[c-nsp] ASR920 Port Licensing

[joe mcguckin]

I refuse to buy in to ’Smart Licensing’ and ‘Port Licensing’. So far, we have been able to avoid buying 
from vendors who practice such anti-customer policies.

I refuse to buy products with licensing schemes that require the equipment to ‘phone home’ or where a vendor 
through an error could remotely disable feature sets or the unit itself. (License keys, as implemented prior to IOS V15 are tolerable)
I’m willing to purchase equipment from a vendor that is not as spiffy as J or C as long as it has an acceptable licensing policy and functionally works.
That means we don’t get the nifty command language of Juniper with commit/rollback…

I also refuse to purchase equipment that requires an ‘app’ or GUI program to configure. I demand a 9 pin serial connector (or a Cisco pinout RJ45) and a 
CLI.

I think customers ought to stick to their guns and refuse to buy equipment from vendors that try to push this crap.

Joe


Joe McGuckin
ViaNet Communications

joe at via.net
650-207-0372 cell
650-213-1302 office
650-969-2124 fax



> On Feb 24, 2021, at 3:42 AM, Shawn L <shawn at rmrf.us> wrote:
> 
> 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
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