technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony
Nortel 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!
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.
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!
We recently started deploying the Nortel IP 2050 Softphone v3.x for our work-from-home Contact Center agent pilot. With software release v3.x or higher you need a licensing server somewhere in your network. That means that yes you need to purchase licenses for all your concurrent 2050 users. It’s my understanding that Nortel has licensed various technologies in the 2050 that required it to deploy a licensing server as set forth in the licensing agreements with the various third parties.
We chose to deploy the Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server on the same server that where we had the Nortel Enterprise Management System (NMS) application and the Nortel Enterprise Switch Manager (ESM) application already installed.
If your testing out the solution there’s no need to worry about needing a licensing server on day one as each installation of the 2050 comes with a 30 day demo/evaluation license.
After you have installed the License Server you’ll need to replace the file “counted.lic” in C:\Program Files\Nortel\IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server (or where ever you’ve installed the software) with the license file you received from your reseller.
You can issue a “lmstat -a” from the installation director and it will output the number of total licenses installed and the number of available licenses. When you add licenses you just need to replace the file “counted.lic” and then restart the “Nortel IP Softphone 2050 Licensing Server Service” service.
Cheers!
It’s quite clear from the poll (included below) that the vast majority of Nortel customers were originally very content to take a “wait and see” approach to the bankruptcy filing. I created that poll on January 15, 2009. It’s now March 29, 2009 more than 90 days later and I get the impression that a lot of folks are really scratching their heads. I would almost be curious to see how many folks have changed their mind in the last 90+ days.
[poll id=”4″ type=”result”]
There are all sorts of rumors around the street these days… everything from a sale to a complete divestiture of the company and it’s assets. While it appears that it’s still business as usual at Nortel (product is readily available, new software releases are being released, support is still responsive) you have to wonder what’s going on and what the end game might look like.
I’ve personally had Brocade (Foundry), Cisco, HP, and Juniper in to discuss their enterprise product offers around LAN/WAN routing/switching. We have quite a few small and large projects that are literally in limbo and I’m not sure how much more uncertainty we (I) as a customer can withstand. I’m curious to what people think today about Nortel?
[poll id=”5″]
I’m interested in hearing your comments and/or thoughts?
Cheers!
We recently started deploying RSMLT in place of VRRP and have run into very few problems. With that said there is one option that is disabled by default that is a must for anyone running in an RSMLT configuration. Since the peer IP addresses are learned dynamically a problem can occur if both ERS 8600 switches go down but only one of them returns to service. In my environment we’ve been using .1 and .2 for our ERS8600 interfaces with DHCP serving up .1 as the default gateway. If the .1 ERS8600 never recovers the .2 ERS8600 will never be able to learn the IP peer interface and hence will not be able to answer requests for .1 from the DHCP clients.
I would advise anyone using RSMLT to enable rsmlt-edge-support with the following command; config ip rsmlt rsmlt-edge-support enable. You will need to be running software release 4.1.4 or later.
RSMLT implementation does not use a Virtual IP address but instead uses Physical IP addresses for redundancy. At the same time, RSMLT can be deployed in either L3/routed configurations, or L2/edge configurations, where previously one might have used VRRP (and back-up master). Now previously, if there was a power outage or shutdown of both switches within a Dual Core IST pair and for some reason only one switch came back-up, clients using the powered-off switch’s IP/MAC as their default gateway would lose connectivity to the network. In such a scenario, even through RSMLT is enabled on the switch it was unable to backup for the Peer as it was unaware of the Peer’s IP/MAC address. With this new feature, the RSMLT Peer’s IP and MAC addresses are stored in the config file and will be used upon next reboot, if the IST link does not become active and operational. Otherwise, the switches will learn from their Peer as normal; see below for additional information.
This feature can be enabled/disabled by the following CLI command:
config ip rsmlt rsmlt-edge-support <enable/disable>
When the configuration file is saved, if the rsmlt-edge-support flag is enabled and RSMLT peer is UP, the peer IP address and MAC address is also automatically saved.
The peer information is cleared by the following CLI command.
config ip rsmlt clear-rsmlt-peer [<vlanId>]
NOTE: if the peer information is cleared the switch could stop forwarding for the peer.
After both the Dual Core IST switches have come back-up, and if the IST comes up and is operational, if a RSMLT Peer enabled message is received from the peer, then normal RSMLT operation is followed. If the peer has either an IP or MAC change, then a new save config must be performed in order for the new information to be saved, and RSMLT L2 Edge support to operate correctly. However, if the IST Peer up message is not received (for example RSMLT is not enabled properly) and the rsmltedge- forward flag is enabled, then first the RSMLT Hold down timer is started to allow routing protocols to converge; during this time user operation could be affected. Once the hold down timer expires, saved peer information is picked up and Switch starts to backup for the Peer by adding the previously saved MAC and ARP records. The Holdup timer is then started and once this timer expires the previously added MAC and ARP records are deleted and the switch stops backing up for the Peer, as the Peer is not running proper RSMLT for the VLAN. It should be noted that RSMLT is a per VLAN parameter, and therefore all affects are on a per VLAN basis, not necessarily per switch. In L2 Edge support mode the Local values of the HoldDown timer (default value of 60 seconds) and HoldUp timer (default value of 180 seconds) will be used.
Cheers!