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Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

 
HEKnet
Advisor

MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

We have a ProCurve 5406zl with a 765zl msm wireless controller and msm 430 ap connected to the 5406zl. The 5406zl reports a lot of

FFI: port C5-Excessive jabbering/fragments

where C5 is one of the ports a AP is connected to. These messages are generated for every port with a AP. Why? Is this a bug in the APs?
7 REPLIES 7
Z273
Frequent Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Hi,

 

Please take a look at http://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/13113/hp-2920-48g-switch-and-apple-airport-extreme-problems

 

the link describe similar problem to your.

 

Cheers.

HEKnet
Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Actually, all the post says is about cabling. I am very sure it is not a cabling problem. All our cabling is certified and tested as ISO EN 11801 Class EA. Moreover it is not happening all the time but in relapses. I do not believe it is a hardware error of our APs either because then all 14 APs must be faulty.
Z273
Frequent Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Hi,

Ok let forget about the cable for now.

How about anything fishy with ethernet link layer negociation ? half/full duplex/flowctrl? you can see the status from the switch.

 

Also any bcast/mcast that might flood your switch? that might overrun the ports.

 

 

Arimo
Respected Contributor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Generally Excessive Jabbering points to faulty hardware - physical interface, cabling or patch panel - or a driver problem. I've not seen a situation when this would happen intermittently in bursts, the interface usually shows jabbering or it does not. And I'm not aware of this being happening with MSM products at all, this is somehow related to your environment.

 

Here's a few suggestions:

 

  1. Ensure that the AP ports are set to Autonegotiation, and remove Flow Control
  2. Move the APs to a different module
  3. Move the module to a different slot (the module with the APs, not the controller)
  4. Change the patch panel
  5. Test connecting an AP directly to the switch without a patch panel in between
  6. Restore the MSM to factory default settings, and either re-configure the wireless from scracth, or upload a saved configuration. If your wless config is not very complex, I'd rather recommend reconfiguring than uploading. I'd also recommend not complicating the setup too much but following the implementation guide.
  7. Check that you're running current MSM FW and switch SW. For MSM I'd recommend 6.4.2, for the switch either K.15.16.0005 (current General Availability -release) or K.15.10.0015m (current Maintenance branch release). Note that despite the version number, K.15.10.0015m is not an "older" FW version. Maintenance is a separately developed SW branch, intended for environments where stability is preferred over latest features and you don't want to upgrade the switch very often. It has a lot longer lifecycle than a GA branch, and gets updates only when there's a FW bug to fix

These should give you a good idea where the problem is.

 

If you can resolve it with these, please do let me know what did it. If not, call support and let us have a look at it.


HTH,

Arimo
HPE Networking Engineer
HEKnet
Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Auto-negiotation is enabled at both sides (switch and AP) and shows 1GBit/s full-duplex at both sides.

 

The idea about multi-cast or broad-cast traffic sounds promising, but how do I find out, if this is the problem?

HEKnet
Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

@Airmo:

 

  1. Ensure that the AP ports are set to Autonegotiation, and remove Flow Control --> that is already the case
  2. Move the APs to a different module --> the APs are already attached to two different modules with a lot of free ports for further upgrades (1 x 24 Gig-T module, 1 20 GigT + 2 SFP+ module, 14 APs)
  3. Move the module to a different slot --> OK, we could try that
  4. Change the patch panel --> No way, this is nearly impossible and would require a complete deconstruction and re-construction of the cabinet. But as I already said, all fixed cables, all patch panels and even the patch cables are certified and measured in-place with a Fluke DTX CableAnalyzer (ISO EN 11801, Class EA, Channel mode)
  5. Test connecting an AP -> This won't really help. The switch is in an IT service room in the basement. No one would use the AP there and I assume that it might be a problem related to high load. As I said the problem occurs in bursts.
  6. Restore the MSM to factory default settings --> We will try. We have a simple setup with only one VSC, but 200 user VLANs. The VLANs are directly brigded to the network at the AP, no use traffic is tunneled to the controller.
  7. We are running K.15.16.0005 and MSM 5.7.2.<something>. We do not have an active CarePack for the MSM controller, hence we are not eligble for sw updates.
Z273
Frequent Advisor

Re: MSM 430 AP excessive jabbering/fragmentation

Hi,

If you can get into the cli of your switch, you can take a peek at the following stats

 

example:

ProCurve Switch 2520G-8-PoE# show rmon

 

But before you do the stats, reset the ports counters

 

ProCurve Switch 2520G-8-PoE# clear statistics 1-8

 

And monitor for excessive bcast/mcast from the stats coming out from 'show rmon'

 

On my switch, I usually rate limit bcast/mcast to protect my network in case arp storm or any storm that might hammer the switch, most of the time the IT guy even ignore these simple protection.

 

Hope to give you more hints.

 

Good luck.