[j-nsp] Juniper support vs. Cisco TAC - experiences?

[Ross Vandegrift]

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 08:50:50AM -0500, Boyd, Benjamin R wrote:
>  I agree, the web interface with Juniper is far superior to Cisco's.
> For any "non-critical" issue I rarely even have to speak with JTAC it's
> all accomplished via e-mail/messaging.

On the Netscreen side of the fence, it's a different story...

Everyone seems to be @juniper.net, but first and second tier support
are typically rather bad.  We've asked a lot of rather sophisticated
NSRP questions over the years, and it's pretty evident that their NSRP
techs don't have that much experience.  I've had to argue with techs
to have them escalate a question that they obviously didn't
understand.


On the other hand, there have been two or three occasions over the years
where I have had to open an emergency case due to firewalls crashing
repeatedly.  In each of these cases, JTAC has quickly and effectively
escalated my case to someone with not only superior knowledge and
experience, but someone with access to things like interim software
builds that fix known issues.  In the worst example of this, I had a
new build of ScreenOS that fixed the issue in under 10 minutes.


So while JTAC is occasionally like pulling teeth, I'm kind of willing
to grin and bear it since when we've *really* needed them, they've
come through.

That's more than I can say for our emergency cases at Cisco, where
we've been told BGP updates cause memory fragmentation and we just
need to reboot sometimes.  Or my personal favorite, "cosmic rays".

Ross

-- 
Ross Vandegrift
ross at kallisti.us

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine
man in the bonds of Hell."
	--St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, Book II, xviii, 37