Posts tagged ERS

Nortel Lifetime Stackable ERS Warranty

Jul 6th

Posted by Michael McNamara in Nortel

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Nortel has announced that it is extending the warranty service on it’s entire line of stackable Ethernet Routing Switches to include next-business-day replacement. This is only available on purchases made after July 1, 2009. Nortel already had a lifetime hardware warranty in place that required you to return any defective units for depot service which would generally take about 10 business days.

There are quite a few vendors now including lifetime hardware replacement on their products although I’m not sure many of them are offering advanced next-business-day replacements.

You can read all about it over at Nortel’s website.

Cheers!

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VLACP on a Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch Stack

Jan 4th

Posted by Michael McNamara in EthernetRtngSwitch

13 comments

I’ve seen quite a few issues with VLACP on the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switches but now Nortel has released a technical bulletin documenting a known issue when running VLACP on their stackable switches (ERS2500, ERS4500, ERS5500, ERS5600) with their chassis based ERS8300 and ERS8600 switches.

The bulletin advises users to re-configure the VLACP timeout from a default value of 3 to 5.

5520-48T-PWR(config)#interface fastEthernet 5-6
5520-48T-PWR(config-if)#vlacp timeout-scale 5
5520-48T-PWR(config-if)#show vlacp interface 5-6
===============================================================================
VLACP Information
===============================================================================
PORT ADMIN OPER HAVE FAST SLOW TIMEOUT TIMEOUT ETH MAC
ENABLED ENABLED PARTNER TIME TIME TYPE SCALE TYPE ADDRESS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5 true true yes 500 30000 short 5 8103 00:00:00:00:00:00
6 true true yes 500 30000 short 5 8103 00:00:00:00:00:00

The bulletin also refers to a software fix in ERS 2500 v4.2.1, ERS4500 v5.2.1 and ERS5500/5600 v6.0.2 or later maintenance releases.

We really only use VLACP as a means of detecting FEFI when the switch equipment doesn’t support autonegotiation (example; Nortel Ethernet Switch 470 doesn’t support autonegotiation on the 1000Mbps uplinks).

Cheers!

Update: Friday February 13, 2009

It seems that Nortel has released software 6.0.3 for the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500/5600 series switches. This release is suppose to resolve the VLACP issues that were reported in the earlier bulletin. Here’s an excerpt from the release notes;

A feature enhancement (Q01645430) that changed the VLACP interoperability behavior with Passport 8600 was removed. For further details, please see the Technical Support Bulletin ID. 2008009238, Rev 1, published on 2008-12-12.

Cheers!

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Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Software Release 6.0

Dec 15th

Posted by Michael McNamara in EthernetRtngSwitch

2 comments

ers_5600_stackleft_800x593Nortel has released a new version of software for the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 that adds quite a few new software features along with support for the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5600 Series.

I’ve posted the release notes for those that are interested in browsing them. I thought I would note that there is a  resolved issue in 6.0 for people experiencing problems with ADAC changing the port PVID.

Here are the five new ERS 5600 models;

• Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5698-TFD
• Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5698-TFD-PWR
• Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5650-TD
• Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5650-TD-PWR
• Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5632-FD

Just don’t try to manage that 6.0 switch with an older version of Nortel’s Java Device Manager. Device Manager support for the ERS5500 and ERS5600 v6.0.0 will be in Java Device Manager v6.1.6 targeted for availability from www.nortel.com by 2008-12-19.

Cheers!

Update: Sunday December 21, 2008
Nortel has now released software v6.0.1 for the Nortel ERS 5500/5600 series.

Cheers!

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