Best way to prolong the life of a Juniper router

Question

Some of the employees of our company telecommute via a Juniper SSG5 VPN FW in their home. The company no longer supports this router, but they are not proactively forcing users off. However, there is not another telecommuting option. The employees obviously want to preserve the life of this router for as long as they can. Short of saying prayers over it each nite, is there anything else they can do to keep it working? The company tells them to keep it clean, ventilated and not to power cycle it often. What else can they do to keep this Juniper router working as long as possible?

Answer 1

Well it's going to be roughly the same concepts as any device, take a look at the datasheet - vendors do pretty extensive testing into how long things would last, and their optimal operating environment. You might want to ask your telecom guys if you still have support through Juniper on the device, just because your company doesn't directly support it, doesn't mean they can't do you a favor and call Juniper should something catastrophic happen.

Here's the SSG5 datasheet - http://www.juniper.net/assets/us/en/local/pdf/datasheets/1000176-en.pdf

1. Operating temperature 32° to 104° F (0° to 40° C)
2. Humidity 10% to 90% noncondensing

Other than that, you obviously do want to keep it well ventilated like you mentioned, which is pretty easy as its such a small device, just don't close it in a cabinet forever. Make sure if you are wiping it down for dust, you're just doing it with a cloth and not something like Pledge.

And to comment on the note of powering it off every night, that's not going to help it last any longer really, your telecom guys are right. These things are designed with the intention that they can run for years.