[j-nsp] MX304 Port Layout

[Saku Ytti]

On Fri, 9 Jun 2023 at 16:58, Andrey Kostin via juniper-nsp
<juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net> wrote:

> Not sure why it's eye-watering. The price of fully populated MX304 is
> basically the same as it's predecessor MX10003 but it provides 3.2T BW
> capacity vs 2.4T. If you compare with MX204, then MX304 is about 20%
> expensive for the same total BW, but MX204 doesn't have redundant RE and
> if you use it in redundant chassis configuration you will have to spend
> some BW on "fabric" links, effectively leveling the price if calculated
> for the same BW. I'm just comparing numbers, not considering any real

That's not it, RE doesn't attach to fabric serdes.

You are right that the MX304 is the successor of MX10003 not MX201.

MX80, M104 and MX201 are unique in that they are true pizzabox Trios.
They have exactly 1 trio, and both WAN and FAB side connect to WAN
ports (not sure if MX201 just leaves them unconnected) Therefore say
40G Trio in linecard mode is 80G Trio in pizza mode (albeit PPS stays
the same) as you're not wasting capacity to non-revenue fabric ports.
This single Trio design makes the box very cost effective, as not only
do you just have one Trio and double the capacity per Trio, but you
also don't have any fabric chip and fabric serdes.

MX304 however has Trio in the linecard, so it really is very much a
normal chassis box. And having multiple Trios it needs fabric.

I do think Juniper and the rest of the vendors keep struggling to
identify 'few to many' markets, and are only good at identifying 'many
to few' markets. MX304 and ever denser 512x112G serdes chips represent
this.

I expect many people in this list have no need for more performance
than single Trio YT in any pop at all, yet they need ports. And they
are not adequately addressed by vendors. But they do need the deep
features of NPU.

I keep hoping that someone is so disruptive that they take the
nvidia/gpu approach to npu. That is, you can buy Trio PCI from newegg
for 2 grand, and can program it as you wish. I think this market
remains unidentified and even adjusting to cannibalization would
increase market size.
I can't understand why JNPR is not trying this, they've lost for 20
years to inflation in valuation, what do they have to lose?

-- 
  ++ytti