This is really great document that helps to outline the best practices when deploying an IST/SMLT configuration within your network.

Here’s the summary of the document updates for March 2011;

March 2011 – Added recommendation to use MLT advance mode on edge Ayava stackable switches when used with ERS 8000 square/full mesh topologies for IP based traffic. Changed VSP CP Limit configuration from port level to MLT level. VRRP hold-down timers can be set in the ERS 5000 6.2 release.

It’s well worth the read in my opinion.

Cheers!

Thankfully Avaya has done something that I truly applaud them for, something that Nortel always had issues with either allowing or executing (not completely sure which it was). What am I talking about you ask? Avaya allows Google to index their support website with all those juicy technical configuration guides. You only need to ask Google to show you the light;

http://www.google.com/search?q=technical%20configuration%20guide%20site%3Asupport.avaya.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&source=hp&channel=np

You can either enter the following query or you can click on the link above;

technical configuration guide site:support.avaya.com

So while Greg over at Etherealmind is complaining about Cisco’s website I’ve found my way around Avaya’s website thanks in no small part to Google. I’m not sure why Greg doesn’t just use Google himself?

Cheers!

If you are working with Nortel/Avaya switches I highly recommend that you review this document.

Cheers!

There’s a lot of great technical information in this document including a lot of recommendations and best practices.

Cheers!

• Communication Server 1000 6.0 SIP Trunking with Quest
• Communication Server 1000 6.0 SIP Trunking with Colt
• Communication Server 1000 5.5 SIP Trunking with AT&T VoEVPN
• Communication Server 1000 6.0 SIP Trunking with Verizon Business

I’ve been very busy as of late with work and hope to write some original posts very soon.

Cheers!

I figured I’d better not skip the Bell Canada document for fear of upsetting my Canadian readers. ;)

I’m really excited to see Avaya providing this information to both their resellers and customers. I’d like to thank those that wrote and lobbied for these documents within Avaya. It’s extremely encouraging to see Avaya willing to empower their users so they can leverage their products and investments to their fullest.

Cheers!

Cheers!

I personally used Paetec a few years ago as a local CLEC where they had been providing local and long distance toll access for a number of our facilities over traditional T1/PRI access lines.

Cheers!

If you are looking for a great resource on BGP I would highly recommend O’Reilly’s book titled BGP.

If you are looking for Avaya/Nortel specific information concerning their BGP implement then you are in luck. Avaya has a technical configuration guide for the ERS 8600 that focuses on BGP. While this is an older document (November 2007) it still does a great job of providing a number of configuration examples and explaining the basics.

In the near future I might need to use an ERS 8606 as an Internet router. I’ll need to peer with the ISP since I’m multi-home to independent Internet Service Providers, although I’m not sure if the 8692SF can handle a full BGP routing table. Has anyone ever tried to feeding a full (or partial) BGP routing table from the Internet to an ERS 8800/8600 switch?

Cheers!

Is the Ethernet Routing Switch 5510/5520/5530 capable of performing basic IP filtering? Yes.

Prior to software release 5.0 you had to-do all filtering in QoS policies. It seems a lot of confusion comes from the fact that in order to perform IP filtering similar to an ACL in a Cisco router you had to create a QoS policy. With the release of 5.0 software you can now create fairly straight forward ACLs. You can only do this from the CLI or WEB interface, there’s no support for ACLs in Java Device Manager.

Let me walk you through a simple example.

I started with a ERS-5520-PwR and factory reset the switch I gave it a management IP address of 192.168.1.50 (VLAN 1);

5520-48T-PWR(config)#ip address switch 192.168.1.50
5520-48T-PWR(config)#ip default-gateway 192.168.1.1
5520-48T-PWR(config)#ip address netmask 255.255.255.0

I created VLAN 100 and moved ports 13-48 to VLAN 100 making sure to set the PVID;

5520-48T-PWR(config)#vlan members remove 1 13-48
5520-48T-PWR(config)#vlan create 100 type port
5520-48T-PWR(config)#vlan members add 100 14-48
5520-48T-PWR(config)#vlan ports 13-48 pvid 100

I enabled IP routing on the switch (remember out of the box it’s just a Layer 2 switch);

5520-48T-PWR(config)#ip routing

I enabled IP routing for VLAN 1 and then gave VLAN 100 an IP address/interface;

5520-48T-PWR(config)#interface vlan 1
5520-48T-PWR(config-if)#ip routing
5520-48T-PWR(config)#exit

5520-48T-PWR(config)#interface vlan 100
5520-48T-PWR(config-if)#ip address 192.168.100.1 255.255.255.0 2
5520-48T-PWR(config-if)#ip routing
5520-48T-PWR(config)#exit

Let’s just making sure that everything looks right before we get the real meat of this post;

