Configuring the Number of Active Ports on 16x10GE 3D MPC

You can disable a sub-set of the physical ports available on the Packet Forwarding Engines of the 16x10GE 3D MPC, and for PICs installed in MPC3, MPC4, MPC5, and MPC6.

Two of the most common reasons for disabling ports are explained below.

• Ensure guaranteed bandwidth by preventing oversubscription—The 16x10GE 3D MPC supports one 10-Gigabit Ethernet tunnel interface for each Packet Forwarding Engine. The effective line-rate bandwidth of the MPC is 12 ports because of an oversubscription ratio of 4:3. Therefore, configuring a tunnel interface might further result in the Packet Forwarding Engines being oversubscribed. To prevent such oversubscription and to ensure a guaranteed bandwidth, include the number-of-ports configuration statement to disable one or two ports per Packet Forwarding Engine.

• Enable Switch Control Board (SCB) redundancy—For maximum bandwidth capabilities (12-port line-rate bandwidth), the 16x10GE 3D MPC uses all the available SCBs (three SCBs for an MX960 router, two SCBs for an MX480 or MX240 router) actively in the chassis.

  If SCB redundancy (2+1 SCBs on an MX960 router or 1+1 SCB on an MX480 or MX240 router) is required, ports on the line card can be disabled by setting the number of usable ports per line card to 8. In such a case, the third and fourth ports (ports 0/2-3, 1/2-3, 2/2-3, 3/2-3) on every Packet Forwarding Engine are disabled.

To configure the number of active ports on the 16x10GE 3D MPC, include the number-of-ports active-ports configuration statement at the [edit chassis fpc slot-number] hierarchy level:

[edit chassis fpc slot-number]
number-of-ports (8 | 12);

To configure the number of active ports on a PIC in an MPC3, MPC4, MPC5, or MPC6, include the number-of-ports active-ports configuration statement at the [edit chassis fpc slot-number pic pic-number] hierarchy level:

[edit chassis fpc slot-number pic pic-number]
number-of-ports (8 | 12);

Specify either 8 or 12 ports using this statement. When eight active ports are configured, two ports per Packet Forwarding Engine are disabled, and the LEDs on the MPC are set to yellow. When you specify 12 active ports, one port per Packet Forwarding Engine is disabled and the corresponding LED is set to yellow. When you do not include this statement in the configuration, all 16 default ports on the MPC are active.

For more information about the 16x10GE 3D MPC, see the MX Series Interface Module Reference.