topic Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl in Switches, Hubs, and Modems

Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 08:11:21 GMT

Hi,

We have 4 5300xl's in a VLAN setup with routing enabled connected with gigabit fibers.

When e.g. pinging a server on the main switch from a node on one of the other switches AND in another subnet/VLAN the response times are not at all satisfactoriuos (probably spelled that wrong :0) ).

I know that the routing process will slow the traffic down a little bit, and the response times are usually 4-6ms which should be OK.

However, every tenth time (or so) there are times at over 200ms to almost 1sec. I've even experienced drop-outs with a single "destination unreachable" every now and then.

Now my question to you is: Why could this be happening? Within the same VLAN across more switches there are no problems, so it must be something with the routing process. FYI there's no ACL's configured on the implied VLANs and routing is only enabled on the main switch.

Hope one of you have a good suggestion to what this could be caused by.
Thanks in advance,

Rasmus

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Markku Leinio — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 07:35:39 GMT

We have been experiencing the same problems from the beginning. HP folks here in Finland have been investigating it, but no solution has been found. We are a 9000 people organization (a polytechnic), so I guess HP should be at least somehow interested in solving the case.

We are testing some HP 9300 routers and Catalyst 3550 switches as well, no problems with them in the same topology.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:35:21 GMT

Will you kindly let my know if you receive any updates on this? Thanks.

Rasmus

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

koppendorfer — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 00:53:41 GMT

i have installed 2 5308xl as core-routers and
20x 2650 as edge switches with 9 vlans over
all switches, running the two 5308 with ospf and xrrp. routing between all vlans is working fine netio test is over 11000kb/s
so no problem there. have updatet all switches with newest software

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Markku Leinio — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:01:34 GMT

We have been using all possible firmwares, also unpublished versions (directly from HP). Firmware versions haven't had very much effect on the problems.

If I hear something new about this, I'll tell here.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

OLARU Dan — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 01:27:40 GMT

Maybe the default route is the culprit. Take a look at page 16-6 of the attachment; in Table 16-1, last row (Default network route).

It reads: "For the Switch 5300XL Series devices, enter an explicit default route (0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 or 0.0.0.0/0) as a static route in the IP route table."

Maybe if you type this into your config you'll get rid of the problem.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Markku Leinio — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 05:31:54 GMT

We are already using static routes, the network topology is so simple.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

OLARU Dan — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 05:57:35 GMT

What these guys are saying is that you HAVE TO TYPE the default network route into the config as soon as you start IP routing on the 5300XL series switches.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Markku Leinio — Wed, 29 Sep 2004 06:03:07 GMT

If they are STATIC ROUTES, how would you think they appear in the router, if we wouldn't have entered them there?

So, of course we have entered the default route as well.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

OLARU Dan — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 02:03:40 GMT

Markku,
you can have STATIC ROUTES in your routing table without this necessarily meaning you have a DEFAULT ROUTE. It is very good you have defined a DEFAULT ROUTE, as per HP's recommendations and, yes, I know the DEFAULT ROUTE is one of your STATIC ROUTES.

But I am not sure these clarifications solved Rasmus's problem.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Markku Leinio — Thu, 30 Sep 2004 07:57:56 GMT

You are correct. Have you seen any router (other than Internet backbone routers) connected to Internet, having static routes, and not having a default route?-) (Ok, I assumed Internet connectivity (not an isolated private network) here, my mistake on that.)

To stay in the subject, the issue experienced by Rasmus and me is not routing table related. The problem is deeper in the routing engine of Procurve 5300XL. Sometimes it just takes a lot of time to do its task, and that should not happen.

HP engineers brought Catalyst 3550's to our premises as well, for backup devices:-)

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Quartino — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 05:40:34 GMT

Same problem for us ... since february. No solution from hp

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 05:43:53 GMT

OK, sounds like this is some major bug in their firmware or whatever.

Markku, since it sounds like HP are actively working at your site, can you ask them when they expect to have a solution? I've send an e-mail to HP, but it is a big company...

Thanks,
Rasmus

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Einar_3 — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 03:39:03 GMT

Rasmus;

Do you experience any Drops TX increasing error count on any interfaces?
We're also investigating a similar error condition on 5300XL with Procurve support.

Regards,
Einar

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 03:49:54 GMT

As I wrote earlier, when doing a series of pings sometimes I receive a single timeout. Besides that it is just generally slow response times at several hundreds of milliseconds.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:51:38 GMT

I recently discovered that the back-end device doing all the routing (which seems to be the problem) is running a constant CPU load of 40% to 65%!!!
Any of you guys having this problem, experiencing the same?

I've looked at the traffic monitor in PCM+, but there's not very heavy load on the switch at all.

Running firmware version E_08_42.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Quartino — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 17:22:07 GMT

Hi,
proc is running at 15% and the problem is the same on multiple 530X with every os tested(not tested 8_50 yet on our main switches)

cpu load doesn't seem to be the problem

regards

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

Paul Vieira — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 09:25:11 GMT

Hello,

We are having the exact same issues. We have 4 5308xl's as the core with 12 HP2524 switches using 4 vlan's. Network slowness is on and off. We have investigated and changed firmware, adjusted edge devices, looked into PIM, also default routes, etc.. etc.. called HP and they seem to be shocked that there is an issue meanwhile I read the forums and seems this an apparent global issue. HP has no resolve to this.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

randy bentley_1 — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 13:38:58 GMT

5308 problems also. I have found a way to make ours happen at will though. I can connect a computer, another switch, anything with a MAC address. The routing stops working for IP traffic for 5 seconds to maybe 2 minutes.

But it only seems to effect our netware servers, the MS servers don't miss a beat.

Re: Slow/unstable performance on 5300xl

IT_7 — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 03:36:07 GMT

Hi,

Has anyone any experience whether the newest firmware releases for the 5300xl series (08_50 and 08_53) solves this issue?

Rgds,
Rasmus