I recently was handed a Juniper SSG 5 Wireless unit for a hardware evaluation. Ha ha ha, you want to give me hardware? Don't you know I have screwdrivers...? But I'm rambling... Anyway, this is a sweet little unit except for one little gotcha, the fan is awfully noisy.
Popping open the case shows the two antenna leads coming off the wireless daughter board with two heat sinks. The fan starts up when the unit gets warm inside, but I was surprised because it's really noisy and the temperature threshold is set so low it almost never goes off. Admittedly this device is typically used in small offices, and probably stuck in a closet somewhere, but if you used it in a home office you'd notice that noise quickly.
The Juniper OS is super easy to set up, I turned it into a WPA-PSK AP in about 2 minutes and was surfing the web from a laptop shortly after that.
Continue reading "The insides of a Juniper SSG5 Wireless" »