Understanding Interface Naming Conventions

Physical Part of an Interface Name

Interfaces in Junos OS are specified as follows:

device-name:type-fpc/pic/port

QFX Series products apply this convention as follows:

• device-name—(QFabric systems only) The device-name is either the serial number or the alias of the QFabric system component, such as a Node device, Interconnect device, or QFabric infrastructure. The name can contain a maximum of 128 characters and cannot contain any colons.
• type—The QFX Series interfaces use the following media types:
  • fc—Fibre Channel interface
  • ge—Gigabit Ethernet interface
  • xe—10-Gigabit Ethernet interface
  • xle—40-Gigabit Ethernet interface
  • fte—40-Gigabit data plane uplink interface
  • me—Management interface
• fpc—Flexible PIC Concentrator. QFX Series interfaces use the following convention for the FPC number in interface names:
  • On QFX3500 and QFX3600 devices, the FPC number is always 0.
  • The FPC number indicates the slot number of the line card that contains the physical interface.
• pic—QFX Series interfaces use the following convention for the PIC (Physical Interface Card) number in interface names:
  • On a QFX3500 standalone switch, PIC 0 can support up to 48 ports, PIC 1 can support up to 15 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, and PIC 2 can support up to 4 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
  • On a QFX3500 Node device, PIC 0 can support up to 48 ports and PIC 1 can support up to four 40-Gigabit data plane uplink ports.
  • On a QFX3600 Node device, PIC 0 can support up to 56 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, and PIC 1 can support up to 8 40-Gigabit data plane uplink ports and up to 14 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
  • On a QFX3600 standalone switch, PIC 0 can support up to 63 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports, and PIC 1 can support up to 16 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• port—QFX Series interfaces use the following convention for port numbers:
  • The QFX3500 device has 48 network access ports labeled 0 through 47 on PIC 0.
  • The QFX3500 device has 15 network access ports labeled 1 through 15 on PIC 1.
  • The QFX3500 device has four 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports labeled Q0 through Q3 on PIC 2.
    • On a QFX3500 Node device, you can use the QSFP+ ports to connect the Node device to Interconnect devices.
    • On a QFX3500 standalone switch, by default, the 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports are configured to operate as 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. You can use QSFP+ to four SFP+ copper breakout cables to connect the 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports to other servers, storage, and switches. Optionally, you can choose to configure the QSFP+ ports as 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports (see Configuring the QSFP+ Port Type on QFX3500 Standalone Switches).
  • The QFX3600 device has 16 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports labeled Q0 through Q15.
    • On a QFX3600 Node device, by default, four 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports (labeled Q0 through Q3) are configured for uplink connections between your Node device and your Interconnect devices, and twelve 40-Gbps QSFP+ ports (labeled Q4 through Q15) use QSFP+ to four SFP+ copper breakout cables to support up to 48 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports for connections to either endpoint systems (such as servers and storage devices) or external networks. Optionally, you can choose to configure the first eight ports (Q0 through Q7) for uplink connections between your Node device and your Interconnect devices, and ports Q2 through Q15 for 10-Gigabit Ethernet or 40-Gigabit Ethernet connections to either endpoint systems or external networks (see Configuring the Port Type on QFX3600 Node Devices).
    • On a QFX3600 standalone switch, by default, all the QSFP+ ports are configured to operate as 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Optionally, you can choose to configure the QSFP+ ports as 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports (see Configuring the Port Type on QFX3600 Standalone Switches) and use QSFP+ to four SFP+ copper breakout cables to connect the 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports to other servers, storage, and switches.

      Note: Port Q0 supports only three (not the typical four) 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Therefore, you can configure up to 63 (not 64) 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports on ports Q0 through Q15.

  port ranges— QFX Series devices can have different port ranges depending on the media type of the interface.

  • On a QFX3500 device (see Table 1 for physical port to logical port mappings):
    • The valid port range for a Fibre Channel (fc) interface is 0 through 5 and 42 through 47 on PIC 0, with a total of 12 available Fibre Channel ports.
    • The valid port range for a Gigabit Ethernet (ge) interface is 6 through 41 on PIC 0 because the ports between 0 and 5 and 42 and 47 are reserved as Fibre Channel ports. The total number of available Gigabit Ethernet ports is 36, because 12 of the remaining 48 ports are reserved for Fibre Channel and 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. Fibre Channel ports cannot be configured as Gigabit Ethernet ports.
    • The valid port range for a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (xe) interface is 0 through 47 on PIC 0. The valid port range for a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (xe) interface is 1 through 15 on PIC 1. The total number of available 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports is 63.

      Note: This port range is available on a QFX3500 standalone switch only.

    • The valid port range for a 40-Gigabit Ethernet (xle) interface is 0 through 3 on PIC 2. There are four available ports.

      Note: This port range is available on a QFX3500 standalone switch only.

  • On a QFX3600 standalone switch (see Table 2 for physical port to logical port mappings):
    • The valid port range for a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (xe) interface is 1 through 63 on PIC 0. There are 63 available ports.
    • The valid port range for a 40-Gigabit Ethernet (xle) interface is 0 through 15 on PIC 1. There are 16 available ports.
  • On a QFX3600 Node device (see Table 3 for physical port to logical port mappings):
    • The valid port range for a 10-Gigabit Ethernet (xe) interface is 8 through 63 on PIC 0. There are 56 available ports.
    • The valid port range for a 40-Gigabit Ethernet (xle) interface is 2 through 15 on PIC 1. There are 14 available ports.
    • The valid port range for a 40-Gigabit data plane uplink (fte) interface is 0 through 7 on PIC 1. There are eight available ports.
• The valid port range for a management interface (me) is 0 through 6, with a total of seven available ports. However, you can only configure me0 and me1.
  • On the QFX3500 standalone switch and QFX3500 Node device, the management interfaces are labeled C0 and C1, and they correspond to me0 and me1.
  • On the QFX3600 device, there are two RJ-45 management interfaces (labeled C0 and C1) and two SFP management interfaces (labeled C0S and C1S), and they correspond to me0 and me1.

    Note: On a QFX3600 device, you can use either the RJ-45 or the SFP management ports, but not both at the same time.

Logical Part of an Interface Name

The logical unit part of the interface name corresponds to the logical unit number, which can be a number from 0 through 16384. In the virtual part of the name, a period (.) separates the port and logical unit numbers: device-name (QFabric systems only):type-fpc/pic/port.logical-unit-number. For example, if you issue the show ethernet-switching interfaces command on a system with a default VLAN, the resulting display shows the logical interfaces associated with the VLAN:

Interface                State   VLAN members           Blocking
node-device1:xe-0/0/1.0  down     remote-analyzer        unblocked
node-device1:xe-0/0/2.0  down     default                unblocked
node-device1:xe-0/0/3.0  down     default                unblocked

When you configure aggregated Ethernet interfaces, you configure a logical interface, which is called a bundle or a LAG. Each LAG can include up to eight Ethernet interfaces, depending on the switch model.

Wildcard Characters in Interface Names

In the show interfaces and clear interfaces commands, you can use wildcard characters in the interface-name option to specify groups of interface names without having to type each name individually. You must enclose all wildcard characters except the asterisk (*) in quotation marks (" ").