VOSS now supports the ability to check port utilization from the command line:

monitor ports statistics interface utilization

The in/out octet counters show cumulative values over a long time or since you last cleared the port stats.

The % util columns are calculated based on increases of the in/out octets over the last monitor interval period.

The % util may show 0 which is an indication that there is not enough traffic to produce a calculation of 1% or greater. Use a traffic generator to generate at line rate and you should see 100%.

To clear port statistics use the command:

clear-stats port

The monitor-statistics command supports options to select the monitor time duration and the monitor time interval under global configuration mode.

There are powerful terminal emulators out there and it is important to find one that suits your way of working.

I’ve decided to use ACLI more regularly to organise my work especially when I have to login to many devices in one day. I find the ACLI tool created by one of my X work colleagues at Avaya is a powerful and free tool for managing switches. The advance grep functionality is amazing and allows me to nail in on specific entries from MAC tables to IP routing tables with a simple one line show command. Or pull out the VLAN configuration for multiple VLANs from the running config which also gets other VLAN specific configuration outside of the VLAN interface.

VSP-1:1(config-if)#% show run -bi ||vlan 500,501
config terminal
vlan create 500 type port-mstprstp 0
vlan members 500 1/5 portmember
interface Vlan 500
ip address 172.19.21.2 255.255.255.128 2
exit
vlan create 501 type port-mstprstp 0
vlan members 501 1/6 portmember
interface Vlan 501
ip address 172.19.21.130 255.255.255.128 3
exit
interface GigabitEthernet 1/5
default-vlan-id 500
exit
end

Options: -b no comments; -i indent; || context aware grep (keeps banner and summary in show commands); !! negate

Can paste a list of command lines into the command line and if one produces an error (maybe because it exists already) then check with @resume buffer command. To continue pasting the contents of the buffer type @resume. Carry on until the buffer is empty.

Search IP routing table for all routes beginning 172.19.21 with next-hop 172.19.21.2.

VSP-1:1(config)#% show ip route ||172.19.21||172.19.21.2
************************************************************************************
Command Execution Time: Sun Apr 07 17:32:18 2024 UTC
************************************************************************************
======================================================================
IP Route – GlobalRouter
======================================================================
NH INTER
DST MASK NEXT VRF/ISID COST FACE PROT AGE TYPE PRF
———————————————————————————————————-
172.19.21.0 255.255.255.128 172.19.21.2 – 1 500 LOC 0 DB 0

2 out of 2 Total Num of Route Entries, 2 Total Num of Dest Networks displayed.
acli.pl: Displayed Record Count = 1
————————————————————————————————————

There are other features of ACLI which can help with sourcing scripts, alias commands that allow shortened custom commands, the ability to compare command output across multiple linked tabs plus so much more.

https://github.com/lgastevens/ACLI-terminal

The Mode button is used to cycle through three display modes for the port LEDs. After two presses of the Mode button, the port LEDs will enter the STK Display Mode, indicated by the STK LED. STK mode is used to indicate slot presence and slot number via the first eight port LEDs.

Shared on the Extreme Networks Community Hub:

1.- Mandatory, mgmt CLIP interface:

mgmt clip
ip address 1.1.1.1/32
enable

2.- Create VLAN, L3 interface and assing it to a port:

vlan create 666 name DHCP type port-mstprstp 0
interface vlan 666
ip address 192.168.69.1 255.255.255.0

vlan member add 666 1/4

3.- DHPC-SERVER subnet

ip dhcp-server subnet 192.168.69.0/24
pool 192.168.69.100 192.168.69.200
router 192.168.69.1
domain-name-servers 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
domain-name dhcp.int
lease-time 86400
enable

4.- Enable it globally

ip dhcp-server enable

At this point the server doesnt work, in order to work you must enable dhcp-server relay on VLAN to mgmt CLIP

5.- Enable DHCP-RELAY

interface vlan 666
ip dhcp-relay fwd-path 1.1.1.1 enable
ip dhcp-relay

ChatGPT is really good for Excel formulas! I wanted to change any MAC address in column A starting with A1 to the format used for the client-identifier in a DHCP pool on a Cisco router.

You:

Write a formula that takes AABBCCDDEEFF and changes it to 01AA.BBCC.DDEE.FF?

ChatGPT:

Sure, to convert the string “AABBCCDDEEFF” into the format “01AA.BBCC.DDEE.FF” in Excel, you can use a formula similar to the previous one. Assuming the original string is in cell A1, here’s a formula to achieve this:

=CONCATENATE(“01”, MID(A1, 1, 2), “.”, MID(A1, 3, 2), MID(A1, 5, 2), “.”, MID(A1, 7, 2), MID(A1, 9, 2), “.”, MID(A1, 11, 2), MID(A1, 13, 2))

This formula follows a similar approach to the previous one:

• The MID function extracts specific portions of the original string using the starting position and the number of characters to extract.
• MID(A1, 1, 2) extracts the first two characters (“AA”).
• MID(A1, 3, 2) extracts the next two characters (“BB”).
• MID(A1, 5, 2) extracts the following two characters (“CC”).
• MID(A1, 7, 2) extracts the subsequent two characters (“DD”).
• MID(A1, 9, 2) extracts the next two characters (“EE”).
• MID(A1, 11, 2) extracts the following two characters (“FF”).
• The CONCATENATE function combines these extracted parts with the added “01” and periods to form the desired output.

