5520 interoperability with HP 5308xl

Hello.

We are currently in the process of replacing our old school early 90s Nortel phone switch with the latest and greatest VOIP solution. Accordingly, we had to purchase PoE switches in order to accomodate the new IP phones. We are an all HP ProCurve shop and I wanted to get some HP PoE switches but since I am not a phone guy and the vendor was strongly leaning on us to use Nortel equipment, I caved when they agreed (incredibly) to match HP's prices. We have a contract with HP to provide 36% off of their list prices, yet Nortel's incentive amounted to around 60% off of list on better equipment (10/100 vs 10/100/1000) so how could I refuse? Better yet, the

5520 will provide us with gig-E all the way to the desktop, so it is really a nice upgrade at the edge of our network.

We recenty received the first 9 5520-48T-PWR switches. I set up a test rig in my office with an HP 5308xl and a 3 deep stack of the Nortel 5520's, as the core of the network is going to remain HP. I hooked up the stacking cables and configured the bottom unit as the base, and magically the units appeared as a stack in the console menu. So far so good. The menu in the console is a bit cumbersome compared to HP but hey that's life. I go to configure the VLANs to talk to the rest of the network and then the fun begins.

I cannot for the life of me get the Nortel equipment to join our network. The 802.1q tag on the testing VLAN I want it to join is 1652. I configure one HP 5308 port, C16, as tagged on this vlan. I then plug it into copper port 48 on the bottom of the Nortel stack. I went into the Nortel menu and set up a VLAN, or so I thought. The first field was Create VLAN, so I ented

1652 into that field and hit return. I assigned the name of the VLAN to match the HP. I chose Port-Based as the type, with no special protocol type. I made it active, and then activated Port 13 and Port 48 as members of the VLAN. After that I went into the port settings and made Port 13 untagged and Port 48 tagged, with a PVID value of 1652 for each. I also removed both from the default management VLAN, #1.

I plugged a spare laptop in and expected to have network connectivity. No such luck. I verified that the ports were in a status of UP on both switches. They weren't, so I forced both to 100/Full for troubleshooting purposes. That seemed to work, or at least indicated on the switch software on both that there was a link that was up. I still had no connectivity. I could not ping anything from the Nortel console or get an IP on the laptop. These activities were both successful on the HP switch. I played around with various settings for a while, still no love.

Finally, frusterated, I decided I would try the thing as a dumb switch. I set the port C16 on the HP switch to UNTAGGED for tag 1652. I plugged the laptop first into this port and presto, the network. I then reset all ports on the Nortel to untagged on the default VLAN only. This would allow to function just as a switch, or so I thought. I plugged port C16 on the HP into port 48 on the Nortel. STILL NO LOVE. I then tried different cables. A crossover cable. Nothing.

What is going on with this thing? As far as I can tell, I do not have a duplex or speed mismatch. My cables are verified to be good. Yet asked to operate in even the most basic settings, I am not getting any network agreement with the rest of my network. I don't get it. There is nothing in the event log on the HP or on the Nortel that is terribly helpful.

Apparently, you have to pay for any level of support through Nortel. HP's support is free. Ugh. No support on a brand new switch, straight out of the box? No wonder they're willing to go 60% off on it.

So here I am. Can anyone be of any assistance?

laters, Jim

Reply to
Jim Bronson
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Sounds like you need a post-sales engineer to help get this going. The reseller you bought it from should give you an hour or so of an SE's time to get this to work (it's in his best interested to keep the customer happy). Same is true if you bought direct from Nortel.

One thought: I don't know anything about the ProCurve series, but the Nortel can do flow control. If the ProCurve does also, make sure the settings match (flow control may be a MLT-only thing - haven't looked at it for a while). Also, double check VLAN settings on both sides. Your description tells me you have it right, but we've had issues where a tweak gets set on one side but not the other. Specifically, check that ports 13 and 48 are *only* in VLAN 1652. If they're in more than the desired VLAN, the results can be *interesting*.

Good luck! Sam

Reply to
Sam Nash

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