Session Smart™ Networking Platform (PAYG)

I used Juniper Session Smart Router within a healthcare environment around 2016 for a couple of years while working with an MSP at NTT Data. Within the healthcare environment, the benefits would include zero-trust segmentation which helps with any ransomware. It is reliable for EMR or EHR connectivity. You get secure patient data transport. For today, it would be great for telemedicine performance.

Within healthcare, having secure patient data transport means things are going to go through pretty much without things falling apart. This is a software router, so that eliminates having to deal with anything physical.

For today, though I didn't use it for telemedicine, the traffic for telemedicine is really huge. With that particular router, you would get a great deal of low latency, high reliability, and the security for it is pretty strong. It is designed for that, so it would treat the session, not just packets in a tunnel.

When you have a hospital that has to be up 24/7, you can get things going rather quickly. Telemedicine depends a lot on audio streams, diagnostics, and remote diagnostics. When I utilized it in 2015-2016, but after COVID, telemedicine has become a big thing. If you have traditional SD-WAN tunnels, you may have frozen videos, session resets, and call failures. With this particular software, you don't have those problems. It's critical for remote surgery support and emergency consults. You wouldn't want to lose a call in the middle of that, and ICU monitoring. It definitely is good for that.

Where I used it was in healthcare, any failovers or anything that went down, we could get it up quickly, and that is what you want. Hospitals cannot afford to have any failover time. Zero-trust protection for PHI is crucial. We're protecting EMR, EHR, and that's for Epic, Cerner, or Meditech. When I worked with NTT Data, we had mostly Meditech clients and some Epic clients. You can also isolate medical devices like monitors or imaging systems, enforce identity-based access for clinicians, and I think that would really matter. It supports HIPAA, HITRUST certification, all things related to the medical field.

It was deployed as a cloud instance with Azure and AWS. It is a multi-cloud software. You can install it on bare-metal servers as well, but it was a cloud instance for us within AWS and Azure.

Mainly AWS, which was probably 90% of it, but we did have some Azure deployments as well. We had dedicated customers, and then we had those across the MSP board.

I think I covered the ones that come to mind. Overall, it is very solid. You can integrate it with the WAN, Epic and Azure, PACS archives in AWS, and SaaS clinical apps. I'm speaking from how it was used for a particular job I was with, and it was healthcare-related. So how it's applicable to other industries, I would not be able to tell you, but I imagine it is. Within the deployment architecture, you have hub-and-spoke.

It's not a physical device, so that is a great thing. Because of its tunnel-free SD-WAN architecture, you're going to get lower latency, no tunnel overhead, no fragmentation, and faster failover. That is great because with traditional ones, they tend to add latency and complexity. Juniper Session Smart Router attempts to bring that down and eliminates it.

The core features for it are no tunnel overhead, low latency, no tunnel fragmentation, and faster failover. That's very important, and it's application-based routing, not just packets.

For example, with EMR/EHR connectivity, we had lower application timeouts and rarely had any session resets or patient workflows interrupted. Sometimes with older routers, we would have chart updates failing within these hospitals, but with this particular device, it really countered that. A lot of things had changed and diminished by utilizing it.

Its AI capabilities do have root cause analysis AI. You can get application behavior, user experience, and session performance. I do recall that being utilized by me. As far as the policy for governance, it does break it down because it is HIPAA and HITRUST related. Therefore, it has to have it. You have unified policy enforcement, identity-based routing rules, application policies, version control policies, and there is zero-trust governance. Its governance policies are excellent, which is essential because of HIPAA, HITRUST, and anything related that governs patients and privacy within the healthcare industry.

I wouldn't know the metrics financially, but I do know it worked beautifully from an IT personnel's perspective. You have a software router that gives you zero-trust segmentation, tunnel-free SD-WAN, and application-level traffic control. It's not tied to hardware. The intelligence lives in the software, and it is beneficial over a long period of time.

Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware. Now you have IoT vulnerabilities, so something like advanced malware detection or threat analysis would help. This is something I worked with around 2016 to 2017. Perhaps they have added those features, but I know they didn't have it then. Some security profiles for specific medical devices would be helpful. Sandboxing would be good.

