[j-nsp] Clarification of EOL policies

[Florian Weimer]

I'm a bit puzzled by the EOL policies. According to
<http://www.juniper.net/support/eol/junos.html>, JUNOS 8.5 has its
first transition event on 2010-11-16 (whatever "End of Engineering"
means). Therefore, I assume that the level of available customer
support is comparable to that of JUNOS 10.1 (with an event on
2010-11-15). However, self-service downloads for JUNOS 8.5 have not
been updated for years, despite intermediate security updates. The
situation for JUNOS 9.3 appears to be similar.

Does anybody know what's going on here?

[Richard A Steenbergen]

Post by Florian Weimer
I'm a bit puzzled by the EOL policies. According to
<http://www.juniper.net/support/eol/junos.html>, JUNOS 8.5 has its
first transition event on 2010-11-16 (whatever "End of Engineering"
means). Therefore, I assume that the level of available customer
support is comparable to that of JUNOS 10.1 (with an event on
2010-11-15). However, self-service downloads for JUNOS 8.5 have not
been updated for years, despite intermediate security updates. The
situation for JUNOS 9.3 appears to be similar.

8.5 is an extended support release, so it has much longer support dates
than normal images, but they never make anything other than R1 R2 R3 and
R4 images available for download via the portal. You have to ask for a
service release to get anything newer.

As far as the definitions go, End of Engineering means they won't do any
more work on that branch of code, and End of Support seems to mean they
won't even make the files available for download. The other month we hit
a nasty bug affecting 9.5R4 a few days after it was released, and were
told that they wouldn't fix it in any 9.5 branch because it had already
reached EoE (which happened before 9.5R4 was even released). 9.6 seems
to be in a similar state, it has already reached EoE (on May 6th) but
9.6R4 isn't even out yet. Also I'm not sure what the date on the latest
8.5 service release is, but I don't think it's particularly current.
8.5S4 was the last one I saw, and it was dated Nov 2009.

[Florian Weimer]

Post by Richard A Steenbergen

Post by Florian Weimer
I'm a bit puzzled by the EOL policies. According to
<http://www.juniper.net/support/eol/junos.html>, JUNOS 8.5 has its
first transition event on 2010-11-16 (whatever "End of Engineering"
means). Therefore, I assume that the level of available customer
support is comparable to that of JUNOS 10.1 (with an event on
2010-11-15). However, self-service downloads for JUNOS 8.5 have not
been updated for years, despite intermediate security updates. The
situation for JUNOS 9.3 appears to be similar.

8.5 is an extended support release, so it has much longer support dates
than normal images, but they never make anything other than R1 R2 R3 and
R4 images available for download via the portal. You have to ask for a
service release to get anything newer.

We did that, but it seems that the later 8.5S releases for J-series
have been pulled since the last round of security fixes. That's why
the download URLs we initially received don't work (we suspected a
permission issue, but it's not).

Post by Richard A Steenbergen
As far as the definitions go, End of Engineering means they won't do any
more work on that branch of code, and End of Support seems to mean they
won't even make the files available for download.

Based on that, I assumed that 8.5 would still receive security fixes.
This does not seem to be the case. Looks like we have to upgrade to a
9.3S release (still not flow-based, so it's got a chance of working).

I really hope that all this is J-series specific (or just bad luck on
our part). It's scary to think that backbone operators have to jump
through similar hoops to get security fixes for their routers.

[Barry Greene]

Post by Richard A Steenbergen

Post by Florian Weimer
I'm a bit puzzled by the EOL policies. According to
<http://www.juniper.net/support/eol/junos.html>, JUNOS 8.5 has its
first transition event on 2010-11-16 (whatever "End of Engineering"
means). Therefore, I assume that the level of available customer
support is comparable to that of JUNOS 10.1 (with an event on
2010-11-15). However, self-service downloads for JUNOS 8.5 have not
been updated for years, despite intermediate security updates. The
situation for JUNOS 9.3 appears to be similar.

8.5 is an extended support release, so it has much longer support dates
than normal images, but they never make anything other than R1 R2 R3 and
R4 images available for download via the portal. You have to ask for a
service release to get anything newer.
As far as the definitions go, End of Engineering means they won't do any
more work on that branch of code, and End of Support seems to mean they
won't even make the files available for download. The other month we hit
a nasty bug affecting 9.5R4 a few days after it was released, and were
told that they wouldn't fix it in any 9.5 branch because it had already
reached EoE (which happened before 9.5R4 was even released). 9.6 seems
to be in a similar state, it has already reached EoE (on May 6th) but
9.6R4 isn't even out yet. Also I'm not sure what the date on the latest
8.5 service release is, but I don't think it's particularly current.
8.5S4 was the last one I saw, and it was dated Nov 2009.

Here is a standard verbiage:

-------
How to obtain Service Releases:

Security vulnerabilities are fixed in the next available Maintenance Release
of? each supported JUNOS version.? In some cases, a Maintenance Release is
not planned to be available in an appropriate time-frame.? For these cases,
Service Releases are made available in order to be more? timely. Security
Advisory notices will indicate which Maintenance and/or Service Releases
contain fixes for the issues described. Upon request to JTAC, customers will
be provided? download instructions for a Service Release.? Although Juniper
does not provide formal Release Note documentation for a Service Release, a?
list of "PRs fixed" can be provided on request.
-------

So the short answer is to open a JTAC Case if you need a service release.

The latest 8.5 service release is 8.5S8 - only built for the core products
(not for J-Series). Open a JTAC case if you need a 8.5S8 built for J-Series.


Barry