I have a Juniper SSG-5 and the school I’m doing the network setup for also got one identical unit on my recommendation. I wanted to set up a fixed VPN between the two but failed miserably, so I logged a support request with Juniper on my machine, which is still in warranty but without any kind of support contract. Oh, boy, do these guys have great service.
After just a day I got an engineer connecting to my system with desktop sharing software and we together went through a number of different configurations. It wasn’t really trivial, since the first config took us nearly three hours. Then I had another question of how to implement more finegrained control over the firewall policies in one direction, but not the other, which had us online another two hours using desktop sharing. The final result was perfect and I’ve learned so much more about the details of autokey VPN tunnels.
I’m totally blown away by the level and quality of support I got for this issue from Juniper. Maybe this particular engineer was exceptionally good and persistent, but I have the impression that it is more of a rule with Juniper. When I bought the SSG-5 I thought it was a little expensive, but after this experience, I’ve totally changed my mind. The support level and quality makes it worth the price hands down.
No, I don’t have shares in Juniper, but after this experience I think I may get some.
Makes a tasty gin, also. 🙂
Seriously — without becoming religious cults, do products truly compete on just quality and support? Or do they make those “just good enough” while reducing price and maintaining profitability?
I don’t know. But it has been a really long time since I’ve had a vendor spend this much energy on my problems. At the same time, I’m getting absolutely no response from Comodo. I paid them money, but no services seem to be forthcoming. Support tickets are ignored, phone calls get routed to answering machines or bitbuckets. The contrast is striking.
Kudos where kudos is due. Juniper support really shines, at least for me, and at least for now. The only other vendor I’ve had similar support experiences with is Apple (sorry about that, I know what you think of them). HP support comes not far behind.
Hey Martin..:) i keep coming back to this post every now and then.I am not sure if you remember me.I am the engineer who had worked with you on that SSG-5 🙂
Arun, yes of course I remember. Your level of dedication and knowledge is hard to forget. Thanks again! (BTW, the setup is still working fine.)