Mailing List Archive

ASR920 Port Licensing
Another member just sent a question about smart licensing, and it got me
thinking that I should post my current issue here and see if anyone has
seen this before, or if I'm crazy (or Cisco is).

Last summer I purchased 6 ASR920-12SZ-D routers/switches. These are the
ones with 12 10-gig ports. Despite some initial weirdness, port issues,
etc. they've actually worked rather well for us. Last week, one of them
started randomly dropping offline. After investigation, Cisco replaced
it. Here's where the fun starts.

It almost looks like Cisco changed the licensing model for these between
when we purchased them and when we received our RMA. Is that possible?

All of our (I'll call them old) routers had the default port licenses and
an Advanced Metro license. All 12 ports are usable at 1 gig, and 4 will
operate at 10 gig. I have 5 that are running quite happily like this at
remote pops right now.

On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational. The other 6
are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers match,
so their job is done.

I don't think I'm crazy (but if you are, would you know) -- I have the doc
from cisco when we originally purchased the routers showing what license
level did what, though interestingly it's no longer on Cisco's website.
The new version of said docs seem to indicate that Cisco is correct and
the default license gives you 6 ports. Which means I need to purchase an
additional license to make my new router behave like the one I RMA-ed.

This is kind of a long story to ask the question but, does anyone know if
the licensing changed somehow? And if it did, what does that mean for the
routers we've already deployed?

thanks

Shawn
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Hi,

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 06:42:41AM -0500, Shawn L wrote:
> On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational. The other 6
> are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
> Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers match,
> so their job is done.

Port usability without license on ASR920 changed between software versions.

We do not have the 12x10 models, but we have the 12x1+2x10 models, and
they changed from "you can only use ports /1../6" to "you can use any
port, but only 6 in total" at some point int the past....

That said, if you have the same software version on the RMA'ed device,
it definitely should behave the same.

*That* said, the ASR920 BU is full of interesting *ahem* surprises.

gert

--
"If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you
feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted
it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor."
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Gert Doering - Munich, Germany gert@greenie.muc.de
Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Interesting. It is full of surprises. So that brings up the next
question..... what happens when someone upgrades the IOS and the licensing
model changes?

I can definitely see a situation where that happens and ports that used to
be in service are now unlicensed. That'll be a fun one to troubleshoot in
the middle of the night.

Shawn

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 7:43 AM Gert Doering <gert@greenie.muc.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 06:42:41AM -0500, Shawn L wrote:
> > On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational. The
> other 6
> > are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
> > Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers
> match,
> > so their job is done.
>
> Port usability without license on ASR920 changed between software versions.
>
> We do not have the 12x10 models, but we have the 12x1+2x10 models, and
> they changed from "you can only use ports /1../6" to "you can use any
> port, but only 6 in total" at some point int the past....
>
> That said, if you have the same software version on the RMA'ed device,
> it definitely should behave the same.
>
> *That* said, the ASR920 BU is full of interesting *ahem* surprises.
>
> gert
>
> --
> "If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you
> feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never
> doubted
> it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor."
> Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh
> Mistress
>
> Gert Doering - Munich, Germany
> gert@greenie.muc.de
>
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Hi,

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 11:36:48AM -0500, Shawn L wrote:
> Interesting. It is full of surprises. So that brings up the next
> question..... what happens when someone upgrades the IOS and the licensing
> model changes?
>
> I can definitely see a situation where that happens and ports that used to
> be in service are now unlicensed. That'll be a fun one to troubleshoot in
> the middle of the night.

Yep. Welcome to the world of "we truly understand what our customers
are really expecting from a network vendor".

If only Arista had something comparable to the ASR920 line (port/footprint/
pricing)...

gert
--
"If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you
feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted
it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor."
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Gert Doering - Munich, Germany gert@greenie.muc.de
Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
On 2/24/21 6:47 PM, Gert Doering wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> Yep. Welcome to the world of "we truly understand what our customers
> are really expecting from a network vendor".
>
> If only Arista had something comparable to the ASR920 line (port/footprint/
> pricing)...
>
> gert

Arista 7020SR-32C2 is the closest match.


--
Best regards,
Adrian Minta


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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
On Wednesday, 24 February, 2021 16:47, "Gert Doering" <gert@greenie.muc.de> said:

> Yep. Welcome to the world of "we truly understand what our customers
> are really expecting from a network vendor".