5520-48T-PWR#show vlan ip
==============================================================================
Vid  ifIndex Address         Mask            MacAddress        Offset Routing
==============================================================================
Primary Interfaces
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1    10001   192.168.1.50    255.255.255.0   00:1F:0A:CE:XX:40 1      Enabled
100  10100   192.168.100.1   255.255.255.0   00:1F:0A:CE:XX:41 2      Enabled
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
% Total of Primary Interfaces: 2

The two IP interfaces are configured properly and have routing enabled. Let’s make sure that the routing table is correct;

5520-48T-PWR#show ip route
===============================================================================
                                        Ip Route
===============================================================================
DST             MASK            NEXT            COST    VLAN PORT PROT TYPE PRF
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0.0.0.0         0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     10       1    1     S  IB     5
192.168.1.0     255.255.255.0   192.168.1.50    1        1    ----  C  DB     0
192.168.100.0   255.255.255.0   192.168.100.1   1        100  ----  C  DB     0
Total Routes: 3
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TYPE Legend:
I=Indirect Route, D=Direct Route, A=Alternative Route, B=Best Route, E=Ecmp Route, U=Unresolved Route, N=Not in HW

Here’s where the real work starts. I created an ACL named “testacl” and then assigned it to port 23.

5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos ip-acl name testacl src-ip 192.168.100.0/24 protocol 6 dst-port-min 80 dst-port-max 80
5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos ip-acl name testacl drop-action enable
5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos acl-assign port 23 acl-type ip name testacl

In the statements above I created an ACL that will allow traffic sourced from 192.168.100.0/24 to a destination TCP port of 80 to pass unrestricted while blocking (dropping) all other traffic. I’ve assigned that ACL to port 23 where I have a test PC connected to the switch.

Let’s just pretend that you forgot to allow DNS (UDP/53) queries in your IP filter so let’s back out the ACL and recreate it.

First we need to determine the ACL number that was assigned to our ACL called “testacl”.  We can do that by issuing the following command;

5520-48T-PWR#show qos acl
Id               Name              State   ACL  Unit/Port Storage
Type             Type
_____ ____________________________ ________ ____ _________ ________
1     testacl                      Enabled  IP   1/23      NonVol

We also need to know how many rules are in the IP ACL that’s being referenced above. We can do that with the following command;

5520-48T-PWR#show qos ip-acl

Id: 1
Name: testacl
Block:
Address Type: IPv4
Destination Addr/Mask: Ignore
Source Addr/Mask: 192.168.100.0/24
DSCP: Ignore
IPv4 Protocol / IPv6 Next Header: TCP
Destination L4 Port Min: 80
Destination L4 Port Max: 80
Source L4 Port Min: Ignore
Source L4 Port Max: Ignore
IPv6 Flow Id: Ignore
Action Drop: No
Action Update DSCP: Ignore
Action Update 802.1p Priority: Ignore
Action Set Drop Precedence: Low Drop
Type: Access List
Storage Type: NonVolatile

Id: 2
Name: testacl
Block:
Address Type: IPv4
Destination Addr/Mask: Ignore
Source Addr/Mask: Ignore
DSCP: Ignore
IPv4 Protocol / IPv6 Next Header: Ignore
Destination L4 Port Min: Ignore
Destination L4 Port Max: Ignore
Source L4 Port Min: Ignore
Source L4 Port Max: Ignore
IPv6 Flow Id: Ignore
Action Drop: Yes
Action Update DSCP: Ignore
Action Update 802.1p Priority: Ignore
Action Set Drop Precedence: Low Drop
Type: Access List
Storage Type: NonVolatile

Now we can remove the ACL from port 23 and then delete it from the switch;

5520-48T-PWR(config)#no qos acl-assign 1
5520-48T-PWR(config)#no qos ip-acl 2
5520-48T-PWR(config)#no qos ip-acl 1

Now we’ll rebuild the ACL allowing DNS queries to the broadband router;

5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos ip-acl name testacl src-ip 192.168.100.0/24 protocol 6 dst-port-min 80 dst-port-max 80
5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos ip-acl name testacl src-ip 192.168.100.0/24 dst-ip 192.168.1.1/32 protocol 17 dst-port-min 53 dst-port-max 53
5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos ip-acl name testacl drop-action enable
5520-48T-PWR(config)#qos acl-assign port 23 acl-type ip name testacl

Now that we have our filter let’s see what it looks like (I’m not a fan of this output format);

5520-48T-PWR#show qos ip-acl

Id: 1
Name: testacl
Block:
Address Type: IPv4
Destination Addr/Mask: Ignore
Source Addr/Mask: 192.168.100.0/24
DSCP: Ignore
IPv4 Protocol / IPv6 Next Header: TCP
Destination L4 Port Min: 80
Destination L4 Port Max: 80
Source L4 Port Min: Ignore
Source L4 Port Max: Ignore
IPv6 Flow Id: Ignore
Action Drop: No
Action Update DSCP: Ignore
Action Update 802.1p Priority: Ignore
Action Set Drop Precedence: Low Drop
Type: Access List
Storage Type: NonVolatile

