How to Establish a Console Connection to a Juniper SRX with an AirConsole

Juniper Networks is a leading provider of networking equipment and solutions for businesses of all sizes. One of their most popular products is the Juniper SRX series of security gateways, which provide advanced threat protection, network segmentation, and secure connectivity for enterprise networks.

If you need to establish a console connection to a Juniper SRX device, you can use the AirConsole device to connect to the console port. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through the steps to connect your macos laptop to the SRX console using AirConsole via Bluetooth.

Before we get started, there are a few things you’ll need:

• A Juniper SRX device (We are using the SRX300 in this example)
• An AirConsole device (We are using the AirConsole XL 2.0 in this example)
• A macos computer with Bluetooth connectivity (We are using a MacBook Pro M1 Pro in this example)

The first step in establishing a console connection to your Juniper SRX device is to pair the AirConsole device with your macos laptop via Bluetooth. Here’s how to do it:

1. Turn on your AirConsole device and make sure it is in pairing mode. You can do this by pressing and holding the power button until the LED indicator starts flashing.
2. On your macos laptop, go to the Bluetooth menu in the top right corner of the screen and select “Turn Bluetooth On” if it’s not already enabled.
3. Click on “Set up Bluetooth Device” and select “AirConsole” from the list of available devices.
4. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the pairing process. Make sure that you start from a clean Bluetooth connection to avoid any issues during the pairing process.

Once you have successfully paired the AirConsole to your macos laptop, you can use the screen command to open up a terminal connection to the console TTY of the SRX. How do you do it?

First, open up the Terminal app on your macos laptop. (I like to use iTerm on my end)

Secondly, Type the following command to find out what it the name of your AirConsole TTY:

The result should include the TTY created by connecting the AirConsole to your computer. In my case, the name of that TTY was:

Then, type the following command and press Enter:

Replace /dev/tty.AirConsole-EE with the name of your AirConsole device, and 9600 with the baud rate of your SRX console.

Finally, you should now be connected to the console TTY of your Juniper SRX device. You can use this terminal connection to configure and manage your SRX device.In my case, the connection appeared as follows:

If you want to close the screen session without terminating it, you need to detach from the session. Here’s how to do it:

1. Press the following key combination:

This will detach you from the screen session and return you to your regular terminal shell without terminating the screen session.

2. If you want to list all current screen sessions, use the following command:

3. If you want to reattach to the detached screen session later, use the following command:

Replace <session_id> with the ID of the screen session you want to reattach to. If there is only one detached session, you can reattach to it without specifying the session ID.

4. If you want to close a detached screen session, use the following command:

Replace <session_id> with the ID of the screen session you want to close.

That’s it! With these simple steps, you can establish a console connection between your macos laptop and a Juniper SRX device using AirConsole via Bluetooth. Remember to be careful when terminating screen sessions to avoid unintended data loss or disruptions to running applications.

If you have any issues with the pairing process or connecting to the SRX console, feel free to leave a comment below this post.