[c-nsp] Cisco ASR vs Juniper

[Aaron Gould]

A few things come to mind...

I enjoy my Cisco ASR9000 network running for ~5 years now... it's solid.  

I also like what I've seen recently in the Juniper ACX5048 (48/72 - 10 gig
ports, or (6) 40 gig ports), which replaced lots of my older Cisco ME3600
boxes (only two 10 gig ports).  I run MPLS L3VPN for my ISP customers.
Interestingly Juniper will automatically redistribute static routes and
connected networks into MPLS L3VPN.  Cisco requires a redistribute command.
Cisco is able to combine multiple vlan tags from same physical port into the
same bridge-domain.... I haven't found a way to accomplish this in Juniper
ACX5048, but I understand this is doable in Juniper MX platform.

I'm also liking what I'm seeing with my dual node CGNat boundary of Juniper
MX104's.  During testing, the MS-MIC-16G CGNat capability of Juniper seemed
nicer than the VSM-500 ASR9000 option.  There was a /27 public scope
limitation on Cisco.  Not so on Juniper....you can add public-pool /32's if
you so desire.  Also, changing public pool crashed Cisco.  Also, showing nat
translations and viewing the outside public addresses of internet hosts
wasn't nice in IOS XR.... you had to hunt and ask for specifics.... Junos
shows it easily.

In planning/discussing upgrading our existing ASR9000 ring to 100 gig, we
found that we needed to upgrade to higher CPU... I think RSP440.  But I
recall that a short life on the RSP440 meant that we were being guided to go
with the RSP880... but I think the RSP880 would cause all my trident
linecards to no longer be useable.  So we figured with that much impact me
might as well look at other vendor options too.  With that said, I'm
planning a (5) node 100 gig "super"core and have been considering both the
Cisco ASR9908 and Juniper MX960.  They both seem like solid options.

I've learned/tested a Juniper feature which is, the nicely contained logical
systems (lsys) feature of turning up pretty isolated and separate router
functions.  I understand this capability is only available on Cisco GSR/CRS
sized platforms but Juniper has it on many of its boxes....testing it on
MX104 now.

- Aaron