Dedicated telemedicine routing profiles would be beneficial because we have a lot of telemedicine going on. Real-time sessions for clinicians may need pre-built templates for EHR and EMR. I think those would be good if they're not already there. I don't know what the latest router has, but I know they didn't have those features then. There can always be improvements because technology is constantly advancing. It is a very solid router, and that is one of many industries that could utilize it. Healthcare is one such industry, and if it works for healthcare, then that is a major plus for that router.

It is very stable. We didn't have any problems with it. That was one of the pluses due to the industry that it was being utilized in: healthcare. What you have is session-aware routing, tunnel-free design, AI-driven operations, limited tunnel drops or rekeying interruptions, latency spikes, or failover delays. It removed that, preventing session resets.

It is a software-driven tool, so it's very scalable. It doesn't have tunnel overhead or fragmentation, so there isn't a tunnel to explode at scale. That allows Juniper Session Smart Router to support thousands of concurrent sessions without any type of performance collapsing.

Juniper is very good with their customer support. I haven't had any complaints. I can't speak for other people. Other engineers, administrators, or analysts may say differently, but I found their support to be excellent with a quick response time when I needed it. It was seldom that I had to reach out to Juniper.

I'd give them a solid nine. I'm not going to give a 10 for perfection, but they were very good when I needed to speak with an engineer via email. Sometimes if there needed to be a Zoom session, then they would join it.

We had various types of routers depending on which particular area we were looking at, which data center. We had Cisco and Brocade.

We were looking at Palo Alto. VMware has theirs, Aruba, Cisco with their SD-WAN, and I believe Fortinet has them. The top competition for Juniper is Cisco, I would say, and Palo Alto.

I personally did not do the pricing. I imagine it was okay because the company did purchase it. In a lot of instances, particularly as it pertains to healthcare, they don't want to spend too much. I imagine with it being through the cloud, it was a lot less expensive and maybe sold to the various healthcare industries that we managed, hospitals, and so forth. I think the appliances are several thousand, and you have premier software licenses that can be quite pricey. If you weigh it against the ransomware attacks, I think it can be less expensive because it does work very well within clinics and remote sites.

Know what your needs are, if you want hybrid or cloud-based. It is a multi-cloud type of router. It's perfect for healthcare. Benefits for healthcare include telemedicine needs, so you have low jitter there, medical IoT, zero-trust segmentation, and hospitals need their sub-second failover. It works for retail with fast failover, and financial services. I think of some of the industries that really could use it: the government, manufacturing.

Juniper Session Smart Router is a great router that Juniper released. They do put out excellent routers. It's something to consider, particularly in healthcare, finances, and I would say logistics as well, and banking. I would give this product an overall rating of 8 out of 10.

I do not work with cloud solutions. I only work with data center solutions, especially switch and VPN solutions, including secure VPN solutions, secure access solutions, and switch solutions.

I do not work with smart routers or cloud routers such as Juniper Session Smart Router. I only work on Juniper switches and Juniper VPN solutions.

The best features of Juniper Session Smart Router include a resilient UI, as this product is very suitable for data centers, and you do not face major issues such as network cutting. There are not many bugs or corruption, and it has a good UI.

The real-time analytics and visibility features are excellent, and its special troubleshooting tool is very strong. The troubleshooting tool is very effective.

Juniper Session Smart Router should have a more user-friendly graphical interface because the user interface is complex, and some upgrade operations are sometimes difficult. It could definitely be easier.

I have been familiar with Juniper, particularly Juniper Session Smart Router, for five years.

The technical support of Juniper is an eight on a scale from one to ten; it is good enough.

The implementation of Juniper Session Smart Router is moderate; it is not too basic and not too complex.

I do not know how much time the implementation of Juniper Session Smart Router takes as it depends on the device model, what the customer needs, and project complexity. It depends on too many parameters, but for a simple project with just one device, it may take approximately four hours.

I usually work with one or two other people and myself, so in total, two or three technical people are needed. I especially work remotely and need a field engineer to plug the cable and deploy the physical device to the physical location. It may be two or three people depending on the project and device.

I do not have any information about Juniper Session Smart Router's price and licensing cost; the update rate is also unknown to me because I am only interested in the technical side. However, I think it is acceptable.

I am not a partner with Juniper because HP bought all of Juniper, and we do not work with HP.

I purchased Juniper solutions directly from the vendor.

