[j-nsp] Re: J-Series

[Richard A Steenbergen]

On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 12:23:57AM -0700, joe mcguckin wrote:
> Does the J-Series switch packets in hardware?

The story I've heard is "software emulation of the IP2", i.e. they wrote 
some new tight code for packet forwarding and filtering which doesn't 
change the way the current software interacts with things, rather than 
hacking changes on the FreeBSD routing code of the RE and opening up a 
new can of worms in support issues.

Also, the way it was described to me was that the performance numbers 
stated are "worst case guaranteed performance, with much software 
processing of firewall filters etc". I don't believe Juniper is disclosing 
the specs of the processors yet, but certainly even a low end modern Intel 
CPU is more than capable of doing many hundreds of Mbps of traffic on an 
Olive without any thought to optimization. Bottom line is that Juniper 
wanted to make a 2600/3600 clone to get into the lucrative T1/T3 CPE 
market without cutting into their M5/M7i market, so I'd bet that even if 
the box was capable of forwarding more it is crippled in some way to 
prevent it from become a "7206vxr class" box.

But this is all rumor, so someone feel free to correct it if this is 
wrong. :)

> Also, what's this verbige on the data sheet about licenses for second
> ethernet ports and second serial ports?
> 
> Personally, I prefer not to buy products where I have to purchase additional
> licenses to enable existing hardware. I feel that advertising a product as
> having 2 Ethernet interfaces, then forcing me to purchase a license to use
> the second interface is deceptive advertising.
> 
> Juniper must have hired a bunch of x-cisco marketing idiots.

This seems to be a common direction for Juniper:

S-ACCT  	J-Flow accounting license on Adaptive Services PIC
S-CRTP		License to use CRTP feature in ASP
S-LNS		L2TP LNS license for M7i Adaptive Services PIC or Integrated Adaptive Services Module
S-NAT-FW-MULTI 	NAT/FW license on Adaptive Services  PIC: Multi-instance
S-NAT-FW-SINGLE NAT/FW license on Adaptive Services  PIC: Single-instance
S-ES		Security Services license (runs on Adaptive Services PIC)
S-MONITOR 	Flow Monitoring License for Monitoring Services II PIC
S-COLLECTOR	Flow Collector License for Monitoring Services II PIC

All very expensive of course. :)

AFAIK J series is still vaporware. I've heard from some people that it is 
supposed to start shipping in late October to coincide w/JunOS 7.0, and 
from others that it won't actually see the light of day for quite a bit 
longer. I'm sure one of them is right. :)

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)