Router Access

When you first install the JUNOS software, all remote access to the router is disabled, thereby ensuring that remote access is possible only if deliberately enabled by an authorized user. You can establish remote communication with a router in one of the following ways:

• Out-of-band management—Allows connection to the router through an interface dedicated to router management. Juniper Networks routing platforms support out-of-band management with a dedicated management Ethernet interface (fxp0), as well as EIA-232 console and auxiliary ports. The management Ethernet interface connects directly to the Routing Engine. No transit traffic is allowed through this interface, providing complete separation of customer and management traffic and ensuring that congestion or failures in the transit network do not affect the management of the router.
• Inband management—Allows connection to the routers using the same interfaces through which customer traffic flows. Although this approach is simple and requires no dedicated management resources, it has some disadvantages:
  • Management flows and transit traffic flows are mixed together. Any attack traffic that is mixed with the normal traffic can affect the communication with the router.
  • The links between router components might not be totally trustworthy, leading to the possibility of wiretapping and replay attacks.

For management access to the router, the standard ways to communicate with the router from a remote console are with Telnet and SSH. SSH provides secure encrypted communications and is therefore useful for inband router management. Telnet provides unencrypted, and therefore less secure, access to the router. For more information about router access, see System Management.

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