Hi everyone! 👋 I'm pretty new to the networking side of things—my background is in data analytics and BI tools like Looker/Tableau—but I've been tasked with helping my local school district evaluate a firewall upgrade. Our current one is... vintage, and IT is overwhelmed.
We're a 200-user district (faculty, staff, and students on-site). We need something **rock-solid reliable** above all else. If the filter goes down, teachers can't plan lessons, and the admin office grinds to a halt.
I've been reading about Juniper SRX series, and they seem highly recommended. But I have some very beginner questions:
* For our size, which SRX model (like 300, 340, 345) would be the right starting point? We don't need the absolute fastest, but we do need consistent uptime and good filtering.
* How is the day-to-day management? Our small IT team is skilled but stretched thin. Is the Junos OS something we can learn without a huge training burden?
* I keep hearing about "Session Steering" and "AppID" on these. In practical terms, how do those help in a school environment? Beyond just blocking sites, can they help manage bandwidth for things like video lessons?
I'd love any real-world experiences:
* What's been your uptime like?
* Any surprises with licensing or ongoing costs?
* For those who came from other brands (like Cisco ASA, Fortinet), what was the biggest adjustment?
Really appreciate any guidance! I'm used to building data pipelines and dashboards, so I'm trying to translate that need for clean, reliable flow to the network layer. A detailed walkthrough of what we should prioritize would be amazing.