Netgear problem

[ICT_GUY]

We have a brace of GS724T's as the back bone of our network. We recently bought a GS724TS and installed it on the network. It appears that the new switch really is not happy talking to the others. Big files will zip across without a problem, however, DHCP barley works and pushing printers out does not work (affecting anything plugged into the new switch)

 

Has anyone come across this? I am going to have to replace the switch this afternoon unless it can be fixed. I have updated the firmware on the older switches already.

[ICT_GUY]

Also the web interface is incredibly slow when compared to others on the network.

[pete]

Slow web interface would make me wonder about high cpu load caused by bad traffic (usually). Look at the ports info, especially the error count per port. If you spot higher-than-average errors on particular ports, investigate what's connected there. If you disconnect a cable and suddenly the switch springs into life, you've found your culprit.

 

Clearing the port counts to zero and then looking at them in half an hour is also a decent test. You shouldn't ideally be getting any errors (we get maybe 5-20 over a 6 month period per client port).

 

Also test if the switch works fine standalone (machine - switch - other machine).

 

(alternatively you may have just got a duff Netgear - we've returned 6 self-bricking switches in the last few years)

[Dos_Box]

I had one of these as my iSCSI switch a while back and it was pretty sweet. The 's' in the product number indicates it is a stackable swich (IIRC) and you should ensure the default switch number is set. I can't remember if it is '0' or '1' for it to be used as a standalone.

[mounters]

What firmware version have you got running on it? I had some issues with these until I upgraded to 5.0.0.23.

 

@Dos_Box I think it defaults to 0 if it's set in standalone mode (ceck box on the web gui front page.

[Dos_Box]

What firmware version have you got running on it? I had some issues with these until I upgraded to 5.0.0.23.

 

@Dos_Box I think it defaults to 0 if it's set in standalone mode (ceck box on the web gui front page.

 

Thats my point, someone may have 'tweaked' it

[ICT_GUY]

Slow web interface would make me wonder about high cpu load caused by bad traffic (usually). Look at the ports info, especially the error count per port. If you spot higher-than-average errors on particular ports, investigate what's connected there. If you disconnect a cable and suddenly the switch springs into life, you've found your culprit.

 

Clearing the port counts to zero and then looking at them in half an hour is also a decent test. You shouldn't ideally be getting any errors (we get maybe 5-20 over a 6 month period per client port).

 

Also test if the switch works fine standalone (machine - switch - other machine).

 

(alternatively you may have just got a duff Netgear - we've returned 6 self-bricking switches in the last few years)

 

No port errors, none. I have had everything out of it and it still shows the same problems. Though I have yet to test it as a standalone).

[ICT_GUY]

I had one of these as my iSCSI switch a while back and it was pretty sweet. The 's' in the product number indicates it is a stackable swich (IIRC) and you should ensure the default switch number is set. I can't remember if it is '0' or '1' for it to be used as a standalone.

It only has the option to be set as number 1, I had thought that I could have dumbed it down a little.

[ICT_GUY]

What firmware version have you got running on it? I had some issues with these until I upgraded to 5.0.0.23.

 

@Dos_Box I think it defaults to 0 if it's set in standalone mode (ceck box on the web gui front page.

 

I am having difficulty upgrading this since it only wants to download the updates via FTP, the smart discovery software won't do it. I may take it offline and try to update it when its not causing a disruption. Its good to know this might be worth while.

[denemagna]

Hope this helps; been seeing similar problems with GS724TS (rest of switches are straight GS724T or GS748T). DHCP fails or is slow to pull, can't PXE. Been going backwards and forwards with Netgear support with no joy. Had a random conversation on a course last week where it was suggested I turn off Spanning on the GS724TS (under Switching / STP). It's enabled by default on the stackable, and disabled on the non-stackable. Turning it off on stackable has cleared up our problems, but be aware it won't prevent loopbacks any longer... Appreciate this may be a little late for you, but may help others who've been scratching their heads for a while like me...!

[accura2000]

Well, this may solve my wireless problems, got 2 WFS709TP's running our wireless network and been get DHCP problems where clients are getting invalid IP addresses. Netgear have got no idea why. Reading this lead me to investigate and both wireless controller are plugged into a GS724T and a GS724TPS. going to play with the spanning options as suggested, will post if it sorts my problems.

 

 

Update: For me this seems to have improved things dramatically. I still get the odd invalid ip address but a quick repair on the adapter and its up and running nice a quick.

Edited November 18, 2010 by accura2000

[o0damo0o]

have you tried vlanning off the wireless potion of the network, also make sure that DHCP is turned off on the wfs709tp

[accura2000]

Yes, DHCP is definatly turned off. The problem seems to have gone since turning the STP option off on the GS724TPS switch. Strange in all but im quitely confident once all is settled everything will return to working order.

[ICT_GUY]

Hope this helps; been seeing similar problems with GS724TS (rest of switches are straight GS724T or GS748T). DHCP fails or is slow to pull, can't PXE. Been going backwards and forwards with Netgear support with no joy. Had a random conversation on a course last week where it was suggested I turn off Spanning on the GS724TS (under Switching / STP). It's enabled by default on the stackable, and disabled on the non-stackable. Turning it off on stackable has cleared up our problems, but be aware it won't prevent loopbacks any longer... Appreciate this may be a little late for you, but may help others who've been scratching their heads for a while like me...!

 

This fixed my problem after a whole day pulling my hair out again. It had been working kind of after I got around to doing a firmware update. Disabling spanning and finally dhcp would work reliably with Ghost.

 

Thank You!

[m25man]

@ICT_GUY I can confirm this as I have also had this even on the latest V4 Hardware.

The GS724T is still a really good budget switch poorly implemented.

 

The onboard resources are woefully inadequate for the out of the box settings.

Turn OFF STP on the switch and enable it only on the uplinks that need it such as if your implementing redundant loops.

STP takes 30 to 50 Seconds to detect topology changes RSTP should take around 6 seconds but Its much slower on this model.

This means that on power up the client NIC will register with the switch port and probably negotiate a 10Mb connection until the device drivers kick in and change the link state from 10 to 100 to 1GB

 

The pants firmware and slow CPU along with the changing link states and Default setting of STP instead of RSTP means that you can easily find yourself waiting up to a minute before you get an IP address by which time your client has gone into 169.x.x.x mode and your DHCP server has given up on you.

 

With STP disabled these switches will work fine and give good service.

As soon as you move up to the managed units the CPU power and RAM are there to cope with these settings so you never see the problem.

 

Also be aware that in some versions we have found that certain settings changed using the web interface DO NOT SAVE so you have to use the CLI to save your settings otherwise after a power outage your GS will revert to its previous settings!

Test your changes carefully using a power cycle or get used to using the CLI to save your work.