[j-nsp] J2300/J4300 FPCs cannot go online

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Mircho Mirchev <mircho at gmail.com> said:
> We have a lot of J2300/J4300 routers in educational labs.
> Suddenly (this weekend) on all of them all the interfaces (both embedded
> and on line cards) disappeared.
<snip>
> The interesting thing is, that setting the router date to several years
> earlier (i.e. 2010), the FPCs go online without any problem.
> This seems to us as an expired HW certificate, or something similar, but it
> is acting as a time bomb :)

When the J-series was initially released, there were order numbers that
came with some ports software-disabled, and you could pay for a key to
enter to unlock the additional ports.  It looks like the certificate
used to check the keys has expired.  Since they are EOL, I doubt Juniper
is going to release an updated JUNOS with an updated key; the only
solution will probably be to set the clock back (and disable NTP).

I wonder if the MX5-MX80 routers face the same eventual issue.  It would
be good for Juniper to issue an official statement about this; hardware
with planned obsolescence built in is not good.

-- 
Chris Adams <cma at cmadams.net>