Juniper Networks Warrior

Chapter 9. MX Network Deployment

Most professional service engagements that we warriors are privileged to be associated with amount to the proverbial “cleanup on aisle 4.” The tribe is requested to fix a situation where the customer has deployed Juniper Networks equipment and things have gone very wrong. We pack our tools and start troubleshooting and repairing.

This engagement was a refreshing change to the normal warrior battle. In this case, our team was engaged prior to the deployment of the equipment and was given the opportunity to design, test, and deploy the initial installment of Juniper Networks MX edge routers.

The customer was part of a growing trend in the US, a regional power company looking to diversify and provide wholesale Internet services as well as power. The company had the rights of way and the manpower to install fiber and add routers—and poof, a regional ISP was born. In the final stages of deployment the company hoped to offer Internet services to its stable of 15 power companies.

The company had existing or planned peering agreements with three national carriers and one regional carrier. The regional carrier had an active link to the customer’s lab, pushing a full Internet BGP feed of routes. This is what we warriors call a fertile green-field installation. The customer had the plans, the contacts, and the hardware to implement the network.

The initial hardware was a quintet of MX480s, each with a single dense port concentrator (GE and XE modular interface ...