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Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs Juniper Session Smart Router comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Forcepoint Next Generation ...
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (25th), WAN Edge (11th)
Juniper Session Smart Router
Ranking in Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Routers (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions category, the mindshare of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is 2.4%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper Session Smart Router is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Juniper Session Smart Router2.1%
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall2.4%
Other95.5%
Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions
 

Featured Reviews

Ajit Pratap Kundan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Solution Consulting at Accops Systems Pvt Ltd
Unified security management has improved traffic control and simplified remote workforce access
Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall does help in vulnerability identification and response by providing a single unified console through which I am able to monitor and manage infrastructure. The URL filtering capability of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall helps in blocking malicious sites. We have to take care of both known threats and unknown threats. The firewall takes care of known threats, and we protect ourselves from unknown threats such as malicious code and malware that we cannot create firewall rules for. With these routing capabilities and policies, only whitelisted things get processed or passed. The biggest advantages of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall, especially as a partner, service provider, and integrator, are that it is very easy to integrate these APIs with our solution, and most of the features I am getting in the clientless mode. Even with the client mode, it is easy to integrate with our client, allowing the customer to get a single client to address all the features of the firewall as well as the GTNA perspective. The flexibility of deployment, especially for the government and defense sectors, is that they want an on-premises solution, while the rest of the PSUs or enterprise segment are comfortable with the cloud offering, which is the SaaS offering and the way to go in the future.
Esther Sultaana - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Consultant Storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Secure healthcare connectivity has protected patient data and supports reliable telemedicine
Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware. Now you have IoT vulnerabilities, so something like advanced malware detection or threat analysis would help. This is something I worked with around 2016 to 2017. Perhaps they have added those features, but I know they didn't have it then. Some security profiles for specific medical devices would be helpful. Sandboxing would be good. Dedicated telemedicine routing profiles would be beneficial because we have a lot of telemedicine going on. Real-time sessions for clinicians may need pre-built templates for EHR and EMR. I think those would be good if they're not already there. I don't know what the latest router has, but I know they didn't have those features then. There can always be improvements because technology is constantly advancing. It is a very solid router, and that is one of many industries that could utilize it. Healthcare is one such industry, and if it works for healthcare, then that is a major plus for that router.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the most valuable features is having the ability to cluster multiple firewalls even if they are different versions."
"I don't have anything bad to say about the product. I absolutely love it."
"The technical support for Forcepoint is fine, they are polite and available twenty-four hours and usually resolve problems the same day."
"I have found that Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is easy to use, highly secure, and the main VPN tunnel is created automatically which is a benefit."
"Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall's IPS feature has four operational modes, including IPS, Layer 2 and Layer 3 Firewalls, and the IPS mode offers many controls, profiles, and signatures for inspecting traffic while allowing for applying firewall rules followed by IPS engine inspection so that many decisions including blocking and controlling traffic actions are possible."
"McAfee NSP helps the organization by filtering most of the active inbound attacks that would otherwise compromise the users and servers."
"I found the initial setup process to be very simple and straightforward."
"Forcepoint is a very expensive solution but it is also very secure."
"For telecom companies, I think zero-trust segmentation is the way to go because if you allow anything that you do not understand, then it becomes a problem."
"The best feature is the easiest way to deploy configuration and also back up them, and also to roll back quickly if there's an incident."
"As compared to the other major vendors in the SD-WAN market, such as VeloCloud, Cisco, and others, the tunnel-free and secure vector routing technology is its major USP, which gives plenty of room to discuss with the customer why IPSec from 1998 is a bit outdated."
"They provided us with a customized product according to our requirements."
"Juniper Session Smart Router has positively impacted my organization by achieving a 30% to 40% reduction in WAN cost, which means less reliance on MPLS, with a 40% faster failover with near-zero user impact during link issues, and 20% to 30% less time spent on troubleshooting, along with fewer outages due to dynamic path selection, which facilitates fast branch deployment."
"The solution is especially Session's smart, application-aware, AI-based."
"Overall, it is very solid."
"The real-time analytics and visibility features are excellent, and its special troubleshooting tool is very strong."
 

