[j-nsp] EX Switch Question

[Ben Dale]

>> Epic fail on Juniper's part to think that networks will 
>> still go for "too big" boxes for "small box" deployments. 
>> The ERBU head promised that they were looking at a 1U MX80 
>> box that would rival the Cisco and Brocade options in the 
>> access, but I think they thought coming up with the MX5, 
>> MX10 and MX40 were far better ideas :-\.
> It's really interesting, that you say 2RU is too much for MX80. I never
> heard such a claim from a customer. At least, it's never been a serious
> problem. Much more often they ask whether it fits into a 60 cm deep rack
> and how much power it eats. I think, the lack of this requirement comes
> from completely different economics of real estate, access networks
> structure and all. In many countries (where telecom markets are
> emerging) access network is often an interconnection of places like
> this: http://nag.ru/upload/images/20519/1877875733.jpeg In a hell I'd
> put there something closely priced to MX5, be it 1 or 2 RU height :) So
> people often come up using something extremely cheap in the PoPs (don't
> even think "MPLS") and aggregate them in a location, where 1 or 2 RU
> doesn't make much difference.

I couldn't agree more.  Funnily enough when I saw the EX2200C-12 get released being both fanless and shallow depth the first use case I thought was ME NTU/Small PoP.

Front-mounted power would have been nice, but hey, I'll deal.
  
There are enough dot1q-tunnelling knobs built-in* for most applications, and aggregating this back to an MX somewhere would make this a pretty solid design.  Port ERPS down to the 22xx code (once Juniper get it sub 50ms) and this would kick ass.

I've seen a couple of MX80s sitting in basements where there is little or no air-con, and I can't imagine them being long for this world.

*Having to pay more than the price of the switch to activate EFL to use Q-in-Q does dampen the idea somewhat though.