technology, networking, virtualization and IP telephony
In a move that I support Nortel has pulled 5.1 and 5.1.1 software for the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 from their support website. The purpose behind removing the older software releases is to help remove the confusion surrounding which software folks should be upgrading to. I’m personally running 5.1.1 on two ERS8606 switches which have been running for almost 60 days now and I haven’t seen any issues or problems.
You can find the bulletin here.
Cheers!
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.
You’d never guess that Nortel is in bankruptcy with all the software releases that keep flying off the shelves.
Nortel has released software 6.0.4 for the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch 5000 series switches. The new “Health Monitor” features are designed to improve the stability of multiple switches running in a stack configuration. I also noticed that one problem reported here on this blog by a vistor has been resolved;
You can find the release notes at the Nortel website.
Cheers!
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;
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 has released software 4.1.8.3 for the Ethernet Routing Switch 8600 that addresses a few issues that were identified since the previous release.
Switch management
Repeated SSH sessions, with CLI command logging enabled, could potentially lock up and no longer allow any other connections to the node. JDM or console access could be still available initially and further lost as well once attempting to run any output command. This problem could lead to a complete Switch Fabric card software lockup. (Q02001015)Platform
The 10GE ports on an 8683XLR card may flap for traffic rates at or very close to line rate. (Q01860167)SMLT/Layer 2 switching
There can be a discrepancy in the ARP tables between IST peers where one peer has invalid or duplicate ARP entries, ARP entries with a negative TTL value or ARP entries which do not appear to be aging. (Q01999818)
After an IST MLT is flapped or the IST Peer is rebooted, invalid ARP entries can get repated on the IST Peer for a MAC that is present in multiple VLANs. (Q01992234). ARP entries are found to be persistently learned on the IST-MLT link while the FDB entries for the associated MAC addresses were properly learned on the SMLT links when multiple MLT/SMLTs returned to service at about the same time causing an overlap in IST synchronization for those MLTs/SMLTs.(Q01996928)
You can find the complete release notes here.
Cheers!