Copy and paste this formula into a cell in Excel, replacing “A1” with the cell containing the original string if it’s in a different cell.

The result in the cell in the adjacent column where I added the formula:

01AA.BBCC.DDEE.FF

Select the + on the bottom right corner of the cell and drag it downwards to apply the same formula against the data from the cell to the left. So, if you have multiple rows with different MAC addresses then you will have a new column with the client-identifier values.

Add Custom FlexViews and MIBs

Use the instructions in this topic to add custom FlexViews and MIBs in ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine.

To add a new FlexView to ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine:

1. Create the following directory on the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine server: /usr/local/Extreme_Networks/NetSight/appdata/VendorProfiles/Stage/MyVendorProfile/FlexViews/My FlexViews if it does not already exist.
2. Add your custom FlexView files (.TPL) to the /usr/local/Extreme_Networks/NetSight/appdata/VendorProfiles/Stage/MyVendorProfile/FlexViews/My FlexViews directory on the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine server.
3. Add the MIB files that correspond to your custom FlexView files to the /usr/local/Extreme_Networks/NetSight/appdata/VendorProfiles/Stage/MyVendorProfile/MIBs directory on the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine server.
4. Log into the system shell (via the local console or SSH) on the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine server as root.
5. Restart the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine server:
   1. Enter service nsserver stop.
   2. Enter service nsserver start.

For example, download a .TPL file (FlexView) from Extreme Github that can be used to show Port Status. Useful to determine port usage on overcrowded switches and free up ports.

XMC-Report-Views/FlexView/Networking/tpl/Port_Status_Time_with_alias.tpl at master · extremenetworks/XMC-Report-Views · GitHub

Here is a command that can help determine the port usage on an EXOS switch.

ENT-EXOS-07.1 # show port info detail | include Port:|Link\sState:|Link\sUps:|Link\sDowns:
Port: 1
Link State: Ready
Link Ups: 0 Last: Tue Jun 20 11:09:26 2023
Link Downs: 0 Last: Tue Jun 20 11:19:09 2023
Port: 2
Link State: Active, 1Gbps, full-duplex
Link Ups: 6 Last: Thu Aug 31 17:38:17 2023
Link Downs: 6 Last: Thu Aug 31 17:37:26 2023
Port: 3
Link State: Ready
Link Ups: 0 Last: Tue Jun 13 15:18:21 2023
Link Downs: 0 Last: Tue Jun 13 17:17:36 2023
Port: 4
Link State: Active, 1Gbps, full-duplex
Link Ups: 6 Last: Thu Aug 31 17:38:18 2023
Link Downs: 6 Last: Thu Aug 31 17:37:27 2023
Port: 5
Link State: Ready
Link Ups: 0 Last: —
Link Downs: 0 Last: —

etc…

If you find that you cannot use the Windows Snipping Tool to take screen shots of drop-down lists because the drop-down list disappears when you move away from it then the solution is to change the Delay from None to 5 seconds. This will give you enough time to select the drop-down list and grab what you want. The Delay can be put back to None if you don’t need the 5 second delay.

In Windows it is possible to use the ping command in the CLI to find the point where fragmentation is needed. Simply, add the -f option to the ping command which sets the Do Not Fragment bit to 1. Then increase the payload size using the -l option in the same ping command until the pings start to fail. The ping response will show “Packet needs to be fragmented but DF set” message which indicates the point where fragmentation is required.

Using ping without options will use 74 bytes packets on the wire (14 byte Ethernet + 20 byte IP + 40 byte ICMP Payload). If specify ping options an extra 16 bytes is added to the IP header.

Increasing the ICMP payload size increases the packet size further and if the DF bit is set you will soon discover the point where fragmentation is required.

In a test I discovered that I could send 1456 bytes of ICMP payload resulting in a frame size of 1514 bytes without fragmentation. When I specified 1457 bytes the ICMP Requests were dropped and the message above was returned.

Fragmentation can lead to issues between client and server and sometimes segments arrive out of order causing issues with reordering or reassembly.

The MSS and MTU settings can be used on a WAN router to prevent fragmentation. The IP layer uses a Path MTU Discovery mechanism to discover the optimum MTU size for transmission. This requires the proper handling of ICMP messages between network devices. Alternatively, TCP MSS can be used to avoid fragmentation.

In XIQ-SE Network Devices can be configured using the Ports Tab and individual ports can have their configuration changed. How can you change the auto negotiation settings for a specific port?

In order to change the auto negotiation settings, first use the Column picker to select Auto Negotiate, Speed and Duplex so they appear as columns in the Ports Tab.

The Port Template needs to be changed to <Use Local Settings> so as an example, Auto can be turned off and the Speed set to 100 and Duplex Full.