I do wonder if someone - Enterprise customers? - is actually asking for this kind of time-bomb phone-home licensing, or if it's purely a vendor frog-boiling exercise in how bad they can make the customer experience and still have it be less bad than the pain of jumping ship...

It's not just C up to this nonsense, experiencing the same pain with network-refresh in J-land :(

Cheers,
Tim.


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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
I have to say, we're not really happy with them at this point.... Just had
a call with Cisco. Showed them the router that only has 6 functional
ports, and 3 more with the exact same IOS and licensing that have all of
the ports functional. They can't explain what the difference is. Their
only response was 'that shouldn't work like that'.

Now, what to do moving forward....

Shawn

On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 1:02 PM tim@pelican.org <tim@pelican.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday, 24 February, 2021 16:47, "Gert Doering" <gert@greenie.muc.de>
> said:
>
> > Yep. Welcome to the world of "we truly understand what our customers
> > are really expecting from a network vendor".
>
> I do wonder if someone - Enterprise customers? - is actually asking for
> this kind of time-bomb phone-home licensing, or if it's purely a vendor
> frog-boiling exercise in how bad they can make the customer experience and
> still have it be less bad than the pain of jumping ship...
>
> It's not just C up to this nonsense, experiencing the same pain with
> network-refresh in J-land :(
>
> Cheers,
> Tim.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
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>
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
I refuse to buy in to ’Smart Licensing’ and ‘Port Licensing’. So far, we have been able to avoid buying
from vendors who practice such anti-customer policies.

I refuse to buy products with licensing schemes that require the equipment to ‘phone home’ or where a vendor
through an error could remotely disable feature sets or the unit itself. (License keys, as implemented prior to IOS V15 are tolerable)
I’m willing to purchase equipment from a vendor that is not as spiffy as J or C as long as it has an acceptable licensing policy and functionally works.
That means we don’t get the nifty command language of Juniper with commit/rollback…

I also refuse to purchase equipment that requires an ‘app’ or GUI program to configure. I demand a 9 pin serial connector (or a Cisco pinout RJ45) and a
CLI.

I think customers ought to stick to their guns and refuse to buy equipment from vendors that try to push this crap.

Joe


Joe McGuckin
ViaNet Communications

joe@via.net
650-207-0372 cell
650-213-1302 office
650-969-2124 fax



> On Feb 24, 2021, at 3:42 AM, Shawn L <shawn@rmrf.us> wrote:
>
> Another member just sent a question about smart licensing, and it got me
> thinking that I should post my current issue here and see if anyone has
> seen this before, or if I'm crazy (or Cisco is).
>
> Last summer I purchased 6 ASR920-12SZ-D routers/switches. These are the
> ones with 12 10-gig ports. Despite some initial weirdness, port issues,
> etc. they've actually worked rather well for us. Last week, one of them
> started randomly dropping offline. After investigation, Cisco replaced
> it. Here's where the fun starts.
>
> It almost looks like Cisco changed the licensing model for these between
> when we purchased them and when we received our RMA. Is that possible?
>
> All of our (I'll call them old) routers had the default port licenses and
> an Advanced Metro license. All 12 ports are usable at 1 gig, and 4 will
> operate at 10 gig. I have 5 that are running quite happily like this at
> remote pops right now.
>
> On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational. The other 6
> are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
> Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers match,
> so their job is done.
>
> I don't think I'm crazy (but if you are, would you know) -- I have the doc
> from cisco when we originally purchased the routers showing what license
> level did what, though interestingly it's no longer on Cisco's website.
> The new version of said docs seem to indicate that Cisco is correct and
> the default license gives you 6 ports. Which means I need to purchase an
> additional license to make my new router behave like the one I RMA-ed.
>
> This is kind of a long story to ask the question but, does anyone know if
> the licensing changed somehow? And if it did, what does that mean for the
> routers we've already deployed?
>
> thanks
>
> Shawn
> _______________________________________________
> cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/

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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Don't get me started on ASR920 serial management ...


