Brocade ICX Series (cheap & powerful 10gbE/40gbE switching)

[rootwyrm]

Again: it is not IPv6 immaturity, it is outright lack of support because it predates final standards.
None of what you are trying to do was even standardized when this equipment was actively maintained. Anything that 'works' only works incidentally, not deliberately. (And /126 is a weird subnet regardless. I'd be surprised if it worked anywhere except JunOS.)

If you want to do IPv6 shenanigans, something running 08.0.80+ or later firmware is an absolute must.

 

[bmh.01]

It's immaturity, probably driven by a lack of development focus/effort/priority.

Plenty of other mainstream vendors supported these concepts on older platforms that reached EoL before the 6610 did.

/126 is pretty standard for P2P links when you don't want to burn /64s (and avoid neighbor cache exhaustion attacks) and the platform doesn't support RFC6164 (which dates from 2011).

The ICX 6xxx switches are well featured for the price but things like this are downsides.

 

[fohdeesha]

It's immaturity, probably driven by a lack of development focus/effort/priority.

Plenty of other mainstream vendors supported these concepts on older platforms that reached EoL before the 6610 did.

/126 is pretty standard for P2P links when you don't want to burn /64s (and avoid neighbor cache exhaustion attacks) and the platform doesn't support RFC6164 (which dates from 2011).

The ICX 6xxx switches are well featured for the price but things like this are downsides.

RFC6164 was added in the icx7xxx series so indeed the 6 series doesn't support /127 links. I've used /126 links quite a bit now on the 6 series platforms however with zero issue, however they are all indeed using the second address, not the first. Are you the guy I discussed this with on reddit?

Sure, they have some special no touch zones, but I think saying "if you want to use IPv6, you HAVE to use a 7 series" is a really vague overstatement - I'm using 6 series in production in a few places for a few years with zero issue - no issue with ND expiry either, at least on xen hosts, live migrates between physical hosts, I certainly don't see any IPv6 downtime, or if there is it's far too small to be measured. Taking IPv6 tables in via BGP in a couple locations as well and performing a good amount of filtering, no issue. They certainly have some blind spots, but if your use case doesn't involve them (which is a LOT of use cases), they work perfectly fine for v6

Also, if any of you are paying Ruckus customers with a 6 series under support, your SE will gladly take these bug reports and forward them to the engineering team for fixing, I know last year at least 1 resolved issue in the release notes was something we reported beforehand

 

[bmh.01]

Yeh I'm the guy from reddit.

I agree with you for the money they're a decent switch, they just have some foibles like anything else. I'd probably rather have a Nexus 3064 but they're 3-4x the price and will come with another set of drawbacks to work around. It's good to hear that they're still interested in actively supporting them.

I need to do some more digging into the ND issue as it seems to work with later Linux kernel guests apart from the expected few seconds while the cache entry expires. This is with a VMware distributed switch, tuning the reachable timeout doesn't seem to effect it either although I need to check if that's for the switches advertisements or the ones it receives and caches.

 

[Roelf Zomerman]

Yeh I'm the guy from reddit.

..... I'd probably rather have a Nexus 3064....

I have one of those at home.... but given it's at home and makes a hell of a lot of noise.... and doesn't have POE+.. (I have the 3064-T) - not sure what to do with it yet..

 

[bmh.01]

I have one of those at home.... but given it's at home and makes a hell of a lot of noise.... and doesn't have POE+.. (I have the 3064-T) - not sure what to do with it yet..

Fortunately I've got everything in a rack in the garage so noise isn't a massive concern, I'll probably regret making this statement but they can't be much louder than the the Brocade FC switches I've got .

Unfortunatly they still go for £1k+ here so I won't be getting one for a while, and like you say being a DC switch they have plenty of missing campus features to trade off. That's a big pro-side of the ICX range that they sit in the middle of both feature sets.

 

[dswartz]

I'll probably regret making this statement but they can't be much louder than the the Brocade FC switches I've got .

Challenge accepted!

 

[bdavid89]

Why is the switch responding with mac address "01:92:00:00:00:00"?

