Keep us posted on how you do. What versions of HARC and DSP code are you currently running? -- Scot ----- Original Message ----- From: Richard Lorbieski <richard@alpha1.net> To: <usr-tc@lists.xmission.com> Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 9:28 PM Subject: Re: (usr-tc) TCS 4.0 - anyone brave enough???

I plan to do one tonight. The good news is the ARC card is 128M DRAM and 16M Flash :-)...

Scot Desort wrote:

...

Anyone using the release version of TCS4.0, in particular, the new DSP

code?

...

I see there are some improvements in v42 and Rockwell compatibility. Weird though -- there are no links to the code in the LATEST CODE section of totalservice -- you have to go to the compatibility matrix and then click on the release.

-- Scot

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--

Richard Lorbieski - richard@alpha1.net Chief Technical Officer - Senior System Administrator Alpha1 Internet http://www.alpha1.net 409.731.8236 - 877.4.alpha1 (877.425.7421)

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Also sprach Richard Lorbieski

DSP - 2.0.60 ARC - 4.2.32 NMC - 6.1.17

I'm currently dloading the NMC and ARC managment software. The new 7.07 NMC is large (17 Megs). You think they were releasing browser software :-).

Ooh...another FYI that at least Mike and I ran across. The new NMC code is completely different...pretty much rewritten from scratch is what I understand. This is good and bad. The good is that its written to not be so classful in its IP addressing (though I didn't ever get to check it to make sure it worked correctly, at least if it doesn't, we apparently stand some chance of getting that fixed now). The bad is that they have changed the way they do retrieval of SNMP values apparently. The older code apparently "cached" (maybe pre-fetched? don't know details) values from the cards across the management bus. This new code doesn't do that...meaning snmpwalks are going to be a tad bit slower overall. For values that it doesn't have to grab across the management bus, its *much* faster (values about the NMC itself, and index values basically), but when it has to get data over the management bus, it does bog down a bit more. Supposedly the HiPer NMCs are much better about this, but with the 486 based cards, this can get to be a fairly big problem if you're throwing a lot of SNMP traffic at it. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

I just finished upgrading our code. It went without a hitch... well we had to restart an aborted upgrade on one of the DSP cards. Didn't have a problem upgrading the ARC from 4.2.32 to 5.0.9 (we have a 128M DRAM - 16M flash ARC). As for performance? Had some glitches with customers trying to login but it may have been a radius problem. Yet, most users are getting v.90 connect :-)... So far, I think its safe to upgrade. Currently the DSP cards are on CT1s (planning to change to PRI in the next week). Will post some more info later. Mike Andrews wrote:

On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:

...

Ooh...another FYI that at least Mike and I ran across. The new NMC code is completely different...pretty much rewritten from scratch is what I understand. This is good and bad. The good is that its written to not [munch] apparently stand some chance of getting that fixed now). The bad is that they have changed the way they do retrieval of SNMP values apparently. The older code apparently "cached" (maybe pre-fetched? don't know details) values from the cards across the management bus. This new code doesn't do that...meaning snmpwalks are going to be a tad bit slower overall. For values that it doesn't have to grab across the management bus, its *much* faster (values about the NMC itself, and index values basically), but when it has to get data over the management bus, it does bog down a bit more. Supposedly the HiPer NMCs are much better about this, but with the 486 based cards, this can get to be a fairly big problem if you're throwing a lot of SNMP traffic at it.

This brings up something I meant to mention in the beta... but was holding out hoping they'd actually come up with a speed improvement or reimplement the cache or something.

When it became obvious that the NETserver was running out of gas, 3Com did a trade-in program for people to trade their NETservers in for HiPer ARCs.

Would they consider doing the same for 486 NMC's to P5 NMC's?

The only difficult part about an NMC tradein program would be x2 feature enable keys for Quads. (We still have two NMC's that manage Quads.) Of course they could just say the hell with it and permanently enable it on P5 NMC's so you don't need one, but, well, we've been through that discussion here before...

Given the costs of manufacturing a P5 NMC are probably far lower than a HiPer ARC, I would think this would be even easier for them to stomach than the NETserver->ARC tradein...

