JN0-105: Junos, Associate (JNCIA-Junos)

The Routing Engine (RE) in Juniper Networks devices plays a critical role in the control plane operations. One of its functions includes responding to network utility commands like ping and traceroute, which are essential for diagnosing network connectivity and path issues. Furthermore, the RE is responsible for maintaining the routing tables, which contain information about network paths and destinations. These tables are vital for making forwarding decisions but are distinct from the actual forwarding of packets, which is handled by the Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE).

Implementing Class of Service (CoS) in a network provides numerous benefits, particularly in managing traffic based on its importance, source, or type. CoS enables network administrators to manage traffic congestion by applying various queuing techniques and policies to ensure that critical services remain unaffected during high congestion periods. Additionally, CoS allows for the prioritization of latency-sensitive traffic such as voice and video, ensuring that these services maintain quality despite varying network conditions.

In Junos OS, route preference (also known as administrative distance) is used to determine the preferred route among multiple routes to the same destination learned via different routing protocols. Direct and local routes, which represent directly connected networks and interfaces, typically share the same low preference value, indicating high trustworthiness because they are directly connected to the router. OSPF internal routes (routes within the same OSPF area) and OSPF AS external routes (routes that are external to the OSPF autonomous system but redistributed into OSPF) also share the same preference value, although this value is higher (indicating less trust) than for direct and local routes. This distinction helps the routing engine decide which routes to use when multiple paths are available.

The candidate configuration in Junos OS is a temporary configuration that allows network administrators to make and stage multiple configuration changes before applying them to the device. This approach enables the deployment of multiple changes in a single operation, ensuring that all configurations work together as intended before making them active. Additionally, the candidate configuration can be discarded if the administrator decides not to apply the staged changes, allowing for a 'trial and error' approach without affecting the currently active configuration. This feature provides flexibility and reduces the risk of disruptive changes to the network.

The Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) in Junos OS performs several key functions, including implementing firewall filters (A) and forwarding transit traffic (C). The PFE applies firewall filter rules to incoming and outgoing traffic and is responsible for the high-speed forwarding of packets based on the information in the forwarding table.

Two physical interface properties in Junos OS include the MAC address (A) and the Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) size (D). The MAC address is a hardware identifier for the network interface, while the MTU size determines the largest packet size that the interface can transmit without needing to fragment the packet.

The firewall filter configuration in the exhibit specifies a filter with two terms. Term 1 matches traffic from the source address 10.0.0.0/8 and has two actions: 'log' and 'next term'. The 'log' action will record the match to a log file, and 'next term' indicates that the firewall should evaluate the next term after logging. There is no explicit action such as 'accept' or 'reject' in term 1, so by default, the traffic will be accepted unless subsequently rejected by another term.

Term 2 has the action 'reject', which discards packets that reach this term. Since there is no 'from' condition in term 2, it acts as a default rule for all traffic not matched by term 1.

Because the traffic sourced from 10.0.0.0/8 matches term 1 and there is no reject action in that term, it will be logged and then accepted by the firewall filter. There is no subsequent term that rejects this specific traffic, so the action from term 2 does not apply to it.