Michael McNamara

technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony

Ethernet Switch 460 and 470 Software Release v3.7.5

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Avaya has released software 3.7.5 for the Ethernet Switch 460 and 470 switch models.

While there were no new features added but there were a number of bug fixes;

  • The status of the stack ports are now correctly displayed when interrogating the MIB for the stack (Q02082410)
  • If MAC addresses are quickly aged out of the forwarding database when the device is authenticated via Non-EAP memory is no longer memory incorrectly consumed (Q02090742)
  • Previously the ifOperStatus reported the status of the IP Management interface based on the port status. Now the switch reports status based on the virtual status of the IP Management VLAN, meaning that if any port in the management VLAN is up, then the status of the management VLAN is reported as up. (Q02114651)
  • The log events created on non-base units in a stack now correctly display the time when SNTP is enabled (Q02112485)
  • VLACP settings are now correctly set when operating in a stack and the VLACP parameters are defaulted (Q02069051)
  • When the member of a MLT group which was carrying multicast traffic is reset, IGMP membership is now correctly re-learnt without an unexpected delay of 40 second (Q02066898)
  • When IGMP Snooping and Proxy is enabled in a stack if the IGMP general query and IGMP host membership report are received on the same unit in the stack, IGMP packets are now correctly processed (Q02070898)

Please review the release notes for all the details.

Cheers!

Changing SNMP Community Strings

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In this day and age it’s not a very good idea to leave the default SNMP community strings configured in any network electronics. The general default configuration uses public for read-only and private for read-write, these defaults apply to  the Nortel Ethernet Switch and the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch.

You can certainly do this from Nortel’s Java Device Manager, however, you need to be careful that you don’t saw off the branch you’re standing on when you change the SNMP community string. It’s best to configure the SNMP community strings from the CLI interface to avoid any potential issues.

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 8600 and 1600 switch. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname first new-commname open
ERS-8610:5# config snmp-v3 community commname second new-commname lock

Here are the CLI commands to configure the SNMP community strings on the ERS 4500, ERS 5500 and ES460/470 switches. In the example below we’ll set the read-only string to open and the read-write string to lock.

5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community open ro
5520-48T-PWR (config)# snmp-server community lock rw

Cheers!

Nortel ES 460/470 Software 3.7.4 Released

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Nortel has released software 3.7.4 for the Ethernet Switch 460 and Ethernet Switch 470.  You’ll probably recall that Nortel pulled the 3.7.3 software release in May 2009 after several software memory leaks were discovered.

I should point out that you can’t just load 3.7.4 software if you are running software older than 3.5.4. You must upgrade the software in steps. Here’s the different versions that you need to step through; 2.x to 2.5 to 3.0 to 3.2.1 to 3.5.4 to 3.7.4.

Also of interest in the release notes is a comment regarding VLACP;

VLACP operation has been changed to match implementation on ERS modular and other stackable platforms with the latest software releases. A link for which VLACP is configured will remain in a blocked state until partnership is correctly formed with the VLACP partner (Q01799355).

I’m not sure what difference they are referring to… the wording makes it sound as though VLACP would initial start in forwarding mode and would only block the port once the timeout and retries had reached the configured threshold. I might need to dig a little deeper just out of curiosity.

You can find the release notes here.

Nortel ES 460/470 Software 3.7.3 Pulled

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Nortel has pulled software release 3.7.3 for their Ethernet Switch 460/470s from their website due to a potential memory leak. I’ve included a few details of the bulletin below;

Background:
A memory leak condition that in some cases has been shown to impact the functionality of the switch has been identified in software release 3.7.3 for the Ethernet Switch 470. This memory leak condition can result in a loss of CLI access and may result in degradation of network operation. This issue has been observed at 2 customer sites and as a result Nortel
has taken the proactive measure to remove the image from the Nortel support portal. The issue is tracked under CRQ02014086

Analysis:
The issue is due to memory leak. Nortel is currently investigating the issue, but no root cause has yet been determined. Investigations are on going and a replacement code will be posted as soon as a resolution is available. The symptom of the issue may include the following: Unable to access CLI from the Menu Interface or very slow CLI response. Additionally the switch may exhibit connectivity problems from Device Manager (JDM). As the condition progresses the switch may become unmanageable which could result in stack instability. This stack instability could then lead to reduced functionality and disruption to network traffic. To recover the switch from the memory leak condition a reboot needs to be perfomed. To determine if your switch is impacted, if you monitor the memory usage of the switch you will notice that the available free memory continues to decrease. Memory usage can be monitored from the CLI using the ‘mem-show’ command. On affected networks the free-blocks displayed by the ‘show-mem’ command will continue to decrease the longer the switch
is up.

ES470#mem-show
status bytes blocks avg block max block
——- ——— ——– ———- ———-
current
  free 4786688 147 32562 4743452 <<< number will keep decreasing
  alloc 3086928 7348 420 –
cumulative
  alloc 9979152 30147 331 –

You may also observce the following repeated messages on the local console (serial port) as additional indicators of the issue:

0x1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0x177e510.
0x1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0x177e510.
0x1e65734 (tLLDP): memPartAlloc: block too big – 1522 in partition 0x177e510.

You can find the entire bulletin here.

Cheers!

Reload command on Nortel Switches

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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!

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