You’ll recall that back in December 2009 I wrote a post about the upcoming release of 7.0 software the the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600. At that time the software was in Controlled Availability (CA) and wasn’t expected to transition to General Availability (GA) until March 2010.

It seems that Nortel/Avaya are starting to get their ducks in a row as a draft version of the release notes hit Nortel’s support website over the past few days.

Here’s one known issue that grabbed my eye while browsing the release notes;

MLT/SMLT limitation(s)

Q01971344
In the case of a full-mesh SMLT configuration between 2 Clusters running OSPF (more likely an RSMLT configuration) because of the way that MLTs work in regards to CP generated traffic, it is highly recommended that the MLT port (or ports) that form the square leg of the mesh (versus the cross connect) be placed on lowered number slot/port, than the cross  connections. The reason for this is because CP generated traffic is always sent out on the lowered numbered ports en active. Using this recommendation will keep some OSPF adjancey up if all the links of the IST fail. Otherwise the switches which have a failed IST could lose complete OSPF adjancey to both switches in the other Cluster and therefore become isolated.

Cheers!