Description

This article discusses the difference between using gigether-options and ether-options hierarchies when creating a Redundant Ethernet (Reth) or an Aggregated Ethernet (AE) interface on an SRX series firewall.

 

Symptoms

When creating a Reth or an AE interface, you could use either the gigether-options or ether-options hierarchy on the child interfaces as shown below:

  • Configuring a Reth interface using ether-options : 

set interfaces et-1/0/0 ether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-1/0/1 ether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-8/0/0 ether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-8/0/1 ether-options redundant-parent reth0

  • Configuring a Reth interface using gigether-options : 

set interfaces et-1/0/0 gigether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-1/0/1 gigether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-8/0/0 gigether-options redundant-parent reth0
set interfaces et-8/0/1 gigether-options redundant-parent reth0

 

Solution

Regarding redundancy (Reth/AE interfaces), there is no difference between the two hierarchies. The two hierarchies are strictly for the options available for L1 negotiation parameters such as speed and link type. gigether-options gives you more control over things that today should not be manually configured such as link duplex or straight cable versus crossover. ether-options is more of a legacy option.

Even though both hierarchies can be used when configuring a Reth or an AE interface, only one of them is to be used on all child interfaces that are part of the Reth or AE interface; else a commit error will be displayed. Juniper documents for configuring Reth and AE interfaces on SRX series use the gigether-options hierarchy: