Juniper Networks has made an excellent first impression with its EX 4000 Ethernet switch, its first foray into the switch market. Announced in March and released over the summer, the EX 4200 earned top marks for line-rate throughput, as well as for 10G Ethernet latency that reviewers called the "lowest we've ever measured."

Reviewers at Network World noted that, even under the heaviest loads, the EX 4200 delivered line-rate throughput in every test, both unicast and multicast, in layer-2 and layer-3 configurations. This performance beat every other switch tested by the reviewers, which bodes well for Juniper's fortunes in this space. The latency lows particularly impressed: 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, leading reviewers to conclude that the switch "won't hold up traffic long enough to adversely affect the performance of any enterprise application."

Juniper has said it is already enjoying some positive early deployments for the EX 4200, including a disaster recovery implementation for an Australian local government council north of Sydney, and a converged voice/data/video network for a Finnish export association. One aspect customers are tuning into is the ease of management in the devices: in Australia, at its primary and off-premises backup sites, Pittwater Council said it was simplifying administration by leveraging Virtual Chassis technology across dual 10 Gbps Ethernet fibre links to essentially operate the two switches as one logical device.