about Junos

Juniper Junos is the FreeBSD-based operating system used in Juniper Networks hardware routers. It is an operating system that is used in Juniper's routing, switching and security devices.
Juniper offers a Software Development Kit (SDK) to partners and customers to allow additional customization. The biggest competitor of Junos is Cisco Systems' IOS.

Versioning

Junos provides a single code base across most of Juniper's platforms. Juniper has issued a new release of Junos every 90 days since 1998.

Features

• Routing: Juniper Networks IP routing expertise delivers a full complement of routing protocols.
• Modularity: Junos software has a modular software design.
• Security: With the introduction of the SRX and J-series (past version 9.3) platforms, support for flow mode has been added to Junos, which includes stateful firewalling, NAT, and IPSec.
• Policy and control: Junos supports a flexible routing policy language that is used for controlling route advertisements and path selection
• Standards-based: Junos adheres to industry standards for routing, MPLS, and high availability mechanisms such as Graceful Restart

Architecture

Junos operating system is primarily based on FreeBSD, an advantage of which is the Unix-like environment: customers can access a Unix shell and execute normal Unix commands. Junos is platform independent within Juniper hardware systems. After Juniper acquired NetScreen, it also integrated ScreenOS security functions into its own Junos network operating system so that now Juniper offers routing and security functions in a single device.

Junos Command Line Interface (CLI)

The Junos CLI is a text-based command interface for configuring, troubleshooting, and monitoring the Juniper device and network traffic associated with it. It supports two types of command modes.

• Operational Mode
• Configuration Mode

The functions of Operational Mode include control of the CLI environment, monitoring of hardware status, and display of information about network data that passes though or into the hardware. The Configuration mode is used for configuring the Juniper router, switch, or security device, by adding, deleting, or modifying statements in the configuration hierarchy.

Junos SDK

Through the Juniper Developer Network (JDN) Juniper Networks provides the Junos SDK to its customers and 3rd-party developers who want to develop applications for Junos-powered devices such as Juniper Networks routers, switches, and service gateway systems. It provides a set of tools and application programming interfaces (APIs), including interfaces to Junos routing, firewall filter, UI and traffic services functions. Juniper Networks also employs the Junos SDK internally to develop parts of Junos and many Junos applications such as OpenFlow for Junos, and other traffic services.

Market share

Juniper as of June 13, 2008 has 5 percent of the $4.2 billion enterprise-router market, 18 percent of the $4.7 billion service-provider edge-router market and 30 percent of the $2.7 billion service-provider core-router market, according to the Dell'Oro Group.