We are not partners with Juniper now, but some customers sometimes need support for Juniper products, and I can support them directly.

I have not utilized the product's session awareness feature.

I do not use centralized policy management.

The impact of Zero Trust Segmentation on my network's security posture is very important for our job and for our customers; we always use this feature, and it is very important.

I did not notice any change in application performance without complex tunnels; it is good, and I did not face any issues with this feature. It is working well.

I do not personally take part in the deployment of Juniper; I deploy Juniper products.

My overall review rating for Juniper Session Smart Router is eight out of ten.

I have been running my own company and working with Juniper Session Smart Router for almost 10 to 12 years because Larsen & Toubro is my client who will use Juniper devices for switching and firewall. The number of engineers supports this work, and we are a 30-year-old company since 1995.

I am using Juniper Session Smart Router deployment model only for my customer site and endpoint; it is not cloud-based.

Juniper Session Smart Router is purchased from the OEM to distributor, then from the distributor to myself, and that process goes through channel only, not from the market.

Juniper Session Smart Router's real-time analytics and visibility features are easily accessible. We first deployed Juniper in 1996 as a branch router instead of Cisco routers. We utilized Juniper firewall SSG 120, SSG 10, and SSG 20 as router devices instead of firewall, and we kept about 60 to 65 firewall devices as routers.

One of the best features of Juniper Session Smart Router from a security perspective is its tight iOS since the earlier NetScreen firewall is present.

Centralized policy management has positively affected network configuration consistency in my customers' environment. Senior people are sitting in my office, while L1 and L2 people are going to the field. In case of any difficulty, our team takes care of the remote session.

I think the current Juniper focuses more on switching rather than routing, which is a weak point in the product.

Currently, I and my customers have not utilized the Session Awareness feature of Juniper Session Smart Router because whatever is required, online help is available. Our people are ready to implement the basic things, and for critical matters, we take online help from technical support for Cisco or other vendors.

I have been in the field of IT since 1986, which means almost 40 years.

I have noticed a change in application performance without complex tunnels, which depends on the application. For some applications, performance is degraded a little, not more than 3 to 4 percent, but this is typical, not for all applications.

Currently, I am not aware of the pricing for Juniper Session Smart Router. For the last two to three years, people have not been selling any devices because the sales cycle is difficult in India, and I currently require the maintenance of the service part of the prices, which is also very difficult. Through Redington, it takes two to three months, and people are waiting for that duration to get the prices for the renewal of the devices, which makes this a difficult task in our region, the Gujarat region.

In my thoughts about the technical support of Juniper, the current scenario is rated as eight; eight is the best.

We first deployed Juniper in 1996 as a branch router instead of Cisco routers. We utilized Juniper firewall SSG 120, SSG 10, and SSG 20 as router devices instead of firewall, and we kept about 60 to 65 firewall devices as routers.

The implementation of Juniper Session Smart Router depends on switching and tasks; it is a dependent task. The switching normally takes a day or two, while routing may take two to three days, and other applications depend on the application and end user capability.

I participate in the deployment of the solution; however, currently, I do not because my team is large, consisting of 10 to 15 people.

My thoughts about zero trust segmentation depend on the customer. We are a supply and implement integrator. Whatever people require posture-wise, my banking customer has supplied Cisco devices with advanced iOS and posture as a solution.

My overall rating for Juniper Session Smart Router as a product is that earlier it was good, but currently, the replacement of the devices is very difficult, and the staff is also a challenge. In case we require a technical session for Juniper, we have to take two days prior permission to check if we can go for that; whether manpower is available or not is currently slower, and the support is also declining. I rate the product eight out of ten.

My main use case for Juniper Session Smart Router is for our tunnel-based SD-WAN architecture and secure vector routing purpose. It provides the routing decision based on the application sessions rather than packet forwarding alone, so we use SD-WAN as a WAN product.

A specific example of how I used Juniper Session Smart Router in our SD-WAN setup is that we want to create a tunnel-free architecture, making Juniper Session Smart Router a significant differentiator. Most vendors prefer IPsec tunnels, GRE tunnels, or overlay networks, but Juniper provides innovative solutions such as session-aware fabric, secure vector routing, and tunnel-free forwarding. By utilizing this solution, we achieve benefits such as lower latency, better voice quality, and less packet overhead, improving bandwidth utilization generally.

