Wed, 10 Jan 2007
HP Procurve Upgrade
As for the packet loss problem I wrote about
yesterday: I have searched a bit, and found this page, which recommends to use the qos-passthrough-mode for switches with variable link speeds. Unfortunately
this requires firmware upgrade, because the switch in question has too
old firmware. Well, let's have a look what the latest-greatest firmware offers:
IMPORTANT
Starting with software version I.08.74, FEC trunks (Cisco Systems’ Fast EtherChannel for aggregated links) are no longer supported, and generation of CDP (Cisco Discovery Protocol) packets are no longer supported. In their place are IEEE standards-based LACP aggregated links (as well as statically configured trunks) and generation of LLDP packets for device discovery. [...]IMPORTANT
Software version I.08.71 detects and disables non-genuine ProCurve transceivers and mini-GBICs discovered in Series 2800 Switch ports. When a non-genuine device is discovered, the switch disables the port and generates an error message in the Event Log.
So they intentionally remove support for CDP and EtherChannel to promote the open-standard protocols (which would have been nice, if the old implementation was kept in place, possibly disabled by default), and they intentionally refuse to work with non-HP GBICs, even though physically they are perfectly OK (which is plain evil from them).
So it seems HP has joined A-T and Cisco in the list of ethernet switch
vendors which are evil. Fortunately there is a firmware version which
already supports the qos-passthrough-mode, and still does
not have the above two, ahem, improvements.