[j-nsp] MX Design

[Frank Sweetser]

For what it's worth, we've been harassing pretty much everyone we talk to with 
a juniper.net email address about SPB.  I suspect the biggest limitation is 
that nowhere in any EX or MX docs is there mention of support for 802.1ah 
mac-in-mac, which is pretty necessary for SPB.  That said, the one time we got 
an answer we were told that Juniper was going to take a "wait and see" 
approach, so there's at least a chance that if enough customers make enough 
noise, they might start seriously working on it.

I, for one, have a dream where spanning tree, in all its incarnations, is 
reduced to little more than a scary story told by crusty old admins to interns 
and PFYs by the light of storage array lights.  "Hey Mr. NetAdmin, tell us the 
story of CareGroup again!"

Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu    |  For every problem, there is a solution that
Manager of Network Operations   |  is simple, elegant, and wrong.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute |           - HL Mencken

On 9/17/2012 5:34 PM, Clarke Morledge wrote:
> Johan,
>
> Regarding your question about whether or not to run MSTP up to a pair of MX
> distribution routers from downstream EX's, I wrestled with this for awhile
> several years ago.  I had a devil of a time trying to get Link Aggregation
> (LAG) to work even between two MX routers reliably without introducing other
> issues in the pre-10.4 days, so I gave up on it.
>
> The idea of Multi-Chassis LAG active/active does sound inviting, but I guess I
> am a bit shy still about LAG in general introducing weirdness and bugs.
>
> I really would like to see Juniper embrace IEEE802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging
> or the IETF RBridges, but with the current emphasis on QFabric I am not
> holding my breadth.   At this point, waiting for  BGP MPLS Based MAC VPN is a
> more realistic down-the-road type of thing from Juniper.
>
> In the meantime, we opted to bringing MSTP up into the MX routers and make one
> of MX routers the root and the other a backup root.  We lose use of one of the
> links, but at least it has been very stable over the past few years, and I
> stay away from proprietary solutions.
>
> Clarke Morledge
> College of William and Mary
> Information Technology - Network Engineering
> Jones Hall (Room 18)
> Williamsburg VA 23187
>
> _______________________________________________
> juniper-nsp mailing list juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp