[j-nsp] Outgrowing a QFX5100

[Saku Ytti]

On Fri, 16 Sept 2022 at 22:12, Jason Healy via juniper-nsp
<juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net> wrote:

Hey Jason,

> My question is, what would be the logical "step up" from the qfx on a small network?  I'm thinking the MX240 as it's the smallest router that has redundant REs.  However, I have no experience with the router family (we're all EX/QFX).  I'd consider a newer member of the QFX family, but I'd need to know I'm not going to bump into a bunch of weird "unsupported on this platform" issues.

Yes. I don't immediately cannot think of any feature that isn't
supported on MX that is supported on EX/QFX.

Broadly speaking if you are not cost-sensitive, and you don't need the
density, always buy an NPU box such as MX, because it's inherently
more feature complete.

Pipeline boxes like EX/QFX make sense if you are cost sensitive or
need high density and can answer what your requirements are ahead of
time and run a field trial against those specific requirements. In my
experience for access providers your requirements are not a knowable
variable, because you will introduce a new product during the life
cycle of a device, therefore you will be carrying additional risk with
pipeline compared to NPU. If you're a cloudy shop or incumbent telco
you likely can have a frozen set of requirements that are knowable
a-priori, which supports pipeline use-case.

> I'm fine with EOL/aftermarket equipment; we've got a pretty traditional layer-2 spoke-and-hub setup with layer-3 for IRB and a default route to our ISP (no VXLAN, tunneling, etc).  Our campus isn't growing so capacity isn't a huge issue (we're 1g/10g uplinks everywhere, and the 10g aren't close to saturation).  I *might* want 40g as a handoff to an aggregation layer, but that's about it.  Thus, I'm OK with a relative lack of new features.

Your problem is the slow rate interfaces and getting reasonable
support for them. With MX if you are buying from a channel for chassis
boxes you should be only buying LC9600, which is 24x400GE, another
alternative is fixed config MX304. Both may be highly unsatisfactory
to you in the front-plate. ACX portfolio may have some middle-ground
to you.


-- 
  ++ytti