Hit a weird snag setting up VLANs for a client last week in Denver

I was configuring a new network for a small office last Tuesday (about 8 people total) and the VLAN tags just would not stick on their managed switches. After 3 hours of digging, I found out the default firmware had a known bug with 802.1Q tagging on their specific model. Has anyone else run into firmware issues that killed a simple setup?

2 comments

2 Comments

mason.paige10d ago

Firmware bugs and I are old frenemies at this point.

henry_kelly5416d ago

Oh man, that is frustrating. I had a similar thing happen a few years back with a batch of HP switches. The VLANs would show up in the config but traffic would just ignore them completely. We spent a whole afternoon swapping cables and rebooting before we thought to check the firmware version. Turns out there was a known issue where the switch would drop all tagged frames if the firmware was older than a certain build. The fix was a simple update, but it cost us a full day of work. What bothers me is that the manufacturer knew about it for months but never pushed an automatic update. You just have to dig through their support forums to find the patch notes. I always check firmware now the minute a new switch comes out of the box. It's a simple step that saves a huge headache later.