Other use cases include application-aware routing with Juniper Session Smart Router, which understands users, applications, sessions, and services. Instead of merely forwarding packets based on IP routes, this understanding is extremely useful for any M365 solution, including our Teams, Zoom applications, Oracle cloud workloads.

In my opinion, the best feature of Juniper Session Smart Router is its built-in zero-trust design. Most SD-WAN vendors bolt security onto the networking side, but Juniper designed Juniper Session Smart Router around deny-by-default and session authorization, identity-aware routing, and service-centric policies. The architecture aligns naturally with the zero-trust concept.

The WAN performance is probably the strongest area for Juniper Session Smart Router. It excels in multi-cloud connectivity, branch-to-cloud traffic, and real-time applications, so Juniper Session Smart Router often performs better than any traditional IPsec overlay architecture.

Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization because we have multi-cloud solutions that are extremely useful for our M365, Teams communication, Zoom communication, SAP applications, and Oracle-based applications. It provides user and application-aware routing-based solutions, allowing us to measure WAN performance, which is the strongest area of this router.

We notice specific improvements in connectivity, particularly with multi-cloud connectivity or multi-cloud applications such as Azure, AWS, or GCP. The WAN performance of Juniper Session Smart Router is apparent, and our branch-to-cloud traffic shows good performance. It often performs better than traditional IPsec overlay architecture with our real-time applications, including SAP applications and Oracle-based applications.

A key area for improvement in Juniper Session Smart Router is its security stack, which is not as robust as Fortinet. This is the biggest weakness, as Juniper Session Smart Router provides routing security and segmentation with zero-trust routing, but it is not a full security platform. Compared to Fortinet, which generally offers next-generation firewall capabilities, Juniper Session Smart Router is quite basic. Features such as IPS or IDS are limited when compared with Fortinet, as are web filtering, sandboxing, and threat intelligence, which are also moderate. However, I find the SD-WAN aspect to be excellent. If security is your primary objective, then Juniper Session Smart Router may lag in that regard.

Regarding needed improvements outside of security, Juniper's SASE maturity is less than that of competing vendors such as Versa, Palo Alto Prisma, Netskope, or Zscaler. While Juniper integrates SD-WAN with SASE offerings, it is generally not viewed as a leader in SASE capabilities.

I do not see any features currently in terms of governance and security regarding Juniper Session Smart Router, as it focuses mainly on routing innovation and solution. Therefore, checking on WAN performance is crucial, but they lack governance and compliance capabilities.

Regarding the accuracy and reliability of output in Juniper Session Smart Router's AI capabilities, it has approximately eighty percent accuracy, which means they are still lagging in the remaining twenty percent. They need to improve their security engine.

I have been using Juniper Session Smart Router for approximately two years.

Juniper Session Smart Router is stable in my experience.

Juniper Session Smart Router's scalability is impressive, and the performance is excellent.

My experience with customer support for Juniper Session Smart Router is that sometimes I feel it is not very proactive or good, but overall, it is acceptable.

We previously used Arista before choosing Juniper Session Smart Router. However, Arista had a complex solution, which prompted our switch to Juniper Session Smart Router.

We have seen a return on investment from using Juniper Session Smart Router, as we have saved money and require fewer employees because routing is managed by this product. We have saved a lot of time in terms of routing.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Juniper Session Smart Router is that pricing is higher compared to other vendors. The main feature we see is WAN performance, which is the only standout feature they have at this moment when compared with the competition.

Before choosing Juniper Session Smart Router, we evaluated Cisco, Netskope, and Arista as options.

My advice for others looking into using Juniper Session Smart Router is that if they seek next-generation firewall capabilities, Juniper Session Smart Router only has basic capabilities in that area. They should consider other options such as Fortinet. Features such as IPS are limited, so if that is a requirement, they should look elsewhere. However, if the focus is on SD-WAN solutions, then Juniper Session Smart Router is a good and excellent choice. I have provided this review with an overall rating of six.

Juniper Session Smart Router is deployed at our branches, where we have over 100 branches set up for software-defined wide area networking, connecting to service provider broadband routers, 4G routers, or 5G routers.

