[j-nsp] MX304 - Edge Router

[Tobias Heister]

Am 25.10.2023 um 08:01 schrieb Saku Ytti via juniper-nsp:
> On Tue, 24 Oct 2023 at 22:21, Aaron Gould via juniper-nsp
> <juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net> wrote:
> 
>> My MX304 trial license expired last night, after rebooting the MX304,
>> various protocols no longer work.  This seems more than just
>> honor-based... ospf, ldp, etc, no longer function.  This is new to me;
>> that Juniper is making protocols and technologies tied to license.  I
>> need to understand more about this, as I'm considering buying MX304's.
> 
> Juniper had assured me multiple times that they strategically have
> decided to NEVER do this. That it's an actual decision they've
> considered at the highest level, that they will not downgrade devices
> in operation. I guess 'reboot' is not in-operation?

I am surprised and it goes against everything i have seen and 
experienced so far on any MX (including MX304).

So there are a couple of enforced licenses even on MX ... and they have 
always been enforced. Subscriber MGMT is one of these features.

Also some form of encryption is typically enforced due to export 
regulations and other silly things. Also the rare use cases where 
external feeds (e.g. for stateful services on services cards) might expire.

That being said, i have not yet seen any expired flex license on any MX 
as we typically play with perpetuals. But not having a license has never 
killed features like Routing Protocols, LDP or similar for me. We run 
the boxes in the lab without licenses regularly (because we are too lazy 
to (re)apply them between tests and/or wipes) including MX304 and Junos 
up to 23.2.

I would be very surprised if there are actually code path that kill 
features in Junos on purpose yet (having seen the quality of the other 
parts of the license parser).

So i would rather suspect some weird combination of misbehaviour and/or 
bug and not an intention to disable stuff for now.

The flex license nagging comes in different stages and intensity 
depending e.g. in HW and sometimes card Generation, which makes license 
mgmt a lot of "fun" in chassis with cards that "need" a license and 
cards that "can have" a license and cards than "do not need" a license 
at all :)

The SE teams (or your partner of choice) have access to the current 
plans of where license nagging and license installation is needed to 
stop the nagging and where it is optional.

I will try to get my hands on a short live trial license to replicate 
that behaviour soonish to look into that now :)

After all ... there is not much that surprise me any more on vendor 
licensing ...

regards
Tobias