[j-nsp] Juniper MX80 IRB

[magno]

Hi Chuck,

  I agree with you about the way Juniper handled this, it was simply
painful. My advice is to check with your SE which features are actually
supported or not. By the way, in the JunOS 10.1 Release notes (10.1 is the
first release supporting new TRIO MPCs) you can read "*Layer 2 VPLS, IRB,
and mesh group feature parity (MX Series routers with Trio MPC/MIC
interfaces)*—Support for Layer 2 feature parity with JUNOS Release  9.1 on
MX Series routers that include Trio Modular Port Concentrators (MPCs) and
Modular Interface Cards (MICs).". I agree this is not the best way to
advertise what is supported and what is not... Moreover this statement
should be included in all the release notes, and while all the features are
ported release after release, the release note should clearly advertising
what has been ported from old DPCs to new MPCs.

 Of course JUNOS should warn you it's not supported, I fully agree with you,
and, overall in my opinion, the unsupported commands should be hidden in the
CLI.

 About why we have to jump 2 years back in time, you must consider that the
new MPCs have a completely new PFE, and this PFE is way way better than the
old but it's also very different, so Juniper has to rewrite a lot of
forwarding plane ucode to port all the features MX has been accumulating
since 2006 to the new TRIO chipset. I was told there is an internal feature
parity catch up program which spans throughout JUNOS releases from 10.1 to
11.4 (new numbering convention) and again you should check in with your SE
to have more details.

 I hope this could clarify a bit more the scenario, regards.

   Massimo.

On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 4:31 PM, Chuck Anderson <cra at wpi.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 27, 2010 at 03:46:41PM +0200, magno wrote:
> > Today Trio only supports the old style config. in the near future, the
> > new style config will be supported as well.
>
> I have several problems with the way Juniper handled this:
>
> 1. The configuration commits without any warnings or errors.  There is
> no indication that what you have configured is unsupported.  No logs,
> no alarms, no nothing.
>
> 2. I've seen MPCs crash/go into a reboot loop when configuring them
> the new VLAN Bundle way.  (For the OP: do your MPC's go into a reboot
> loop, alternately showing offline/online under show chassis fpc
> pic-status?)  They should gracefully fail to work when doing something
> unsupported and make loud noises when you do.
>
> 3. Documentation is severely lacking.  In the 10.2 Release Notes, no
> where does it say "today Trio only supports JUNOS 9.2 features"
> (except when talking about the MX80 specifically, and some other
> specific features--nothing about the other Trio cards or about
> bridging/VLAN Bundles specifically).  I've only heard that from
> statements made by my Juniper reps.  Even then, you have to really dig
> deep in the Network Interfaces guide and Layer 2 Configuration Guide
> to find references to "9.5+ required" on VLAN Bundles and other
> configuration statements and features.  The 10.x Release Notes really
> ought to say "In this release, Trio only supports JUNOS 9.2 features
> and configurations on the following cards and platforms" and then list
> out *exactly* which hardware and configuration statements this applies
> to.  The rest of the configuration guides ought to have warnings
> sprinkled throughout saying "Not supported on Trio!" with pointers to
> the old way that works on Trio.  These warnings should stay in the
> documentation and Release Notes until the limitations no longer apply.
>
> The current situation is a horrible landmine for customers wishing to
> migrate/upgrade from DPC to Trio, as well as brand new customers like
> myself who haven't read the 9.2 documentation and earlier Release
> Notes.  Why should I have to go back 7 releases worth of documentation
> to configure my brand new hardware that is only supported at all under
> 10.0/10.1 and only supported under 10.2 when mixed with DPC cards?
>
> Finally, JTAC/ATAC can't even figure out the above!!!  I have a case
> open and they *still* haven't come to the solution because they
> haven't realized that "Today Trio only supports the old style config"
> and what that really means.
>