[j-nsp] MX304 Port Layout

[Mark Tinka]

On 7/2/23 10:42, Saku Ytti wrote:

> Yes. Satellite is basically VLAN aggregation, but a little bit less
> broken. Both are much inferior to MPLS.

I agree that using vendor satellites solves this problem. The issue, 
IIRC, is was what happens when you need to have the satellites in rings?

Satellites work well when fibre is not an issue, and each satellite can 
hang off the PE router like a spur. But if you need to build rings in 
order to cover as many areas as possible at a reasonable cost, 
satellites seemed to struggled to have scalable ring topologies. This 
could have changed over time, not sure. I stopped tracking satellite 
technologies around 2010.


>   But usually that's not the
> comparison due to real or perceived cost reasons. So in absence of a
> vendor selling you the front-plate you need, option space often
> considered is satellite or vlan aggregation, instead of connecting
> some smaller MPLS edge boxes to bigger aggregation MPLS boxes, which
> would be, in my opinion, obviously better.

The cost you pay for a small Metro-E router optimized for ring 
deployments is more than paid back in the operational simplicity that 
comes with MPLS-based rings. Having ran such architectures for close to 
15 years now (since the Cisco ME3600X/3800X), I can tell you how much 
easier it has been for us to scale and keep customers because we did not 
have to run Layer 2 rings like our competitors did.


> But as discussed, centralised chassis boxes are appearing as a new
> option to the option space.

Well, for data centre aggregation, especially for 100Gbps transit ports 
to customers, centralized routers make sense (MX304, MX10003, ASR9903, 
e.t.c.). But those boxes don't make sense as Metro-E routers... they can 
aggregate Metro-E routers, but can't be Metro-E routers due to their cost.

I think there is still a use-case for distributed boxes like the MX480 
and MX960, for cases where you have to aggregate plenty of 1Gbps and 
10Gbps customers. Those line cards, especially the ones that are now 
EoS/EoL, are extremely cheap and more than capable of supporting 1Gbps 
and 10Gbps services in the data centre. At the moment, with modern 
centralized routers optimized for 100Gbps and 400Gbps, using them to 
aggregate 10Gbps services or lower maybe be costlier than, say, an MX480 
or MX960 with MPC2E or MPC7E line cards attached to a dense Ethernet 
switch via 802.1Q.

For the moment, the Metro-E router that makes the most sense to us is 
the ACX7024. Despite its Broadcom base, we seem to have found a way to 
make it work for us, and replace the ASR920.

Mark.