EthernetSwitch

Ethernet Switch 460 and 470 Software Release v3.7.5

2
July 11, 2010
by Michael McNamara in , ,

Avaya has released software 3.7.5 for the Ethernet Switch 460 and 470 switch models.

While there were no new features added but there were a number of bug fixes;

  • The status of the stack ports are now correctly displayed when interrogating the MIB for the stack (Q02082410)
  • If MAC addresses are quickly aged out of the forwarding database when the device is authenticated via Non-EAP memory is no longer memory incorrectly consumed (Q02090742)
  • Previously the ifOperStatus reported the status of the IP Management interface based on the port status. Now the switch reports status based on the virtual status of the IP Management VLAN, meaning that if any port in the management VLAN is up, then the status of the management VLAN is reported as up. (Q02114651)
  • The log events created on non-base units in a stack now correctly display the time when SNTP is enabled (Q02112485)
  • VLACP settings are now correctly set when operating in a stack and the VLACP parameters are defaulted (Q02069051)
  • When the member of a MLT group which was carrying multicast traffic is reset, IGMP membership is now correctly re-learnt without an unexpected delay of 40 second (Q02066898)
  • When IGMP Snooping and Proxy is enabled in a stack if the IGMP general query and IGMP host membership report are received on the same unit in the stack, IGMP packets are now correctly processed (Q02070898)

Please review the release notes for all the details.

Cheers!

Changing SNMP Community Strings

13
October 20, 2009
by Michael McNamara in , ,

In this day and age it’s not a very good idea to leave the default SNMP community strings configured in any network electronics. The general default configuration uses public for read-only and private for read-write, these defaults apply to  the Nortel Ethernet Switch and the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch.

You can certainly do this from Nortel’s Java Device Manager, however, you need to be careful that you don’t saw off the branch you’re standing on when you change the SNMP community string. It’s best to configure the SNMP community strings from the CLI interface to avoid any potential issues.

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 8600 and 1600 switch. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname first new-commname open
ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname second new-commname lock

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 4500, ERS 5500 and ES460/470 switches. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community open ro
5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community lock rw

Cheers!

Nortel ES 460/470 Software 3.7.4 Released

3
October 5, 2009
by Michael McNamara in ,

Nortel has released software 3.7.4 for the Ethernet Switch 460 and Ethernet Switch 470.  You’ll probably recall that Nortel pulled the 3.7.3 software release in May 2009 after several software memory leaks were discovered.

I should point out that you can’t just load 3.7.4 software if you are running software older than 3.5.4. You must upgrade the software in steps. Here’s the different versions that you need to step through; 2.x to 2.5 to 3.0 to 3.2.1 to 3.5.4 to 3.7.4.

Also of interest in the release notes is a comment regarding VLACP;

VLACP operation has been changed to match implementation on ERS modular and other stackable platforms with the latest software releases. A link for which VLACP is configured will remain in a blocked state until partnership is correctly formed with the VLACP partner (Q01799355).

I’m not sure what difference they are referring to… the wording makes it sound as though VLACP would initial start in forwarding mode and would only block the port once the timeout and retries had reached the configured threshold. I might need to dig a little deeper just out of curiosity.

You can find the release notes here.

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