[j-nsp] M5/M10/M20 gear questions

[Jonas Frey]

Charles,

yes, the PICs (PE, P, PB) are all the same, the difference is just the
faceplate. Using PE- PICs in M20 upwards works fine. Using P- PICs in
M5/7/10i is a bit difficult. Some folks tend to add some type of
removable gluesticks to the faceplate so they can pull them out more
easily.

The difference of the GE PICs (basically fixed optics vs. removable/sfp
optics) is that the newer PICs have some more features like mac rewrite,
vlan CCC (while the fixed optics -B versions also do this) and flexible
ethernet encapsulation. Most of the time you dont need these features
untill you run MPLS.

Using just 1 GE interface and doing everything via VLANs on a switch
works fine, its a cheap and good way to get started. 

There have been some enhancements to the ASICs but thats mostly in the
upperscale units like M320/T320 and above. The m5/7/10i gear is almost
the same. You will very likely not notice any difference in a normal
deployment scenario.

I personally recommend removing the harddrive of the RE and installing a
solid state disk. All juniper RE's upto date use harddisks and flash.
Replacing the harddisk with a SSD is the best way to make sure you wont
run into problems when utilizing used hardware. I have documentated this
process on the cluepon pages.

Software contracts are not that cheap. First you will likely need to get
your hardware recertified. That means someone from J will visit your
site and check the unit. This usually costs around 2k-5k depending on
config. The yearly cost for the service contract depends on response
times/features etc. This can be anything starting from 1k upwards. You
will need to talk to juniper to get exact figures.

Regards,
Jonas


On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 06:13, Charles Sprickman wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I am trying to gather some more info on the downside of the older/used 
> gear.  On paper, it looks like anything from an M5 up would be more than 
> capable of meeting our needs for the next few years.
> 
> After looking at the cluepon site and digging around the archives here, I 
> still have some questions...
> 
> It looks like with the exception of the ejector handle, the PICs are 
> basically the same between the M5/10/20/7i.  If that's true, that's great 
> news.
> 
> Next up is the PICs themselves.  It looks like there are several revisions 
> of ATM PICs and GigE PICs.  For example, I see references to "ATM2", which 
> appears to be a hardware differentiation, and I think that for DSL 
> aggregation, I probably want ATM2.  On the GigE PICs, what is the main 
> difference between the older and newer versions?  I will likely cheap out 
> and go with just 2 or 3 of them and for the less bandwidth-intensive stuff 
> stick one of them in a GigE switch and do the "router on a stick" config 
> with VLANs.  Any thoughts on this?
> 
> As for the hardware, the nifty thing about these routers is that all the 
> hard work of pushing packets around is done on the ASICs.  That's good and 
> bad I assume since newer gear has newer ASICs.  What are the main features 
> that a current generation router has that an older one would not due to 
> limitations in the older ASICs?
> 
> Since the routing engine is basically a PC running a modded FreeBSD 
> distro, what's the story with moving parts there?  I'm having a hard time 
> tracking down which models have flash for the RE and which use a hard 
> drive.  I assume if there's a drive, it would be a wise investment to grab 
> a new drive...
> 
> And again, I'm still looking for any ballpark prices on software contracts 
> for these older models.  Just a very rough annual cost would really help.
> 
> Lastly, are there any very good books covering the hardware peculiarities 
> and JunOS in general anyone would like to recommend?
> 
> I think that covers it for now.
> 
> Thanks again for all your help...
> 
> Charles
> 
> ___
> Charles Sprickman
> NetEng/SysAdmin
> Bway.net - New York's Best Internet - www.bway.net
> spork at bway.net - 212.655.9344
> 
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