The performance difference is going to be an issue for us because we almost continuously hammer on the NMC pulling connect stats off of it, and with more than about 5 PRI's in a box it *really* starts to get sluggish. On a box with only a couple of PRI's, it's not a problem, in fact it's usually faster than the old code. But load a box up with 9 PRI's and watch all your software griiiiind to a halt... I suppose we could reimplement a cache of our own using, say, a SQL database, but I don't have time this month... been busy rolling out ADSL, installing a new core router (mmmmm, 7206vxr) and upgrading our email system (read: finding/patching bugs in procmail) and really haven't touched anything 3Com related for a while.

Anyway, despite the NMC being a bit slower, we've been running what is now TCS 4.0 on one production box for a few weeks now and I don't think we've had a Rockwell related complaint since. On the other hand, I'm a bit more removed from tech support than I used to be, so maybe it's just that nobody's telling me. :)

Mike Andrews (MA12) * mandrews@dcr.net * http://www.bit0.com/ VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville www.fark.com: If it's not news, it's Fark. (Or something like that.)

-- Richard Lorbieski - richard@alpha1.net Chief Technical Officer - Senior System Administrator Alpha1 Internet http://www.alpha1.net 409.731.8236 - 877.4.alpha1 (877.425.7421) - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach Jeff Mcadams

I played with the DHCP capabilities in...ah...5.0.8 I believe it was, and there were still problems with it. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to check it out in 5.0.9 yet. I may see if I can get a chance to play with it tomorrow and see if they fixed it. If I remember correctly, it didn't handle renewing leases very well at all...I believe (and looking back through my email correspondence seems to confirm this) renewal requests are sent in for the IP address "0.0.0.0" rather than for the actual IP address in use. Obviously a problem there. Like I said...I'll try to check out the DHCP setup again tomorrow and see if they got that corrected in 5.0.9. I truly hope they did...'cause being able to manage all your Arc IP pools from a central DHCP server will be *seriously* cool. :)

Well...its *better*...but still not quite right. My apologies to 3Com for not getting around to checking this actually during the beta...just didn't have enough hours in the day. This isn't really a critical feature at this point, but I certainly do see the advantages of it so I want to try to help you all get it working. :) Jun 2 11:28:04 quiz dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 204.255.236.215 from 00:c0:49:10:e3:16 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:04 quiz dhcpd: DHCPACK on 204.255.236.215 to 00:c0:49:10:e3:16 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 204.255.236.215 from 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPACK on 204.255.236.215 to 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 204.255.236.215 from 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPACK on 204.255.236.215 to 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 204.255.236.215 from 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPACK on 204.255.236.215 to 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 204.255.236.215 from 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:07 quiz dhcpd: DHCPACK on 204.255.236.215 to 00:00:00:00:00:00 via hme0 Jun 2 11:28:10 quiz dhcpd: DHCPRELEASE of 204.255.236.215 from 00:c0:49:10:e3:16 via hme0 (found) As you can see...it tries several times to get the lease renewed, and gets the correct IP address added this time, and for the first renewal request, it has the correct MAC address. Subsequent requests have a bogus MAC address from what I can tell. I'm not sure why the original renewal request fails, but since it retries it several times, it apparently isn't seeing something correctly. Again, as I mentioned during the beta...I'm not extremely well versed in DHCP at this point, so there may be more information that I can get out of the dhcp server that might help...let me know and I'll see what I can do. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach Rick

The only problem I see with a centralized DHCP would be the issue of having a much larger internal routing table due to /32 announcements. We now aggregate all our TC hub pools in /25 or /24 announcements and implementing a DHCP solution would strongly impact our OSPF.

You just need to get a better DHCP server is all...one that gives you more control. :) Keep in mind that when you get a DHCP request, you get the MAC address of the originating system, the IP address of the relaying system (if any), and potentially other identifying information. This set of information can be used to make your IP assignments more efficient, ie by grouping your leases together in a way that can be aggregated in your routers. Although, if you're running OSPF on your Arcs, you'll have to put your Arcs in a different area, and aggregate on the area boundary like on a Cisco. If your Arcs are still running RIP and your redistributing into OSPF (which is what I'm doing), then you can aggregate/summarize at the redistribution (nice little bonus there). Admittedly, configuration your DHCP server with this type of detail removes some of the benefit of centralizing control, but there are other management wins with this... -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach Charles Sprickman

Also, since I'm really only looking for DSP fixes, is there any problem with just upgrading the NMC and DSP and leaving the Arc as-is?

