Comware 5700FF static route limit!

[Twin_Turbo]

5700FF
Comware - 7

Have had an issue today where afer removing and re-adding a subnet IP

DefaultGW IP went from bing in the routing table as active to being in there as inactive allong with a bunch of other routes as inactive.

This broke a large proportion of our "Branches" , remote access, etc.

We could find no way to make these active and everything else checked out ok  pings to GW's etc.

Eventualy we tried removing 3 old un-needed routes (that were showing active in the routing table),  at thsi point the Default and two other routes  from the inactive list popped back into the routing table and everything started working.

Extreamly annoyed as it caused a large amount of disruption, and the original change was backed out as it did not work. Even more annoyed that this switch seems to have a limit of 29 static routes $%^$%"£$!"£!!!

Is there seriously such a huge limitation of the device???

Cheers

Rob

[johnk3r]

Hello !

There is a limitation to the size of the routing table. For that family size is:

128 entries (IPv4), 128 entries (IPv6)

[sdide]

Hi

The HPE 5700 is basically a layer 2 switch.

That said. It should accomodate 1k static routes.

https://www.hpe.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=c04347352

Regards

[parnassus]

Interesting...just a (dumb?) question: why the HP FlexFabric 5700 Switch Series Release Notes (as example, take the one of latest release Firmware version) reports up to 1k IPv4 static routes and up to 1k IPv6 static routes (see, as example, page 56 of Release Notes) when the Routing Table's size permits, at most, 128 IPv4 routes and 128 IPv6 routes as correctly reported by @johnk3r?

Shouldn't the Switch Routing Table's size be large enough to accomodate all the static routes entries that can be manually created (up to 1k in IPv4 and up to 1k in IPv6)?

Is the Release Notes document inaccurate with that regard or am I misunderstanding the theory behind the whole "Routing Table's size versus Routing Entries quantity" thing?

[Ian Vaughan]

Hello,

From the most definitive source I can find: 

IPv4 route = 128 entries

MAC table = 1K entries

I guess if the 5700 had more capability it would eat upwards into 5900/5930/5940 sales. 

just my 2p worth - Given where a 5700 is positioned to sit in a network it should only need to hold a handful of local prefixes and some default route options. 

Hope that helps

many thanks

Ian

[Twin_Turbo]

I eventualy found the "128" value whilst hunting through firmware release notes ( expecting to find some bug report)

Anyway. my static routes are 52.

[SW-HO-CORE-1]disp ip rout protocol rip
Summary Count : 0
RIP Routing table Status : <Active>
Summary Count : 0
RIP Routing table Status : <Inactive>
Summary Count : 0

[SW-HO-CORE-1]disp ip rout protocol static
Summary Count : 52
Static Routing table Status : <Active>
Summary Count : 29
Destination/Mask    Proto  Pre  Cost         NextHop         Interface
0.0.0.0/0           Static 60   0            128.129.10.250  Vlan1
128.129.19.0/24     Static 1    0            128.129.10.250  Vlan1

But there are 25 configured VLAN IP's, but that should still be only a total of 77

looking at those "Direct" routes each one seems to consume 4 routing entries

[SW-HO-CORE-1]disp ip rout protocol direct
Summary Count : 99
Direct Routing table Status : <Active>
Summary Count : 99
Destination/Mask    Proto  Pre  Cost         NextHop         Interface
128.129.11.0/24     Direct 0    0            128.129.11.254  Vlan4
128.129.11.0/32     Direct 0    0            128.129.11.254  Vlan4
128.129.11.254/32   Direct 0    0            127.0.0.1       InLoop0
128.129.11.255/32   Direct 0    0            128.129.11.254  Vlan4
128.129.12.0/24     Direct 0    0            128.129.12.254  Vlan12
128.129.12.0/32     Direct 0    0            128.129.12.254  Vlan12
128.129.12.254/32   Direct 0    0            127.0.0.1       InLoop0
128.129.12.255/32   Direct 0    0            128.129.12.254  Vlan12
128.129.13.0/24     Direct 0    0            128.129.13.252  Vlan6
128.129.13.0/32     Direct 0    0            128.129.13.252  Vlan6

Thusfilling the routing table.

[SW-HO-CORE-1]disp ip rout
Destinations : 128      Routes : 128
Destination/Mask    Proto  Pre  Cost         NextHop         Interface

This is not Good!

Rob

[Twin_Turbo]

PS... Don't ask about the public IP's

1) yes they are there.

2) yes we know they should not be.

3) no they are not globaly routable.

4) We have no intention of interacting with the current real holders of the IP's.

[Ian Vaughan]

Hello,

Just a thought for the OP.

Have you looked through your routing table and done an exercise to see if route summarization would help bring down the number of prefixes?

If your prefixes are non-contiguous, or just outnumber the routing table entries, there's always the VSR virtual Router software - I have heard of a VSR with a decent memory footprint eating up a "full table" of IPv4 prefixes - or MSR router series to preside over your WAN. Still runs on Comware v7 so same as the 5700. 

Horses for courses - Split the tasks between the local 10Gb switching and the WAN Routing elements. 

HTH

Ian

[Twin_Turbo]

Route sumirisation is going to have to be the way to go and should be possible.

The fact still remains thouhgh that the switch is unbale to truly handle 128 routes, due to Gobbling up entries by itself.

We are migrating from a 5400zl, which is only showing 88 routes. And I can't find any documentation on the maximum for that device.

[parnassus]

Hope not to be wrong but on the old 4AA0-5488ENW_Rev2 "HP ProCurve 5400zl, 3500yl and 6200yl series Technical Overview" PDF document contains two features, among others, under the "Routing Protocol" paragraph of "Overiew of features and benefits":

• Static IP route: to manually add routes directly to the routing table; includes ECMP.
• 10000 network address routes, 65536 L3 host address routes.

See here:

And a particular note about Routing and Forwarding tables is interesting too:

"The HP ProCurve Switch 5400zl, 3500yl, and 6200yl series have several routing and forwarding table features that enhance routing and switching performance.

Every line interface module has its own “best match prefix” routing table that contains IP routes and is used for determining how to route the vast majority of incoming packets. Using the best match prefix routing table is extremely fast and enables wire-speed routing to be achieved.

If the best match prefix routing table does not contain an entry that can be used to determine the route of a received packet, then the main routing table is used.

The main routing table can contain up to 10000 routing table entries.

For Layer 2 forwarding, each switch has a forwarding or MAC table that can contain up to 65536 entries."