[j-nsp] Junos feature licensing?

[Stacy W. Smith]

I also won't try to defend the licensing model, but your description  
of J-series licensing behavior is incorrect. Comments in-line...

On Jul 20, 2005, at 4:48 PM, Lewis, Charles wrote:
> What this means - among other things - is that if I replace a  
> router in
> the field I turn the router on, it boots and continues to do what it
> needs to do regardless of whether I've turned on netflow, etc.  On a
> J-series box it means that I get a new router and then get the
> appropriate license codes from JTAC to hopefully get the features I  
> need
> working.

As Doug said, it's a soft licensing model. All features and ports  
will work without a license. If you're using unlicensed  features or  
ports syslog messages will be generated and nag messages will be  
displayed on commit, but the features and ports will work.

> What is *really* horrid is that I can't freely swap interfaces
> between the modular chassis.  What if I want to take a 2-port FE  
> out of
> one J6300 and put it in another?

The license is tied to the chassis. Replacing a 2-port FE PIM with a  
different 2-port FE PIM in the same chassis will "just work". If you  
want to move a port or feature license from one chassis to another,  
as described, you can open a JTAC case to have the license unbound  
from the old chassis and bound to the new one. Again, it will work in  
the new chassis in the mean time.

> If I don't have appropriate licenses
> I'm out of luck.  It was at best ill-conceived  selling a J2300  
> with two
> T1 interfaces of which only one is working.

Again, both are working. One is licensed by default.

> It also means that I have to keep track of license keys - sometimes as
> many as three or four per router.

You can have one license key file per feature/port that's licensed,  
but you can also have multiple software features and port licenses  
included in one license key file.

> If Juniper wants to sell me hundreds
> of routers asking me to track on hundreds and hundreds of keys
> associated to serial numbers is a huge issue.

I believe you can download a lost key file from the Juniper support  
web site if you have the router's serial number.

> If I need to turn up a
> new feature (say deploying route reflection on a couple of boxes) I
> can't simply turn it on and buy the license (a la Cisco) but instead I
> have to wait for a full procurement process to take place to buy  
> license
> keys.  Not good.

You're correct, that would not be good. Fortunately, it's not true.

--Stacy