(crosses fingers and hopes for an iMac fix that's better than segregating some quads into a hunt)

I believe I have heard the statement that TCS releases are "compatible" between consecutive releases, though certainly not supported in that configuration. So, you can use (at least in theory) TCS 3.5/3.6 DSP code (the DSP code didn't change between these releases I don't believe) with TCS 4.0. I haven't tested this at all, so don't take that as gospel, but I've been told that 3Com at least puts some effort into making that be the case. FWIW, the Arc code really is pretty solid at this point as long as you don't try to take advantage of new features. I'd say you'd be fine upgrading to new Arc code as long as you test out any new functionality that you take advantage of. For those of you that are as frustrated as I am maintaining 4.2.x Arc code because of the idiosyncracies of command-line tab-completion, that is *much* improved in 5.0.x...it even has partial-completion (ie, it will complete the command out as far as is unambigous, ala Cisco's IOS and many other CLIs...no more typing out a 20 character keyword because the last character is different from another. :) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach Charles Sprickman

On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:

...

I believe I have heard the statement that TCS releases are "compatible" between consecutive releases, though certainly not supported in that configuration. So, you can use (at least in theory) TCS 3.5/3.6 DSP code (the DSP code didn't change between these releases I don't believe) with TCS 4.0. I haven't tested this at all, so don't take that as gospel, but I've been told that 3Com at least puts some effort into making that be the case.

I was actually looking at doing the opposite; staying with my ARC code for now and trying the new DSP code on a few racks for a few days...

I think it goes both ways, so you'd be fine. Again though, this certainly isn't anything that's tested.

I was going to try the NMC as well, but it looks like that might not be advisable if it will actually make snmp slower (how is that possible?).

You'd think they could do everything the NMC needs to do in a 486 without much optimization. I mean, it's not running a GUI or anything...

Well...the slowdown is a result of getting the data over the management "bus" from the cards. If its getting data from the NMC itself, it screams...orders of magnitude faster than the old code. The management bus is basically a individual set of serial lines for each card though, so its not like you've got ethernet bandwidth there or anything to work with. I think I remember seeing that the management lines to the NACs are 512kbps, which is pretty quick, but its certainly going to be slower than the NMC grabbing the data internally (ie, not over the management lines).

...

FWIW, the Arc code really is pretty solid at this point as long as you don't try to take advantage of new features. I'd say you'd be fine upgrading to new Arc code as long as you test out any new functionality that you take advantage of.

I'm just about to read the release notes, I'm curious about this "interim release" I have to do between 4.2x and 5.0.x...

I don't remember having done that, but I might have. Does make the upgrade process a bit more disruptive, but this is the only time you'll have to do that. Ok...found in the release notes where its talking about it. The older code can't download a file that big into flash ROM, once you get on the newer code though, you're back to normal upgrades (assuming you don't run out of flash, which is getting to be a concern with these bigger images...older Arcs only had 8megs of flash ram) -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach pferraro@wna-linknet.com

With all the talk of the new code, has anyone put the code on a HiperArc with just 64 of memory? I have 4 HiperArcs Two with 128 and two with 64. Three of the 4 are in production (live). Can the memory from the 4th one be used to up grade the other HiperArc?

I had it running in 64megs of RAM briefly during the beta...worked fine. Though it was slightly tricky to get it on there with only 8 megs of flash to work with.

Also, any problems with the FLASH 4 vice 8?

4?! Didn't know such a beast existed...at least as shipped. I'd say all bets are off on being able to get the code on there in 4 megs. *Maybe* if you had the boot menu pull it down, but even that is gonna be really iffy (the 5.0.x code is almost 3 1/2 megs, and it has to go through some uncompress and reclaim cycles during the actual upgrade process - once you actually reboot to activate the new code - I'd say its unlikely to be able to pull that off)

We are not doing anything fancy, just ip.. No IPX, OSPF, etc

If you could get the code on, you shouldn't have any problems running in 64 megs of ram...the flash issue is really iffy though. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

Also sprach Jeff Binkley

Can the HiPerArcs flash be upgraded from 8 to 16 megs ?

