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Detection and Corrective Actions of Line Cards on MX Series Routers

You can configure a line card to be moved to the offline state on an MX-Series routers (such as MX10008, MX10004, MX2020, MX2010, MX2008, MX960, MX480, or MX304, MX240, and so on). Configuring this feature does not affect the system. You can configure this feature without restarting the line card or restarting the system.

The following scenarios can occur when you configure the feature to disable line cards :

  • If a line card has been brought offline because of fabric errors and this functionality to move the line card to offline state is disabled, the line card is transitioned to the online state automatically.

  • If a line card has been brought offline because of fabric errors and this functionality to move the line card to offline state is disabled or configured for some other line card, the line card that was turned offline is transitioned to the online state automatically.

  • All the line cards that were brought offline , when you configured this setting, are brought back online when you commit any configuration under the [edit chassis] hierarchy level. Similarly, a restart of the chassis daemon or the Graceful Routing Engine switchover (GRES) operation also causes the line card that is disabled because of degraded fabric to be moved to the online state.

When a line card is operating with less than the required number of active fabric planes. If a line card is operating with less than four planes, the fabric traffic operates at a reduced bandwidth.

The following conditions can result in reduced operating bandwidth in fabric:

  • The fabric control boards go offline as a result of an unintentional, abrupt power shutdown.

  • An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) error, which causes a plane of a control board to be automatically turned offline.

  • Manually bringing the fabric plane or the control board to the offline state.

  • Removal of the control board

  • Self-ping failure on any plane.

  • HSL2 training failure for active plane.

  • If a spare fabric plane has CRC errors, and this spare plane is made online, the link with the CRC error is disabled. This mechanism might cause a degradation in fabric in one direction and might cause a null route in the other direction.

  • When a self-ping or HSL2 training failure occurs, the fabric plane is disabled for a particular line card and it is online for other line cards. This condition can also cause a null route.

If you need to remove the control board or move a fabric plane to the offline state during a system maintenance, you must enable the functionality to turn the line cards with degraded bandwidth to the offline state (by using the offline-on-fabric-bandwidth-reduction statement at the [edit chassis fpc slot-number] hierarchy level).

The following corrective actions are performed when a null route or reduced operating bandwidth occurs in the fabric:

  • Regardless of whether a spare control board is available or not, self-ping state for each line card is monitored at intervals of 5 seconds at the Routing Engine. Fabric manager determines the presence of spare control boards

  • The switch fabric is hosted on the Switch Fabric Boards (SFBs) on MX10008, MX10004, MX2020, MX2010 and MX2000 devices:

    • The MX10008 router has eight slots for the line cards that can support a maximum of 768 100-Gigabit Ethernet ports (4x100), 192 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports, 192 100-Gigabit Ethernet ports, or 192 400-Gigabit Ethernet ports with line card slots 0-7 that combine Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE) and Ethernet interfaces enclosed in a single assembly. MX10008 supports six Switch Fabric Boards (SFBs) There are two models of SFBs: the JNP10008-SF and the JNP10008-SF2. SFBs installed must be of the same model type in a running chassis.

      For details, see Fabric-Plane-Management-on-MX10004 and MX10008-Devices

    • MX10004 features a compact 7-U modular chassis, line card slots 0-3 silicon line cards (2.4 Tbps, 480 Gbps, and 9.6 Tbps throughput) , with full hardware redundancy. Switch Fabric Boards (SFBs) create the switch fabric for the MX10004. Each SFB has a set of connectors to the line cards and the Routing and Control Board (RCB) to the switch fabric. Three SFBs provide reduced switching functionality to an MX10004 router. Six SFBs provide full throughput. Each MX10004 SFB has four connectors. Each connector matches up with a line card slot, eliminating the need for a backplane.

      For details on fabric plane management, see Fabric Plane Management on MX10004 Devices.

    • The MX10003 router contains modular routing engines and PFEs. The single PFE performs both ingress and egress packet forwarding. The router provides two dedicated line card slots. The router supports one primary and two redundant Routing and Control Boards (RCBs).

    • The MX2020 and MX2010 devices support 8 SFBs. The Mx2020 has 20 dedicated line card slots.The MX2010 router has 10 dedicated line-card slots The host subsystem consists of two Control Boards with Routing Engines (CBREs) and eight Switch Fabric Boards (SFBs). Data packets are transferred across the backplane between the MPCs through the fabric ASICs on the SFBs.

      Switch Fabric Boards (SFBs) provide increased fabric bandwidth per slot. Up to eight SFBs, SFB2s, or

      SFB3s can be installed in an MX2020 or MX2010 router. All switch fabric boards in the chassis must be the same type. Mixed mode is not supported.

    • MX960 routers with I-chip or I-chip and Trio-chip-based line cards that contain three control boards.

    • MX240 or MX480 routers with I-chip or I-chip and Trio-chip-based line cards that contain two control boards.

    • MX960, MX480, or MX240 routers that contain only Trio-based line cards are not considered to contain a spare control board.

    If during any such interval of 5 seconds, two line cards indicate a failure for the same plane, a switchover to the spare control board. In this case, the control board that reported errors is turned offline and the spare control board is turned online.

  • If a spare control board is available, and if you configure the functionality to disable line cards , self-ping state for each line card is monitored at intervals of 5 seconds at the Routing Engine. The following conditions can occur:

    • During any 5-second interval, if only one line card indicates a failure for a plane, the fabric Manager waits for the next interval. During the subsequent interval, if no other line card indicates a failure for the same plane, switchover of the control board is performed.

    • During any 5-second interval, if multiple line cards show failures for multiple control boards, the fabric manager waits for the next interval. During the subsequent interval, if the same condition remains, all the failing line cards are turned offline even if the spare control board is present.

    • During any 5-second interval, if any line card shows a failure for multiple planes on multiple control boards, the fabric manager waits for the next interval. During the subsequent interval, if the same condition persists, the line card is turned offline even if the spare control board is present.

  • If spare planes are not available, the line card is turned offline when it displays a failure for a single plane or multiple planes. The line card is brought offline only if you previously configured the offline-on-fabric-bandwidth-reduction statement at the [edit chassis fpc slot-number] hierarchy level.