Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Nortel ERS 8600 Software 5.1 Available

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Nortel has released software 5.1 for the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600. This new software release promises the following new software features;

• Multicast virtualization for VRF-Lite (IGMP, PIM-SM, and PIM-SSM)
• Multicast Source Discovery Protocol (MSDP)
• IGMPv3 backward compatibility
• Multicast Static IP Route (mroute)
• Static RP enhancement for PIM-SM
• Standards-based MIBs for multicast
• Multicast routing process statistics
• IPv6 support for FTP, TFTP, and rlogin
• TACACS+
• Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD)
• Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) Minimum Link
• DDI software support
• Time zone offset enhancement
• ping and traceroute source IP enhancement
• SMLT/RSMLT operational improvements
• IPFIX enhancement
• Nortel Automatic QoS
• New operation for corrupt configuration loading
• Core dumps

I’m really happy to finally see TACACS+ support in the 8600. Now if we could only get TACACS+ support in all the other switches as well.

You can find the release notes at Nortel’s website. The release notes are quite lengthy but are worth the time to read.

Note: I’ve been told that the LANE lockup issues in all the GBR/GBRS/GTRS modules were resolved in software release 5.0.1.0. Unfortunately I don’t have any GBRS/GRTS modules so I can’t personally confirm.

Cheers!
Updated: Saturday May 23, 2009

You’ll need to upgrade to Nortel’s Java Device Manger v6.1.8 or later to manage an Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 running software v5.1.0

Nortel ERS 5500 Software 5.1.4 Available

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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!

Where’s the content?

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Yes I’m admitting that I need to post some new content here…

I’ve literally been wrapped up in a large (400+ handset) Nortel IP Telephony deployment not to mention dozens of other projects including such topics as virtualization and managed data center design. In the coming months I’ll also be participating in designing and setting up a 25 user pilot of Microsoft Office Communication Server and integrating it with the Nortel Succession 1000 platform.

I know a lot of us are also sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see what will happen with Nortel. I heard a few rumors that something should be announced with the next week or two but only time will tell.

Thanks for reading!

Nortel ERS 8600 Software 5.0.1.0 Available

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ers8006_loNortel has released software 5.0.1.0 for the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600. This software promises to bring forward all the fixes/changes introduced in the 4.1.8.2 code along with support for virtualization and the new RS modules.

You can find the release notes here at Nortel’s website.

I’ve been running 5.0.1.0 in a testlab environment between a cluster of ERS 8600 switches (IST/SMLT) for the past 30+ days without any issues or problems.

Cheers!

Nortel Java Device Manager Tips

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I hope the majority of folks out there can agree with me when I say that Nortel’s Java Device Manager was a large step up from Nortel’s Site Manager application. While I personally do the majority of my work in the CLI interface, Device Manager is a very useful tool to have around.

I really like the fact that you can launch either a telnet or SSH session straight from Device Manager. Over the years I’ve found PuTTY to be the best terminal application so I configured Device Manager to call PuTTY for telnet and SSH connections.

jdm-options

After opening Device Manager select Device -> Properties -> Current. Select “User-Defined” for both Telnet and SSH and then place “C:\Program Files\PuTTY\putty.exe” (or wherever you have PuTTY installed) into option box and then use “-telnet <ip>” for telnet sessions and “-ssh <ip>” for SSH sessions (see figure above).

Another problem you can sometimes run into with Device Manager is the relative easy with which you can mistakenly delete a row (interface, VLAN, ACL, etc). Thankfully there is an option within JDM that you can enable called “Confirm row deletion” (see figure above).

Cheers!

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