Stupid Cisco ASR 920s!!

dlots · February 04, 2016, 04:10:06 PM

So the ASR 920s come with 4 working 10Gb ports, to get other ports open we have to buy a licence, well we need the 1gb copper ports open (gi0/0-5) so we bought a port licence which opens ports 6-11 4 of which are SFP ports. After trying like crazy to get 0-5 unlocked I opened a ticket with Cisco, TAC said that's what the licenses are suppose to do call your vendor. CDW has been looking into it and it turns out to get ports 0-5 working we have to buy 2 port licenses, one for ports 6-11 (we don't need), and 1 for ports 0-5, just buy 2 licenses at ~$300 a pop. Did I mention we will probably be buying hundreds if not thousands of these? I asked my boss if he's sure he doesn't want a Juniper backbone.

It's been an interesting day.

wintermute000 · February 04, 2016, 06:07:29 PM

The cisco nickel and diming is getting ridiculous. I know a customer who got stung by not buying a 10Gb license on an ASA5585-X.

Features yes, but its getting ridiculous now if you have to check whether a standard network port that physically exists on the box works with or without license XYZ

Don't get me started on the half duplex throughput licensing on ISR4ks

deanwebb · February 04, 2016, 06:39:00 PM

Cisco ain't the only vendor that will do the license surprise. However, they can come up with some of the craziest licensing situations that I've seen. Having to install the 3DES license on every ASA we bought just to be able to SSH to them will always be the one I remember the most.

Dieselboy · February 05, 2016, 03:33:55 AM

Yea I've been caught out by things like this, either the piece of info I read on Cisco's website was wrong or it's not quite obvious or it's hidden somewhere in the black hole they call their website. You know I actually use Google to search their website as it has given better results.

If the forum manager is okay with it, we should probably post specific questions like that to the forum. More than likely one of us has found that info or had the same problem. Then again, how do we ask the question about something which we don't know about in the first place

I ordered a couple new 800 series routers to be a replacement for the 877 or 871 we were using in peoples home offices. The cisco webpage all about the units said they supported OSPF - groovy. They didn't support OSPF, so I raised a TAC for Cisco to give us OSPF support or to update their website. I refused to let them close the TAC until the web page was updated correctly

That was years ago.
(we needed OSPF to run across resilient VTY IPSEC tunnels to different datacentres.)

icecream-guy · February 05, 2016, 07:35:06 AM

New certification ?

Cisco Software Licensing Expert

That'd be some hard tests...

deanwebb · February 05, 2016, 07:54:05 AM

Cisco Certified Licensing Information Expert - CCLIE

And, yes, we *should* post licensing gotchas here. They can be as important in resolving issues as code snippets. It can lead to better-informed PO submissions.

routerdork · February 05, 2016, 08:41:43 AM

That sucks. I really hated the model with the ASR 901's too. I do have to give Cisco credit though. They got their foot in the door with the cheaper cost since we only needed 3 1G ports on most of the 901's. When I left that company we had deployed 4 new MetroE rings with them and they were solid performers. Biggest issue after that was that the only VPLS capable device out at the time was the ASR 903 for gobs of money.

dlots · February 05, 2016, 08:45:36 AM

Oh I hated the 901s... alot, their documentation was horrible, and they were a complete hack-job.

Even had commands in the ? menu that the OS didn't recognize.

I think they have added VPLS to the 901s though.

routerdork · February 05, 2016, 09:05:10 AM

Oh yeah they were a pain to get configured and running for the first time and documentation only covered pieces. We were using unstable MRV boxes prior to that so these were awesome compared to what we had done. The 920 was still coming out when I was slipping out the door.

NetworkGroover · February 05, 2016, 10:23:36 AM

Cisco doesn't help themselves in this regard, and it's been clear it's a pain for their users, yet I guess they're trapped and can't do anything about it.

It's definitely something I bring up when speaking to customers as yet another way to just make their lives easier.... there's more important crap to worry about.