[c-nsp] ASR920 Port Licensing

[Shawn L]

Another member just sent a question about smart licensing, and it got me
thinking that I should post my current issue here and see if anyone has
seen this before, or if I'm crazy (or Cisco is).

Last summer I purchased 6 ASR920-12SZ-D routers/switches.  These are the
ones with 12 10-gig ports.  Despite some initial weirdness, port issues,
etc. they've actually worked rather well for us.  Last week, one of them
started randomly dropping offline.  After investigation, Cisco replaced
it.  Here's where the fun starts.

It almost looks like Cisco changed the licensing model for these between
when we purchased them and when we received our RMA.  Is that possible?

All of our (I'll call them old) routers had the default port licenses and
an Advanced Metro license.  All 12 ports are usable at 1 gig, and 4 will
operate at 10 gig.  I have 5 that are running quite happily like this at
remote pops right now.

On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational.  The other 6
are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers match,
so their job is done.

I don't think I'm crazy (but if you are, would you know) -- I have the doc
from cisco when we originally purchased the routers showing what license
level did what, though interestingly it's no longer on Cisco's website.
 The new version of said docs seem to indicate that Cisco is correct and
the default license gives you 6 ports.  Which means I need to purchase an
additional license to make my new router behave like the one I RMA-ed.

This is kind of a long story to ask the question but, does anyone know if
the licensing changed somehow?   And if it did, what does that mean for the
routers we've already deployed?

thanks

Shawn