We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Juniper SRX based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers felt that Juniper SRX’s user interface as well as its pricing could be improved.
"I have found Fortinet FortiGate to be scalable."
"The usage in general is pretty good."
"Their reliability and their policy of pre-shipping replacements when a unit has failed."
"It increases security posture and is helpful for firewall reporting, intrusion protection, web filtering, and SD-WAN implementation."
"FortiGate Secure SD-WAN includes best-of-breed next-generation firewall (NGFW) security, SD-WAN, advanced routing, and WAN optimization capabilities, delivering a security-driven networking WAN edge transformation in a unified offering."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a security device. It can optimize security on the networks of a company. It actually protects the company from attacks from outside. With FortiGate, you can categorize the users. You can create a group of users that can access all of the websites for their work. You can limit other users' access."
"Fortinet FortiGate is user-friendly and affordable."
"We can detect any attack of viruses or malware at the first point of contact."
"We use it as a firewall at our head office and branches."
"The scalability is fine."
"The solution's stability is very good."
"The Juniper SRX series is easy to use."
"The security features and the model collection are the most valuable."
"From a protection perspective, it provides a network perimeter security function for our company."
"It's a reliable firewall and very stable, for both the hardware and applications it is stable."
"We mostly use the Layer 4 firewall functions: Access rules, NAT, and site-to-site IPsec VPN."
"In the next release, maybe the documentation on how to use this solution could be improved."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"One of the features that I would like to have is to do with endpoint production, it should be integrated. For example, the firewall gets notified of any kind of forensic event that needs to be done, such as if there is a ransomware attack and how it originated, all those records have to be available from the firewall, which is not."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the protection, it did not prevent us from being attacked. Additionally, Fortinet FortiGate could provide more features for WAF devices. I should not have to purchase two solutions, it would be a benefit to combine these features into one solution."
"My only complaint about FortiGate is a lack of QinQ VLAN tunneling. I haven't found this feature in any Fortinet product. You can do this on all Cisco routers, including the smaller models. However, QinQ isn't available on the biggest, most expensive Fortinet units. They still don't have that. I think now we're on software version 6.0, and they still haven't found a solution for QinQ. It isn't a dealbreaker, but that's my main complaint."
"At first glance, the interface for the device is very confusing."
"It would be a benefit if Fortinet would release a one-stop solution that is better integrated with other products and an automated emergency response system."
"The sniffing packets or packet captures, can be simplified and improved because it's a little confusing."
"There are a lot of features that customers do not know about and I think that better documentation would help when it comes to learning how to use the product."
"Juniper SRX could improve by adding an IPX feature."
"The GUI needs to be easier to handle."
"I would like to have a better web UI for administration. Juniper could simplify the web UI and make it more compatible with mobile devices."
"In the future, I would like to see the UI more responsive"
"Juniper SRX's UI is very bad."
"When I was going to upgrade the OS, the solution didn't accept certain USB devices."
"There is room for improvement in scalability and performance. It's scalable and reliable, but when using next-generation firewall features, the performance decreases significantly for Juniper SRX."
Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Juniper SRX Series Firewall is ranked 18th in Firewalls with 86 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Juniper SRX Series Firewall is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Juniper SRX Series Firewall writes "Highly scalable, user-friendly UI, and easy to maintain". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and Sangfor NGAF, whereas Juniper SRX Series Firewall is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Netgate pfSense, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls and Check Point NGFW. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Juniper SRX Series Firewall report.
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Hello Fahrorozi,
From my point of view, I would rather choose SRX4200 solution over FortiGate1800.
Why?
1. SRX4200 is a compact 1U device equipped with ports you actually need for full firewall usage and not for datasheet specifications.
2. Juniper Networks started as a Network company so alongside with full NGFW functions of the SRX firewall you are also getting full L3 routing functionalities same ones that are working on Juniper routers with complete granular configuration.
3. All products from Juniper Networks are equipped with their JunOS Operating System which is built on FreeBSD with data and control plane separation. Main configuration and really fast troubleshooting power are provided with structured CLI where you can do everything you can imagine even get into FreeBDS for troubleshooting if needed. Also, a tool like MTR (My Traceroute) for troubleshooting is available. JunOS configuration is the same for every Juniper Networks device so when you will get used to it you can configure every platform the same way (except for stateful firewall functions dedicated only to the SRX platform).
4. Web management is also included on a device that simplifies day-to-day configuration. Web management historically was not quite great, but starting JunOS 21.x it was really improved and provided all you need for device configuration and troubleshooting, also Juniper is still working on quality-of-life improvements.
5. SSL VPN / Client VPN is fully integrated with Juniper SRX and also with a client application.
6. Regarding performance, FortiGate was and maybe is still not providing full packet sanity checks (IP protocol, SEQ number, etc.) in the default configuration. When you enable these features, FortiGate loses some performance because HW acceleration is not possible with these features.
7. Also when you are using NFS with source NAT then you will find a useful feature where you can set to NAT traffic with port number <1024.
8. Regarding C&C, antimalware, IPS, and centralized management it's all similar to all other vendors.
9. Juniper SRX also provides VRF-light routing table separation, and also Full separation with Logical systems that have separate processes for each LSYS. You can also allocate CPU resources for each LSYS.
10. Regarding HA Clustering you can use an active/active data plane (data traversing -> one node in a cluster is entrance and destination is on another node) in a special use case. You can also have free hands regarding failovers using separate interfaces/interfaces groups based on BFD, interface status, and IP reachability. You can also deploy a full L3 cluster.
This is only a subjective short summary, always depends on other factors (interfaces, budget, preferences, etc.). I would suggest you find the nearest partner (Forti or Juniper) to you, schedule a PoC and receive the solution you would prefer.
Instead of FortiGate, I would definitely choose SRX.
A different case is the native L7 firewall when I want to check all applications, then I would maybe consider Palo Alto vs SRX in some cases.
Hi Fahrorozi,
If I have to choose between these two, I will choose FG 1800.
Reasons:
1. More flexible ports to use from 1G to 40G
2. Includes SSL VPN / client VPN for users
3. Has better web management than SRX
4. From the datasheet, some of the throughputs are also larger (IPv4 FW throughput, Max Session, Max Policies, etc).
But you need to know what you need for your company.
- Maybe you only need a 10G interface instead of a 1G
- Maybe you don't need the SSL VPN / Client VPN
- You also don't need a large throughput.
Hope this helps.