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Posts tagged ERS5500
Nortel ERS 5500 Software 6.1 Available
Jun 5th
Nortel has released software 6.1for the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500/5600 series. Nortel has also released Java Device Manager 6.20 which provides support for managing switches running the newly released software.
There are a few features that I believe will be worth the effort to upgrade;
- IP Flow Information Export (IPFIX) licensing
IP Flow Information Export functionality is now part of the base functionality of the Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 Series. A separate license for this functionality is no longer necessary.
- Stack forced mode
When you enable this feature in a stack of two switches, on the failure of a unit, the remaining switch retains the stack IP address ensuring continued management access to the remaining unit. When Stack Forced Mode is enabled if the base unit remains, then AUR, AAUR and DAUR ensures that when a replacement unit is added to the base unit it is correctly provisioned.
There are also a large number of bug fixes which I really won’t go into here. One note of caution, you’ll need to be running software release 6.0 in order to upgrade to software release 6.1, you’ll also need to upgrade the diagnostic agent.
You can find the complete release notes on Nortel’s website.
Cheers!
Nortel ERS 5500 Software 5.1.4 Available
May 13th
Nortel has released software 5.1.4 for the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Series switches. While there are a number of bug fixes in this software release the one feature added involves and 802.1 AB MED enhancement.
The purpose of this feature is to allow an IP Phone to get voice traffic VLAN ID, DSCP and priority and tagged/untagged traffic type information through LLDP-MED Network Policy TLV.
While this new feature is completely outside of ADAC it does allow the assignment of different voice VLANs on a port by port basis. I would strongly recommend that anyone interested review the release notes for further details.
Cheers!
Reload command on Nortel Switches
Jan 18th
In today’s demanding business environments a lot of changes need to be made remotely and sometimes even the best laid plans go south. Thankfully Nortel offers the “reload” command in their Ethernet Switch and Ethernet Routing Switch series. I don’t believe the command is available for the 1600 or 8600 series. For those folks that are familiar with Cisco routers this command is identical although the syntax is different. If your making changes that could hang the switch or otherwise leave it improperly configured the reload command will automatically restart the switch after a specified interval has passed. If your configuration changes are successful you can cancel the reload command. If you somehow get disconnected from the switch you only need to wait until the switch reloads the original configuration.
ERS5520-PWR#reload ? cancel Cancel a previous scheduled reload force Do not ask for confirmation minutes-to-wait Minutes to wait before reboot <cr>
Cheers!
Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 Stack Troubleshooting
Jul 31st
In a previous post entitled, “Ethernet Switch 470 Stack Troubleshooting“, I discussed how to troubleshoot stacking issues between Ethernet Switch 470 switches and I highlighted some caveats that can prevent switches from stacking properly. As I mentioned in that post I wanted to cover the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series and provide some basic troubleshooting steps for those.
Let me start by telling you (if you don’t know already) that you can’t stack Ethernet Switch 460/470s with the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500. You also can’t use the Ethernet Switch 460/470 cascade cables with the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series switches.
The Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series has the same basic LEDs as the Ethernet Switch 470, Up, Down, Base, etc. A green light indicates that everything is good while an amber or no light indicates a problem. I’ve found the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series to be much easier switch to stack for a number of reasons. One long overdue feature that is now available in the ERS 5500 series is automatic firmware/software upgrade. You can add a switch to the stack and the base unit will automatically push the running firmware/software to the recently added switch. You may need to be running at least v4.2 software for this to work although I’ve been unable to confirm as of yet.
Another feature is the ability to run loopback testing of the cascade/stack ports while the switch is running the agent software, there’s no need to reboot the switch and start the diagnostic code. You can also physically test the cable by looping it between the up and down stack ports (on the same switch) and the LEDs for both ports (Up and Down) should turn amber. If they both don’t turn amber you’ve got a problem somewhere, either with the cable or with the cascade module in the switch itself.
I should note that there was also a recall by Nortel on various cascade cables manufactured in 2005. If you have any cascade cables that have an “/05″ designation on them you might want to contact Nortel to see if those cables were recalled. As a side note to that I recently discovered 7 cables out of 10 that were defective out of the box. They had the manufactured date of “11212007″ on the bag.
5520-48T-PWR#stack loopback-test internal Testing uplink port ... Ok Testing downlink port ... Ok Internal loopback test PASSED 5520-48T-PWR#stack loopback-test external External loopback test PASSED.
Cheers!
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