Id: 2
Name: testacl
Block:
Address Type: IPv4
Destination Addr/Mask: 192.168.1.1/32
Source Addr/Mask: 192.168.100.0/24
DSCP: Ignore
IPv4 Protocol / IPv6 Next Header: UDP
Destination L4 Port Min: 53
Destination L4 Port Max: 53
Source L4 Port Min: Ignore
Source L4 Port Max: Ignore
IPv6 Flow Id: Ignore
Action Drop: No
Action Update DSCP: Ignore
Action Update 802.1p Priority: Ignore
Action Set Drop Precedence: Low Drop
Type: Access List
Storage Type: NonVolatile

Id: 3
Name: testacl
Block:
Address Type: IPv4
Destination Addr/Mask: Ignore
Source Addr/Mask: Ignore
DSCP: Ignore
IPv4 Protocol / IPv6 Next Header: Ignore
Destination L4 Port Min: Ignore
Destination L4 Port Max: Ignore
Source L4 Port Min: Ignore
Source L4 Port Max: Ignore
IPv6 Flow Id: Ignore
Action Drop: Yes
Action Update DSCP: Ignore
Action Update 802.1p Priority: Ignore
Action Set Drop Precedence: Low Drop
Type: Access List
Storage Type: NonVolatile

That’s a basic ACL filter using Layer 3 parameters. There is a Technical Configuration Guide available from Nortel/Avaya that provides additional examples and covers Filtering and QoS configuration of the Ethernet Routing Switch 5500 series switches. The guide is a little dated by still a very useful resource in my opinion.

Cheers!

Reference;
2008_04_01_Filters_and_QOS_Configurati0on_for_Ethernet_Routing_Switch_5500_TCG_NN48500559.pdf

I’m curious if anyone out there is using Avaya’s IP Flow Manager and has any thoughts and/or comments to share.

I remember a few folks either here or on the forums commenting that they were using nTop to collect the IPFIX flow information. Anyone have any thoughts about nTop/nProbe?

Cheers!

It’s definitely well worth the time to review.

Cheers!

I should point out that this document covers the Nortel Succession Call Server 1000 v6.0 software. While this document obviously can’t cover every possibility it does a great job of getting your feet wet and is welcome addition to my library.

You can find the document here.

Cheers!

It’s definitely well worth the time to review.

Cheers!

The document covers standalone Nortel IP Phone sets and how they can be deployed on various Nortel switches. It also covers features on Nortel switches related to VoIP with configuration examples. Overall, topics that will be covered include the following:

Ethernet switch platforms that support PoE:

• Ethernet Switch 470-PWR
• Ethernet Routing Switch 5xxx: 5520-24T-PWR, 5220-48T-PWR, 5650TD-PWR, 5698TFD-PWR,
• Ethernet Routing Switch 45xx: 4526T-PWR, 4550T-PWR, 4524GT-PWR, 4526GTX-PWR, 4548GT-PWR
• Ethernet Routing Switch 25xx: 2526T-PWR, 2550T-PWR
• Ethernet Routing Switch 8300

VoIP technologies:

• Power over Ethernet (PoE)
• Auto configuration via DHCP for VoIP Phone sets
• Auto provisioning using tftp or http
• Quality over Service (QoS)
• Authentication using EAPoL (802.1x)
• Auto Detection Auto Configuration (ADAC)
• LLDP

If you are working with Nortel IP telephony products I would highly recommend you give this document a quick review.  It’s about 257 pages in length it’s very detailed providing lots of examples.

Cheers!

The document covers topics such as convergence between IP telephony and data networking, chassis versus stackable, Layer 2 versus Layer 3 at the edge, redundancy, high availability, clustering (IST/SMLT), two tier and three tier network designs, VLANs, Spanning Tree, Control Plane Rate Limit (cp-limit), Extended CP-Limit (ext-cp-limit), VLACP, SLPP, QoS, VRRP, RSMLT, ECMP, Multicast, EAPoL and the list goes on and on. And best of all they provide configuration examples for a large number of the scenarios which are always helpful.

A lot of the material I cover here in my blog is covered in this document. I’ll probably pull a few excerpts from this document over the next few months and make some posts out of it, expanding on some of the examples and filling in any unanswered blanks.

I’m impressed with effort that Nortel has made in trying to “get out the word”.  This is really a great tool for Nortel customers! Let’s hope that Avaya will allow these folks to continue with their success.

Oh behalf of all those Nortel customers out there let me say “Thanks!”

Cheers!