[j-nsp] Going Juniper

[adamv0025 at netconsultings.com]

> Aaron Gould [mailto:aaron1 at gvtc.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2018 2:44 PM
> 
> Really?  I'm hearing rumblings of pain in new XR upgrades
> 
> google - [c-nsp] Cisco ASR99xx 64-bit upgrade 6.3.1 to 6.3.2
> 
> or....
> 
> https://lists.gt.net/cisco/nsp/199480
> 
> I can't say from experience since I'm sitting on 4.1.2 (lol, hey, it
works!).... I
> recall XR and PIES being for straightforward, but I don't think Junos
upgrades
> for me have been as involved as XR and separate PIES
> 
> I upgraded (5) MX960's within the past week to newer Junos with vmhost
> using ISSU process and it went very nicely
> 
> I upgraded an EX4550 yesterday for 40 gig pic compatibility and it also
went
> nicely
> 
> Cisco and Juniper wouldn't have made it this far in the network industry
if
> they both weren't great options.  It is interesting to compare two great
things
> :)
> 
Well first of all juniper made it this far only because it's a cheap
alternative to cisco, and you always get what you pay for. 

In HW MX-es internal architecture will *never be as solid as ASR9k's one. 
*That is not me saying never but MX team saying never when we proposed some
changes to the architecture in order to get them where ASR9k is in terms of
platforms internal architecture (at least on the paper), but to be fair they
fixed 2 out of 3 design flaws, (by asic redesign and by added knob) so the
"never" was only for the third one -one you're least likely to hit I'd say).
And it goes without saying that ASR9k internals are also not 100% flawless
straight out of the box and need some tweaking in LC cli.

In SWs it's little more complicated, 
1) In general Junos is trailing XR in development (the gap seem to be around
a year or little over), so if you need a new feature it'll be cutting edge
on Junos while old news in XR.
2) Junos is truly suffering from its monolithic nature (everything in RPD),
in XR you can install only what you need reducing the bug surface, and the
modularity allows for faster development. 
3) In XR installing SMUs or PIEs to fix bugs is business as usual right, but
how many of you are familiar with JSUs to do the same in Junos -the
framework is so rarely used by customers that it's buggy in itself. 
4) Junos BGP implementation, well ya'll know my views...
 
Anyhow, I'm glad you, and I'm sure many others on the list, have a positive
experience with Juniper boxes, having Juniper on the market as a strong and
healthy competitor to Cisco is essential for the whole industry.  
Despite what I said I'm a big fan of juniper, love the support and attention
they give even to smaller deals, 
Yes it sometimes takes a bit longer to get to right people in India to talk
about ASIC internals in comparison to just pinging Xander or Aleks on cisco
support page to get the same level of info. 
But the most important thing for me is they listen are willing to improve. 


adam

netconsultings.com
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