Newly Linked Ports may not immediately Forward, with SecureStacks

FAQ_User — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 21:40:00 GMT

Article ID: 5759

Products
SecureStack C2
Firmware 3.03.33
SecureStack B2
Firmware 3.00.18
Firmware 3.00.14
SecureStack A2
Firmware 1.02.23
Firmware 1.02.12
RBT-1602

Symptoms
Newly linked ports don't immedately forward traffic
DHCP / IPX / SNA / Appletalk not working for newly booted PC

Cause
When a port is set to adminedge="false", after ethernet link is established the port will take anywhere from 7-12 seconds to transition to a forwarding state.

This can adversely affect the more time-sensitive protocols; including DHCP, Novell IPX, SNA, and Appletalk. The operation of RBT-1602 "thin" wireless clients, which rely on a BootP-like protocol to download their configurations upon bootup, may also be affected.

Compounding the visibility of this issue is the default change to adminedge="false" for the above-named firmware versions (5756).

Solution
For the C2, upgrade to firmware 3.03.38 or higher.
For the B2, upgrade to firmware 3.01.16 or higher.
For the A2, upgrade to firmware 1.03.17 or higher.

Release notes state, in the 'Firmware Changes and Enhancements' section:
The default behavior of spanning tree ADMINEDGE begins with the value set to FALSE initially after the device is powered up. If a spanning tree BDPU is not received on the port within a few seconds, the ADMINEDGE setting changes to TRUE. In the previous release, this process had taken 7-12 seconds, but with this release the time period for this process to complete has been reduced to 4 seconds. This matches the behavior displayed in the Enterasys DFE product line.

Pre-upgrade workaround:
On Edge ports, configure 'set spantree adminedge <port_string> true' to override the default setting.
On InterSwitch Link ports, there is no workaround to the forwarding delay.

topic Newly Linked Ports may not immediately Forward, with SecureStacks in FAQs

Newly Linked Ports may not immediately Forward, with SecureStacks