A specific example of how I use Juniper Session Smart Router at one of our branch sites is that we have our SD-WAN hub in the data center and Juniper Session Smart Router at each of our branches, connecting to a broadband router to form a VPN with the Juniper hub device in our local data center, thereby connecting users to our data center through the VPN.

Juniper Session Smart Router incorporates the Juniper AI tool via the Juniper Mist platform, providing significant visibility into site operations, including monitoring session numbers, VPN session drops, users, BGP routing, ARP, devices on the LAN, as well as conducting wide area network and LAN packet captures, running periodic speed tests, upgrades, and providing granular details about applications and their performance.

Juniper Session Smart Router offers ease of deployment, allowing for visibility of applications, bandwidth, traffic, LAN, devices, and users' IP addresses, making it not only easy to deploy and manage but also very effective with excellent visibility into the network at each of our branches.

Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization by simplifying SD-WAN deployments, allowing us to operate with fewer staff, as its integration with Juniper Mist AI takes on much of the workload, thereby offering reliable performance and stability without software issues.

One area for improvement that I have observed is related to the VPN, where I frequently notice VPN flaps or disconnections between Juniper Session Smart Router and the SD-WAN hub device in the data center, which should be addressed to prevent users from experiencing any downtime.

While everything is graphical and easily visible to troubleshoot issues, improvements could be made around identifying the root cause of VPN session terminations, as real-time insight into the reasons for connection drops would significantly aid network engineers.

I have been using Juniper Session Smart Router for about one year, having recently started the software-defined wide area networking migration in my organization where we are currently deploying them on Juniper SSR.

Juniper Session Smart Router is stable in my experience, although occasional blips happen that are typically unnoticed by users and are often untraceable.

Juniper Session Smart Router demonstrates impressive scalability, allowing for easy management and monitoring of hundreds or even thousands of branches via the Mist AI tool without issue.

My experience with Juniper Session Smart Router customer support has been very positive, as they are responsive to issues, providing solutions quickly, whether related to WAN side problems or software version upgrades.

We have not previously used any different solution before implementing Juniper Session Smart Router as this is our first venture into SD-WAN technology.

Before selecting Juniper Session Smart Router, I evaluated alternatives such as Cisco C-Edge SD-WAN devices, but found them to be significantly more expensive compared to Juniper's offering.

My advice to others considering Juniper Session Smart Router is to ensure it meets their needs for deployment, as it is stable, reliable, and significantly more affordable compared to many competitors.

My company maintains a partnership and reseller relationship with Juniper beyond merely being a customer.

A specific example of how much time or resources I have saved with Juniper Session Smart Router can be seen in our management of over 100 sites with just four or five engineers, which is significant compared to traditional MPLS requiring many more staff and multiple monitoring tools, as we can manage everything through the Mist dashboard without the need to log into devices' CLI.

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Juniper Session Smart Router fall outside my direct responsibilities, but I believe that utilizing Juniper SSR proves to be more cost-effective than Cisco SD-WAN deployment kits, requiring fewer devices for setup while maintaining reliability.

Although I lack detailed insights about the financial aspects since I am not in the accounts department, I know that the integration of AI has led to approximately 50% savings in terms of employee requirements, which reflects positively on our overall efficiency.

Before selecting Juniper Session Smart Router, I evaluated alternatives such as Cisco C-Edge SD-WAN devices, but found them to be significantly more expensive compared to Juniper's offering.

The unique aspects of Juniper that stand out for me are the ease of deployment and management, as you can deploy Juniper Session Smart Router at a site in just five minutes and gain considerable visibility.

The integration with Juniper Mist significantly automates many previously manual tasks, enhancing network management operations for branches, especially when managing hundreds or thousands of branches.

I have not delved deeply into Juniper Session Smart Router's AI capabilities related to governance and security, but I find it integrative with platforms including Azure and AWS, ensuring safe logins and minimal issues regarding security or data leakage as of now.

The accuracy and reliability of Juniper Session Smart Router's AI capabilities have proven dependable as it provides real-time results and detailed data through various graphs on the Mist portal concerning bandwidth, sessions, users, and application specifics.

I recommend discussing the training available on the Juniper portal for SSR and SD-WAN, as I believe specific training for SD-WAN and Juniper SSR would be valuable, especially if offered for free.

I would rate this product a nine out of ten.