MAC address authentication issues with ERS 4550 stack?

[Flintstone]

Guys,

We are currently having port authentication issues after upgrading to FW:5.3.0.3 SW:5.5.0.003 a few months ago. 

After approx 3/4 weeks we get a few users that can no longer connect to the network on one of the switches(4) in the stack and when we investigate we can see that the associated IP phone authenticates Ok, but not the workstation.  When we 'Sniffed' the Radius session to our Ignition servers we can see the request and response Ok for the IP Phone but no request for the workstation.  It looks like that additional MAC addresses are no longer being recognised on the port?  The problem then starts to spread to other switches in the stack.  Note - We do not see any port authentication issues on our stand alone switches.

After a reboot everything is Ok and the 3/4 weeks later the problems start again.

We have opened a call with Avaya and will let you know how we get on?

CHeerZ

[Michael McNamara]

That's an interesting problem... certainly sounds like a bug. Hopefully you haven't fully deployed the new software to all your switches.

[Flintstone]

Unfortunately, we have deployed to all our edge switches as EDM had been 'turbo charged'. 

I think we will be turning off port authentication until we get a resolution?

CheerZ

[Michael McNamara]

Well that's a big pain then... how many switches do you need to re-configure?

[Flintstone]

As it happens we are having a huge reorganisation at work and have decided to switch off port authentication until everyone has moved where they are supposed to move and the turn on port authentication for the different companies per floor, so that they can only authenticate to their stacks/switches and nobody else's. 

This will allow us to troubleshoot this problem with Avaya and hopefully have a resolution before we turn port authentication back on again?

CheerZ

[Michael McNamara]

I was going to offer to write an Expect script to turn off port authentication if you had say 10+ switches or something like that.

Cheers!

[Flintstone]

Thanks for the offer 

You only have to turn off EAPOL in the global settings and that turns it off for the whole stack/switch.

CheerZ and thanks again