TAB-12-0001 ARP on Reboot

Technical Advisory Bulletin:           TAB‐12‐0001

Severity Level:      

 Low – non traffic affecting

Equipment:

TrangoLINK® ApexPlus, GigaPlus, Sparta Elite, and GigaPro

Condition:                 

Within 1 minute of a soft or hard reboot of the IDU or ApexPlus OMU, the out of band management(OBM) port will issue 8 ARP messages with an Intel MAC Address, which may cause a connected switch to shut it’s Ethernet port down sincethe MAC table in the switch or router may be updated with the incorrect MAC.

Description:

Radio does not respond to management attempts via the OBM port. ARP messages with an Intel MAC address are sent out the out of Band management port (OBM) after a power cycle or software issued reboot. The messages were originally intended for automatic firmware upgrades. Traffic ports are unaffected. This condition has been present from the initial release of the product.

Solution:                   

The easiest field solution is to flush the arp cache in the switch or router to which the radio out of band management port is connected after a reboot of the radio. If the arp messages cause a problem, the IDU or ApexPlus unit can be returned via the standard RMA process to the factory for a bootloader firmware upgrade. The bootloader cannot be updated remotely.

An RMA is not recommended unless the radio is forced to reboot on a regular basis AND the management connection is lost.

All units produced in the Trango factory after June 1 2012 will have new bootloader firmware which eliminates the problem. For reference, the bootloader firmware with the correction is V2.0 for ApexPlus and Sparta Elite, and V3.0 for GigaPlus. Earlier versions will exhibit the symptom.

 For further assistance, please email techsupport@trangosys.com.