On 2/24/21 7:48 PM, joe mcguckin wrote:
> I refuse to buy in to ’Smart Licensing’ and ‘Port Licensing’. So far, we have been able to avoid buying
> from vendors who practice such anti-customer policies.
>
> I refuse to buy products with licensing schemes that require the equipment to ‘phone home’ or where a vendor
> through an error could remotely disable feature sets or the unit itself. (License keys, as implemented prior to IOS V15 are tolerable)
> I’m willing to purchase equipment from a vendor that is not as spiffy as J or C as long as it has an acceptable licensing policy and functionally works.
> That means we don’t get the nifty command language of Juniper with commit/rollback…
>
> I also refuse to purchase equipment that requires an ‘app’ or GUI program to configure. I demand a 9 pin serial connector (or a Cisco pinout RJ45) and a
> CLI.
>
> I think customers ought to stick to their guns and refuse to buy equipment from vendors that try to push this crap.
>
> Joe
>
>
> Joe McGuckin
> ViaNet Communications
>
> joe@via.net
> 650-207-0372 cell
> 650-213-1302 office
> 650-969-2124 fax
>
>
>
>> On Feb 24, 2021, at 3:42 AM, Shawn L <shawn@rmrf.us> wrote:
>>
>> Another member just sent a question about smart licensing, and it got me
>> thinking that I should post my current issue here and see if anyone has
>> seen this before, or if I'm crazy (or Cisco is).
>>
>> Last summer I purchased 6 ASR920-12SZ-D routers/switches. These are the
>> ones with 12 10-gig ports. Despite some initial weirdness, port issues,
>> etc. they've actually worked rather well for us. Last week, one of them
>> started randomly dropping offline. After investigation, Cisco replaced
>> it. Here's where the fun starts.
>>
>> It almost looks like Cisco changed the licensing model for these between
>> when we purchased them and when we received our RMA. Is that possible?
>>
>> All of our (I'll call them old) routers had the default port licenses and
>> an Advanced Metro license. All 12 ports are usable at 1 gig, and 4 will
>> operate at 10 gig. I have 5 that are running quite happily like this at
>> remote pops right now.
>>
>> On the new router that was sent, only 6 ports are operational. The other 6
>> are disabled, and won't enable, giving me license error when I try.
>> Cisco's telling me that the licenses on both the new and old routers match,
>> so their job is done.
>>
>> I don't think I'm crazy (but if you are, would you know) -- I have the doc
>> from cisco when we originally purchased the routers showing what license
>> level did what, though interestingly it's no longer on Cisco's website.
>> The new version of said docs seem to indicate that Cisco is correct and
>> the default license gives you 6 ports. Which means I need to purchase an
>> additional license to make my new router behave like the one I RMA-ed.
>>
>> This is kind of a long story to ask the question but, does anyone know if
>> the licensing changed somehow? And if it did, what does that mean for the
>> routers we've already deployed?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> Shawn
>> _______________________________________________
>> cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
>> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
>> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
>
> _______________________________________________
> cisco-nsp mailing list cisco-nsp@puck.nether.net
> https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/cisco-nsp
> archive at http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/
>
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 05:47:48PM +0100, Gert Doering wrote:

> If only Arista had something comparable to the ASR920 line (port/footprint/
> pricing)...

I also have been badgering them about this for a while and keep getting told there
might be something in the pipeline, but too early to count chickens yet.

--
Patrick Cole <patrick.cole@spirit.com.au>
Chief Engineer
Spirit Technology Solutions
19-25 Raglan St, South Melbourne VIC 3205
Desk: 0385541391
Mobile: 0410626630
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Hello,

It's been a while (more than 1 month) since we are waiting for the licence
to enable the 6 others 1Gb ports on an ASR920. That's crazy !!!

Nick
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Re: ASR920 Port Licensing [ In reply to ]
Nicolas,

Is this already ordered? If so, license generation takes minutes and
something is wrong.

Do you have TAC case with GLO (Global Licensing Team)?

Please provide me with the box information and TAC/GLO case if you
have it, I’ll check what’s going on (to lbromirs-at-cisco.com <http://lbromirs-at-cisco.com/>).


./

> On 27 Feb 2021, at 09:20, Nicolas KARP <liste@karp.fr> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> It's been a while (more than 1 month) since we are waiting for the licence
> to enable the 6 others 1Gb ports on an ASR920. That's crazy !!!
>
> Nick
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