Interesting limitations or silly Anthony?

As previous blogs have indicated I have my hands on a Juniper Networks EX-2200. This device has great functionality what I found great was the dual-purpose uplink ports. As pictured below these ports are linked and can take either a RJ-45 port or an SFP port. These two ports I had connected via the copper ports up linked to an SRX110. I had some Cisco SFP’s for fiber lying around and I placed them into the slots to protect them.

I boot the device up and happily perform some base configurations. This works well. I establish connection and configure the LLDP settings I wanted from the previous blog. Superb. It was then I noticed I didn’t have a connection upstream to my device. The infamous up/down scenario. I was remotely labbing from the lounge so I didn’t see my front panel which taught me to hunt more in the CLI. I checked configs, interface status and more. Then I thought more about dual-purpose. It dawned on me that maybe it is one or the other. Well it is, kind of.

A SFP module takes priority over a RJ-45. The SFP I plugged in kept me down as it was just chilling there with no fiber cable installed. Juniper has by default an internal priority. Unless you specify otherwise, the SFP takes precedence.

There is a fix and I will show you how I got it working below. With this change my device came up and it was happy days.

[email protected]# set interfaces ge-0/1/0 media-type copper
[email protected]# set interfaces ge-0/1/1 media-type copper

So be aware that there are some hardware limitations. The name, dual-purpose port, should have given it away but I have to admit I was excited to get this puppy in the lab. In doing so I may have not read all the manual. RTFM? Yeah, I got bitten. This switch has made a great addition to my lab and expect some cool JUNOS stuff in the future. Awesome features thus far. It is like a mini 3560 without the price-tag.

Disclaimer I do have a disclaimer about my blog and how I operate in the blogging world with integrity. I do declare here and with other posts that this Juniper Networks EX2200-12P switch was provided to me by Francois Prowse, on behalf of Juniper Networks. I was not asked for positive, marketed, vendor drivel. I will blog honestly about the platform and my experiences and share what I find, good or bad.