Mailing List Archive: S50 and default-network

S50 and default-network

Jun 19, 2008, 6:09 AM

Post #1 of 4 (8216 views)

Hi everyone,

This list seems very calm lately, but it's the first place I've found
for Force10 technical discussions, so here I go...

I just bought three S50 switches and stacked them together. So far, so
good. I've been having trouble with the Force10 support, because I
couldn't download an image from their website for a switch on which I
had damaged the image, but that's another story... (and for the record,
you can't copy from an installed image to tftp or xmodem to make a
backup...)

I've set them up in a stack, which is working fine. I've got two
uplinks arriving, both set up with OSPF and receiving routes fine. The
issue is that the provider isn't sending any 0.0.0.0 route which the
stack would then pick up as its default gateway, as explained in the
Force10 Tips and Tricks :
https://www.force10networks.com/CSPortal20/KnowledgeBase/HowDoIConfigureLoadBalancing.aspx

With any Cisco Catalyst equipment, the solution here is to use the "ip
default-network <network>" configuration, and since the network will be
known through both uplinks, it would work and provide failover.

With those Force10 S50 switches, that configuration doesn't seem to be
possible, unless I'm missing something. For now I've configured two
default gateways pointing to the remote IP addresses of both uplinks,
but this is far more ugly and doesn't provide the same level of
failover.

Does anyone know if the default-network options is something Cisco
specific? I thought it wasn't, and that it would be present in the
enhanced Level 3 image Force10 charges for to get OSPF, as it makes a
lot of sense when using OSPF...

Any pointers would be welcome!

Matthias

--
Clean custom Red Hat Linux rpm packages : http://freshrpms.net/
Fedora release 9 (Sulphur) - Linux kernel 2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64
Load : 0.17 0.23 0.25
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Re: S50 and default-network [ In reply to ]

marcus at grmpf

Jun 19, 2008, 8:57 AM

Post #2 of 4 (7922 views)

Permalink

Hi,

Matthias Saou wrote:
> This list seems very calm lately, but it's the first place I've found
> for Force10 technical discussions, so here I go...
>
> I just bought three S50 switches and stacked them together. So far, so
> good. I've been having trouble with the Force10 support, because I
> couldn't download an image from their website for a switch on which I
> had damaged the image, but that's another story... (and for the record,
> you can't copy from an installed image to tftp or xmodem to make a
> backup...)
>
> I've set them up in a stack, which is working fine. I've got two
> uplinks arriving, both set up with OSPF and receiving routes fine. The
> issue is that the provider isn't sending any 0.0.0.0 route which the
> stack would then pick up as its default gateway, as explained in the
> Force10 Tips and Tricks :
> https://www.force10networks.com/CSPortal20/KnowledgeBase/HowDoIConfigureLoadBalancing.aspx
>
> With any Cisco Catalyst equipment, the solution here is to use the "ip
> default-network <network>" configuration, and since the network will be
> known through both uplinks, it would work and provide failover.

I haven't used F10 for Layer3 stuff before, but you can always try adding
a default route and setting the preference low enough so that the OSPF
default route is the preferred way. In SFTOS (and on S25p, but I don't
think that should differ much to S50) this can be done with "ip route
default <gateway-ip> <preference>".

Marcus

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Re: S50 and default-network [ In reply to ]

thias at spam

Jun 19, 2008, 10:18 AM

Post #3 of 4 (7892 views)

Permalink

Marcus Stoegbauer wrote :

> Matthias Saou wrote:
> > This list seems very calm lately, but it's the first place I've found
> > for Force10 technical discussions, so here I go...
> >
> > I just bought three S50 switches and stacked them together. So far, so
> > good. I've been having trouble with the Force10 support, because I
> > couldn't download an image from their website for a switch on which I
> > had damaged the image, but that's another story... (and for the record,
> > you can't copy from an installed image to tftp or xmodem to make a
> > backup...)
> >
> > I've set them up in a stack, which is working fine. I've got two
> > uplinks arriving, both set up with OSPF and receiving routes fine. The
> > issue is that the provider isn't sending any 0.0.0.0 route which the
> > stack would then pick up as its default gateway, as explained in the
> > Force10 Tips and Tricks :
> > https://www.force10networks.com/CSPortal20/KnowledgeBase/HowDoIConfigureLoadBalancing.aspx
> >
> > With any Cisco Catalyst equipment, the solution here is to use the "ip
> > default-network <network>" configuration, and since the network will be
> > known through both uplinks, it would work and provide failover.
>
> I haven't used F10 for Layer3 stuff before, but you can always try adding
> a default route and setting the preference low enough so that the OSPF
> default route is the preferred way. In SFTOS (and on S25p, but I don't
> think that should differ much to S50) this can be done with "ip route
> default <gateway-ip> <preference>".

Thanks for the answer. Maybe I wasn't clear enough : I'm not getting
any default gateway (0.0.0.0/0 route) through OSPF, but one of the
networks I am receiving should be considered the "default network".

With Cisco's IOS (3750 switches are what I've used most), this is
trivial with the "ip default-network 192.168.44.0" for instance, which
will make the switch send out packets for unknown destinations towards
that network, which can be learnt through any dynamic routing protocols.

This makes it easy to scale by adding more links through which that
destination is known. The Force10 link from above clearly states that
the SFTOS can handle up to 6 identical cost paths. But without the
ability to point to a default network, it's kind of useless outside of
a LAN.

Matthias

--
Clean custom Red Hat Linux rpm packages : http://freshrpms.net/
Fedora release 9 (Sulphur) - Linux kernel 2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64
Load : 0.05 0.15 0.28
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Re: S50 and default-network [ In reply to ]

jrhett at svcolo

Jun 19, 2008, 10:38 AM

Post #4 of 4 (7912 views)

Permalink

On Jun 19, 2008, at 10:18 AM, Matthias Saou wrote:
> Thanks for the answer. Maybe I wasn't clear enough : I'm not getting
> any default gateway (0.0.0.0/0 route) through OSPF, but one of the
> networks I am receiving should be considered the "default network".
>
> With Cisco's IOS (3750 switches are what I've used most), this is
> trivial with the "ip default-network 192.168.44.0" for instance, which
> will make the switch send out packets for unknown destinations towards
> that network, which can be learnt through any dynamic routing
> protocols.
>
> This makes it easy to scale by adding more links through which that
> destination is known. The Force10 link from above clearly states that
> the SFTOS can handle up to 6 identical cost paths. But without the
> ability to point to a default network, it's kind of useless outside of
> a LAN.

I don't think that default network does what you think it does. And
more to the point, the implementation of default network on Cisco gear
changed throughout the years, and doesn't do anything at all on some
versions of IOS.

A default route is the appropriate thing to use in this situation, and
the behavior is clearly defined and consistent. You can have many
default routes of equal cost.

--
Jo Rhett
senior geek

Silicon Valley Colocation
Support Phone: 408-400-0550

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