Cons

"The interface is complicated. It's difficult to locate all the necessary menus and functions."
"I would like to see more sizing in the next release, and the roadmap should be clear."
"The solution needs to build upon its network functionality. It needs to be a bit smarter."
"Forcepoint would be improved if there were more training available."
"It is really hard to work with their customer support. For example, unlike Fortinet where you can escalate an issue and quickly get responses from the development team, Forcepoint's process seems slow and challenging."
"A VPN client feature is missing in our region, which we hope Forcepoint will address in future updates."
"The solution needs to add an antivirus profile and anti-spyware profile, not just policies and VPN."
"When it comes to a complex deployment, the rules, firewall features, SD-WAN core features, and auto-scaling can cause the device to be not quite stable."
"A key area for improvement in Juniper Session Smart Router is its security stack, which is not as robust as Fortinet."
"Juniper Session Smart Router could be better in terms of software performance."
"My overall rating for Juniper Session Smart Router as a product is that earlier it was good, but currently, the replacement of the devices is very difficult, and the staff is also a challenge."
"Juniper Session Smart Router could improve its documentation to become more competitive. It has very little documentation, and you have to rely mainly so much on support to do something, which I feel should not be that way."
"The UI of the SSR conductor is the main part where improvements can be done. Today, for every configuration step, you have to do a series of clicks. What we are missing there are wizards. For example, I have two applications, and I want one application to be prioritized against the other. In such a case, a wizard for assigning policies to a service without configuring each step by hand would be very helpful. There should be an overhaul of the GUI of the conductor. The functionality they have got in the Mist portal should be baked into the conductor itself. It would be really great, but as we all know, that won't happen."
"Everything can be improved. It could improve its security stack with malware detection, particularly in healthcare because of ransomware."
"I found some weaknesses on their hardware. They are sometimes breaking very often."
"One area for improvement that I have observed is related to the VPN, where I frequently notice VPN flaps or disconnections between Juniper Session Smart Router and the SD-WAN hub device in the data center, which should be addressed to prevent users from experiencing any downtime."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have just a subscription for the cloud, and this license is great. The license is so good."
"There is a license required to use this solution and we can purchase it for one, two, three, or five years."
"Next Generation Firewall is moderately priced."
"The pricing of the solution is normally competitive with other products."
"Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is reasonable, it is priced the same as other firewalls."
"There is a need to make payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product is not expensive."
"I believe the licensing fee is for one year, three years, and five years, or something like that. If you wants to increase the support level from a simpler level to platinum, I think that there's a cost. There are differences between every kind of support, but I don't know the numbers."
"It requires a yearly subscription."
"We are currently renegotiating the offer for the licenses and the license bundle model. The license for an ISP has to be different from the license for an end customer. This is something we are currently renegotiating with Juniper, but, of course, the pricing for the licensing is always an issue when you want to get more customers."
"It is a simple bandwidth-based license and the orchestration comes bundled with the solution by default."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
In terms of price, I would say Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is not expensive. It is very much comparable to other vendors, and pricing is not a problem, especially for the Asian market, with...
What needs improvement with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The negative side of Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall is that the ZTNA part is missing. For that, we have to integrate a third-party component with Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall to complet...
What is your primary use case for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall?
The major use cases for Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall are in government turnkey projects where we require a lot of traffic coming from the public domain. That is why we are putting these fire...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper Session Smart Router?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Juniper Session Smart Router is that pricing is higher compared to other vendors. The main feature we see is WAN performance, which is the ...
What needs improvement with Juniper Session Smart Router?
I think the current Juniper focuses more on switching rather than routing, which is a weak point in the product. Currently, I and my customers have not utilized the Session Awareness feature of Jun...
What is your primary use case for Juniper Session Smart Router?
I have been running my own company and working with Juniper Session Smart Router for almost 10 to 12 years because Larsen & Toubro is my client who will use Juniper devices for switching and fi...
 

Also Known As

Forcepoint NGFW, Stonesoft Next Generation Firewall, McAfee Network Security Platform, Intel Security Network Security Platform
128T Networking Platform, 128 Technology SD-WAN, Juniper SSR Series
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR)
Revation Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs. Juniper Session Smart Router and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.