[j-nsp] Understanding limitations of various MX104 bundles

[Edward Dore]

The MX204 seems to be amazing value for money if it has the right port combination for your workload (i.e. not great if you need lots of 1GE). The RE is also significantly more capable than the somewhat underpowered one in the MX104.

I would be extremely hesitant about deploying a new MX104 today given the poor CPU and relatively small amount of RAM on the RE.
The RE CPU is also a PowerPC, which seems to be a bit of a dead end for Junos with new development work seemingly focussing on x86 (last time I looked, the MX104 is stuck on FreeBSD 6 and so has no SMP support despite having a dual core CPU for example).

We ended up going with the Cisco ASR 9001 instead of MX104 due to the poor performance when converging multiple full BGP tables thanks to the underpowered RE CPU and interesting design choices in rpd.
We’re very happy with our ASR 9001 (although IOS XR isn’t as nice to use as Junos), but if the MX204 had been available at the time, then we would quite likely have ended up using them instead.
There is an ASR 9901 “coming soon”, which might also be worth a look at for new deployments.

For our use case (border router terminating peering/transit), having dual RE isn’t particularly important as we achieve our redundancy using separate routers. YMMV.

Edward Dore
Freethought Internet

From: Josh Baird <joshbaird at gmail.com>
Date: Friday, 5 January 2018 at 14:42
To: Edward Dore <edward.dore at freethought-internet.co.uk>
Cc: "alexander.marhold at gmx.at" <alexander.marhold at gmx.at>, Juniper List <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net>
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Understanding limitations of various MX104 bundles

I believe this is what we are finding as well, which is unfortunate.  Maybe we should look at the MX204 instead?  Although, it's 2X the cost (MSRP) and only has one RE.  Thoughts?

On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 9:18 AM, Edward Dore <edward.dore at freethought-internet.co.uk<mailto:edward.dore at freethought-internet.co.uk>> wrote:
Beware the bundle upgrades on the MX104 – when we looked at these in 2016, for some reason that our VAR couldn’t explain it was cheaper to just throw the MX104-MX5-AC away and buy a brand new MX104-40G-AC-BNDL bundle rather than purchasing the MX104-MX5-40G-UPG license.

Edward Dore
Freethought Internet

From: Josh Baird <joshbaird at gmail.com<mailto:joshbaird at gmail.com>>
Date: Friday, 5 January 2018 at 14:08
To: "alexander.marhold at gmx.at<mailto:alexander.marhold at gmx.at>" <alexander.marhold at gmx.at<mailto:alexander.marhold at gmx.at>>
Cc: Edward Dore <edward.dore at freethought-internet.co.uk<mailto:edward.dore at freethought-internet.co.uk>>, Juniper List <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net<mailto:juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net>>
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Understanding limitations of various MX104 bundles

Actually - come to find out (from my reseller), the MX104-MX5 package gives you two MIC slots.  Not sure if the "locking" is actually enforced or not on the other two.

Supposedly, the overall throughput of the chassis is also limited to 20Gbps - again, not sure if this is enforced.

Options for 10Gbps include purchasing a single MIC-3D-2XGE-XFP and installing it in the one open MIC slot providing two 10Gbps interfaces or purchasing MX104-MX40-40G-UPG to open two of the four built-in interfaces while also bumping overall capacity of the chassis to 40Gbps.

The S-MX104-UPG-* licenses to activate the 4X10GE fixed interfaces don't appear to be usable on the MX104 bundle packages (like the MX104-MX5-AC).

On Fri, Jan 5, 2018 at 4:34 AM, Alexander Marhold <alexander.marhold at gmx.at<mailto:alexander.marhold at gmx.at>> wrote:
Hi !
IMHO Edward is right with his assumption:

Those are the available licenses for the MX104

Upgrade license to activate 2x10GE P2&3
        MX104
        S-MX104-ADD-2X10GE

Upgrade license to activate 2X10GE P0&1
        MX104
        S-MX104-UPG-2X10GE

Upgrade license to activate 4X10GE fixed ports on MX104
        MX104
        S-MX104-UPG-4X10GE

License to support per VLAN queuing on MX104
        MX104
        S-MX104-Q

Chassis-based software license for inline J-Flow monitoring on MX5, MX10, M40, MX80, and MX104 Series routers
        MX5, MX10, M40, MX80, and MX104
        S-JFLOW-CH-MX5-104

With best regards
alexander

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: juniper-nsp [mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net<mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net>] Im Auftrag von Edward Dore
Gesendet: Freitag, 5. Januar 2018 10:21
An: Josh Baird; Juniper List
Betreff: Re: [j-nsp] Understanding limitations of various MX104 bundles

I believe that the MX104-MX5 bundle is supposed to be locked to only allowing you to make use of a single MIC slot, like the MX5 version of the MX80. As to whether or not that is actually enforced…

Edward Dore
Freethought Internet

On 04/01/2018, 18:34, "juniper-nsp on behalf of Josh Baird" <juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net<mailto:juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net> on behalf of joshbaird at gmail.com<mailto:joshbaird at gmail.com>> wrote:

    Hi all,

    Given the MX104-MX5-AC bundle which comes with 1 20x 1GE MIC pre-installed
    (and none of the onboard 10Gbps interfaces enabled), is this box actually
    limited to 20Gbps overall throughput?

    Can I install another MIC (say the MIC-3D-2XGE-XFP) in an additional slot
    to gain 2 10Gbps interfaces without purchasing any additional licensing?
    If I do this, is overall throughput of the chassis still locked to 20Gbps
    (due to the original bundle)?

    I can't find anything (ie "show system license") that states there is an
    overall capacity restriction, but I'm hearing mixed things from various
    sources.

    Thanks.
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