Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 NVRAM Flash memory wear

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Avaya/Nortel has released a technical support bulletin documenting an issue that may arise regarding the NVRAM (flash memory) on the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500.

Apparently the auto-save feature may be exhausting the number of writes that the physical flash memory is capable of. If the switch is configured with MAC address security, a feature that could possibility be causing the auto-save feature to write the configuration hundreds if not thousands of times, the flash memory may surfer from extreme “memory wear” and cease functioning properly.

Thankfully there is a “second” NVRAM flash block available.

I would highly suggest that everyone review the bulletin for themselves.

It might be wise to disable the auto-save feature and have the technicians/engineers manually save any configuration changes when necessary (similar to how Cisco switches/routers work).

Cheers!

Aspect pitching Nortel customers

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Aspect AdvertisementOver the past few weeks you may have noticed the Aspect advertisements (see copy left) all over this blog and the discussion forums. This evening I decided to take a look at Aspect’s advertising campaign and fine out what all the excitement was about.

Aspect is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, March 9th at 11:00AM EST / 8:00AM PST hoping to discuss with current and future potential customers how the integration of the Nortel and Avaya product lines might affect them.

Aspect is a well known provider of large contact center solutions. I hope to personally listen in and see what Aspect has to say. I’d be curious if/how Aspect will also be pushing their Unified Communications solutions.

Cheers!

Nortel VPN Client Release 10.04.016 for Windows 7

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Nortel has released version 10.04.016 of their VPN client that now supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. This single client supports the following operating systems (in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions);

  • Windows 7: Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate
  • Vista: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate
  • XP: Home, Professional, and Tablet

There are quite a few resolved bugs in this release and quite a few known issues. I would advise everyone to read the release notes thoroughly before spending too much time troubleshooting.

You can find the actual NVC (Nortel VPN Client) on the Nortel/Avaya website and the release notes here.

Cheers!

Updated September 2, 2010
It would seem that this is a very popular post given the number of people searching for information regarding the Nortel VPN Client (NVC) and Microsoft Windows 7. I’ve uploaded the complete documentation archive containing the installation instructions and troubleshooting instructions. In addition if you are looking for the new NVC you can download it directly from Nortel here. While the client software isn’t “licensed” it is restricted by US export laws because of it’s 128-bit (and greater) encryption capabilities.
Updated Friday December 17, 2010

I’ve added links to the 32-bit and 64-bit clients in the comments below.

Updated Sunday April 10, 2011

I can no longer host the Avaya VPN client software do to the enormous bandwidth utilization on my host. In addition there are just too many people abusing my gesture. I had a single IP address from China download the client software so many times that it consumed 10GB of bandwidth.

Updated Saturday May 7, 2011

Avaya has released v10.04.109 of their VPN client software which is available in this post.

UNIStim Firmware Release 4.1 for Avaya IP Phones

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Avaya has released UNIStim 4.1 for their IP phones;

  • 0621C7D for 2007 IP Deskphone,
  • 0623C7J, 0624C7J, 0625C7J, 0627C7J and 0626C7J for 1110, 1120E, 1140E, 1150E and 1165E IP Deskphones respectively and
  • 062AC7J for 1200 Series IP Deskphones

UNIStim 4.1 adds the following features;

  • UNIStim 4.0 functionality delivered onto the 1165E IP Deskphone
  • Quality improvements to Secure Signaling using DTLS
  • Adjustable open-microphone warning tone during Zone Paging
  • UNIStim VPN client interoperability extended to include Avaya VPN Gateways

The two product bulletins covering the software release can be found here and here.

Notice any formatting differences between the two bulletins?

Cheers!

Avaya ERS 8600 Software 7.0 Draft Release Notes

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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!

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