405 watts of available power while the more advanced version with 48 ports has 740 watts of available power. This would be more than enough for your networked devices. It is important to mention that these switches support the more advanced PoE+ IEEE 802.3at instead of the earlier IEEE 802.3af PoE standard. With the740 watts of available power in the EX3300-48P, this switch has the capability to provide 15.4 watts of power on each of its ports, or 30 watts of PoE+ on 24 ports. This amount of power is enough to meet the requirements of 802.3af Class 3 PoE. You can mix and match both PoE standards based on your needs until the maximum PoE power budget of 405 or 740 watts is exhausted. You can configure the PoE feature in two independent modes: static or class mode. With the static mode you can specify the amount of power on an individual port while with class mode the end devices can negotiate the power they need from the switch.

One of the key benefits from this switch series is the support for the Virtual Chassis Technology by Juniper. This technology is very similar to the Cisco StackWise technology by Cisco. Juniper allows you up to 10 switches to be interconnected over their uplink ports and be managed as a single logical device. The most important benefits from this configuration are:

• High speed interconnectivity between the switches
• Ease in manageability because the switches act as a single logical device
• Inter-chassis Etherchannel by bundling Ethernet cables landing on different stack members
• Layer 3 redundancy without the need of a redundancy protocol like VRRP
• The entire stack would look like one switch from a configuration and switch’s perspective which would eliminate the highly plausible STP issues

The way this technology works is by electing a master and a backup switch based on preconfigured criteria or policies. As with some other networking protocols like VTP and OSPF, the master switch regularly updates and creates the switching and optional routing tables on all switches in the Virtual Chassis configuration. The unique aspect of this configuration is the capability for switches to be removed or added in the Virtual Chassis configuration without disrupting service. This configuration resembles the one of Cisco StackWise and it shares the same benefits to the whole network and network operations. The management of a single logical switch is way simpler than logging on every switch in your network. This configuration provides the engineer with a single IP address, single telnet or SSH session, single command-line interface (CLI), automatic version checking and automatic configuration when needed. In addition the forwarding speed and capacity is increased by eliminating the need for a packet destined for another port to traverse the Virtual Chassis. In this technology you will find handy the support for use of a single configuration file and operating system across the Virtual Chassis. Juniper Virtual Chassis can only be configured on the uplink ports. The last two uplink ports on the EX3300 front panel are configured by default as Virtual Chassis ports and they will act as Virtual Chassis ports as soon as you insert a standard 10GbE SFP+ or GB Ethernet SFP transceiver in the port.

When it comes to security the EX3300 Switch Series offers a broad range of security capabilities. One of these capabilities is the advanced access control and security all the way down to the individual port or user levels. With this feature the user’s identity, device type, machine posture check, and location can be used to deny or allow access. Additionally you can also change the duration of access or denial of access based on your needs. In case of granted access the switch would assign the user to a specific VLAN based on authorization levels. It’s worth mentioning that this VLAN will be updated throughout the Virtual Chassis configuration. Included in the security features you will also find a set of security measures to deny the possible DHCP. MAC and ARP internal and external spoofing, man-in-the-middle and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Across all models of EX3300 switches you will find the widely popular JunOS operating system. This operating system provides a consistent implementation and operation of control plane features across all Juniper products. With the use of a single source code and a single quarterly release train the Juniper developers have managed to create one of the most widely known operating systems, with a highly modular architecture that prevents isolated failures from bringing an entire system down. This gives confidence to customers that their network will continue to operate at the highest performance.

The EX3300 Switch Series also has the capability to operate as a highly capable routing engine when deployed in Virtual Chassis configuration. When two or more switches are connected with each other, they form a Virtual Chassis connection and the JunOS operating system elects the master and backup routing engine. In addition an integrated Layer 2 and Layer 3 graceful Routing Engine switchover (GRES) feature will maintain the uninterrupted access to applications, services, and IP communications in the unlikely event of a master Routing Engine failure. The network engineer has the capability to affect the master/backup election by changing the priority levels of each switch engine. In addition to the Virtual Chassis feature the EX3300 offers some unique capabilities to provide high availability:

• The support of redundant trunk groups to provide the necessary port redundancy and simplify switch configuration
• The support of link aggregation across the Virtual Chassis configuration to provide reliability and availability
• The support of Non-stop Bridging and Non-stop Routing to prevent protocol flaps or convergence issues following a Routing Engine failover

As with any other Juniper Networks switch, the EX3300 Switch Series supports a wide range of optical transceivers. These transceivers together with their CBO BlueOptics© and CBO BlueLan© compatible transceivers and cables are listed in the table below:

The EX3300 Switch Series has been developed to accelerate, optimize and extend the existing network architecture in a Service Provider and Datacenter environments. With the various services it supports you will be able to minimize your operational costs and at the same time optimize the network architecture to maintain required levels of performance, reliability, and availability.