The switch' ports has these MACs before configuring the default VLAN: MACs and after they just get that address
Extra "info" i found is at the Boot Log "Unable to open /fast_iron/ka_link_reg.txt"

Now I am hitting the table with my forehead too

I already done it twice Maybe I should ask the seller what he means under the "Taken from a working environment tested and is in excellent working order"

 

[ArmedAviator]

The switch' ports has these MACs before configuring the default VLAN: MACs and after they just get that address
Extra "info" i found is at the Boot Log "Unable to open /fast_iron/ka_link_reg.txt"

My 6610 shows the Unable to open /fast_iron/ka_link_reg.txt on boot as well, but no issues with MAC addresses, so I think that's a red herring.

What's in your running-config? Perhaps a previously issued subcommand in the hidden dm command is causing your MAC address issues.

 

[bdavid89]

What's in your running-config?

I don't have too much in conf. I didn't run any dm commands, and I did "factory set-default" a couple of times now. Those commands results can be persistent somewhere (like the previous owner used them and now it "haunts" me ) ?

 

[fohdeesha]

I don't have too much in conf. I didn't run any dm commands, and I did "factory set-default" a couple of times now. Those commands results can be persistent somewhere (like the previous owner used them and now it "haunts" me ) ?

Can you post the output of show version and show chassis

 

[bdavid89]

Can you post the output of show version and show chassis

Version Chassis

 

[fohdeesha]

Version Chassis

Well that would be why it's replying with a nonsensical MAC, that's what it's been set to on that chassis:

Boot Prom MAC : 0192.0000.0000
Management MAC: 0192.0000.0000

Also possible it was erased for some reason and that's just the default/blank fallback MAC. Every MAC on the switch for every port/VE is based on an iteration of that boot prom mac, so it needs to be something sensical. Somewhere on your chassis should be a sticker with the actual mac address, or you can generate a random one using: MAC Address Generator

Get into the bootloader of your switch over serial, then you can set the base MAC to whatever you generated above, (or the MAC on the sticker), just make sure it's in the following format:

set ether-address EEF6.FE8C.D074

You should get output like the following:

Monitor>set ether-address EEF6.FE8C.D074
base-eth-address=eef6.fe8c.d074

then just send "reset", it'll reboot, and once it comes up "show chassis" should show the new prom/mgmt MAC being a close copy of whatever you set (sometimes it's offset by one or two)

 

[fohdeesha]

made the mistake of gathering all the units I could find while organizing the basement (not including switches out on loan or units in use). I may have a problem

 

[klui]

made the mistake of gathering all the units I could find while organizing the basement (not including switches out on loan or units in use). I may have a problem

Gee, it looks like you like Brocades. Which one is your favorite and why?

 

[kapone]

made the mistake of gathering all the units I could find while organizing the basement (not including switches out on loan or units in use). I may have a problem

"a problem" ?? I think what you're looking for is...a therapist?

 

[losx]

It's for "building his resume"... I can see how he gathered so much experience! If you are married you have a very forgiving wife lol.

"a problem" ?? I think what you're looking for is...a therapist?

 

[HaxSmash]

I have a second 6450-48P with a dead POE board (scorched POE chip with a hole in it haha). I pulled the POE board out, and was going to use it as a non-POE swtich, however having done that, the fans are now running full speed all the time, and never spin down.

If I reinstall the POE board, the fans go back to normal, and spin down after boot. Does anyone know if there is any way to work around this? The switch is still spitting out POE power on about half its ports, and the switch OS has no control over it, so I'd rather not have it installed if I can avoid it.

 

[rootwyrm]

made the mistake of gathering all the units I could find while organizing the basement (not including switches out on loan or units in use). I may have a problem

I'll take the EX4300 if you don't want it. I could use another switch that can run Perl and Tcl/Tk.
Or I guess I could teach you how to really root it if you want. It's far easier than any of the Brocade crap.

 

[ArmedAviator]

If anyone has a working PoE module for a 6450-24 that they can part ways with, I could really use one.