Doesn't look like it. If you look at one of the Arc boards, with the faceplate to the left, towards the bottom of the board, just to the right of the DIMM SOCKET (labelled as such), you'll see the "FLASH ROM" chips (2 rows of 4 chips...also labelled as such). These are soldered on, so it doesn't look upgradeable...at least without a soldering iron, and that's something that I certainly don't want to get into. :) At least, this is what I'm seeing on my board...though I *think* this is a 128/16 board, not a 64/8. I would assume the 64/8's would be similar...perhaps only half the chips though. -- Jeff McAdams Email: jeffm@iglou.com Head Network Administrator Voice: (502) 966-3848 IgLou Internet Services (800) 436-4456 - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

64 meg works fine here. As far as getting the code onto a 4 meg flash... you don't *have* to use the "interim release" approach. The documentation describes a few others. The one I used was... - put the .dmf file on a TFTP server with the name 'netserve.dmf' - connect a terminal to the console port of the ARC - reboot it - as it reboots, a menu will come up. Quickly feed it its own IP/netmask and the IP of your TFTP server and it will TFTP the file down and update it right away. Pretty fast, doesn't need two reboots. I'd practice on a non-production card if you can first, to get the procedure down though. :) Mike Andrews (MA12) * mandrews@dcr.net * http://www.bit0.com/ VP, sysadmin, & network guy, Digital Crescent Inc, Frankfort KY Internet services for Frankfort, Lawrenceburg, Owenton, Shelbyville www.fark.com: If it's not news, it's Fark. (Or something like that.) On Sat, 3 Jun 2000 pferraro@wna-linknet.com wrote:

With all the talk of the new code, has anyone put the code on a HiperArc with just 64 of memory? I have 4 HiperArcs Two with 128 and two with 64. Three of the 4 are in production (live). Can the memory from the 4th one be used to up grade the other HiperArc?

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On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Jeff Mcadams wrote:

Also sprach Mike Andrews

...

64 meg works fine here.

...

As far as getting the code onto a 4 meg flash...

I think you're thinking 8 meg flash, not 4. 64meg Arcs usually (always?) have 8 megs of flash, compared to the 16 in the 128 meg Arcs. :)

Yeah, I meant 8 vs 16 meg.

...

and it will TFTP the file down and update it right away. Pretty fast,

Well, as fast as TFTP ever is...not exactly a highly efficient protocol there. :) Does the job though. :)

Well yeah, but it was only about 10 seconds... not slow like TFTPing to an NMC is. :) - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.

If you're like me, you'll have to fight to get the access you've paid for. After you download what you need, they cut you off again, so you have to fight/beg again. I think it must be a power thing with Michelle, who has ALWAYS been rude to us. I've never heard anyone say they've had a good experience with her. I would consider her the Nurse Ratchet (?Spelling) of 3Com :) At 01:19 AM 6/6/00 -0500, you wrote:

Is a service contract required to download TCS 4.0? I have purchased a new Total Control bundle among several other things in the last couple of months and have registered it with 3Com. When I go to the download site, everything appears to be available to me, but none of the links work. Anyone else have this problem? Russ Miescke Power Web Connect

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Is there a way to save the configuration settings from HiperArc and NMC card to a file? I am thinking about disaster recovery and would like to know what other do to preserve the current configuration in the event that a new card might need to be configured... Thanks in advance! ============================================================================== Phillip Ferraro WorldNet Access, Inc pferraro@wna-linknet.com Onslow County's PREMIER InterNet Service Voice (910) 346-0835 824 Gumbranch Square, Suite Q FAX (910) 455-1933 Jacksonville, Nc 28540-6269 ============================================================================== - To unsubscribe to usr-tc, send an email to "majordomo@xmission.com" with "unsubscribe usr-tc" in the body of the message. For information on digests or retrieving files and old messages send "help" to the same address. Do not use quotes in your message.