juniper mx80 vs cisco asr 1000

[mtinka at globaltransit.net (Mark Tinka)]

On Friday, January 20, 2012 05:40:10 AM Leigh Porter wrote:

> I have not used the asr1000 but it looks like a capable
> box. You would do well to look at the MX80 fixed
> chassis, it comes with 48 1G interfaces and 4 10G
> interfaces. They are pretty good value, I think.

The thing the MX80 has that the ASR1000 is port density. You 
get lots of Gig-E ports in there and a couple of 10Gbps 
ports too. Not too bad.

The ASR1000 has an 8-port Gig-E card (called a SPA - Shared 
Port Adapter) that offers the most dense Gig-E port capacity 
in a single-height line card. There is a 10-port Gig-E SPA, 
but that is a double-height unit, i.e., it eats up 2x slots.

10Gbps port density on the ASR1000 sucks a bit; there is 
only a 1-port SPA, and no built-in 10Gbps ports unlike the 
MX80. But on the other hand, the ASR1000 is great if you're 
looking to throw in some non-Ethernet SPA's, e.g., serial, 
E1, T1, SONET, SDH, e.t.c. The MX80 won't do this 
efficiently today, and is really best deployed in Ethernet 
scenarios.

Also, the MX80 can come with rather complicated licensing 
structures even for the ports you want enabled, if you want 
to take advantage of their cheaper offers. This can get 
hairy.

Mark.
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