Conference netcad::hub_mgnt

91.0. "DECagent goes brain-dead on 6th community" by GUCCI::DMCCLOUD (Dennis McCloud - SOA ANC) Mon Nov 30 1992 16:49

    At a customer network last week I experienced some very unfriendly
    behavior in configuring the DECagent 90 with multiple communities.  The
    symptom is that we configured the DECagent 90 with multiple communities
    in a standalone configuration then inserted them into the DEChub.
    
    With more than 5 communities defined, the DECagent goes brain-dead with
    the System OK and Back port LEDs flashing together at ~1 second
    intervals.  The DECagent must be reset back to factory settings.  Even
    the out-of-band port is dead.
    
    We went through multiple iterations before we isolated the problem.
    We tried configuring everything with the DECagent installed in the HUB.
    In this situation the DECagent would accept 4 communities successfully
    and would accept the 5th community but would not show the correct
    status of the modules in the 5th hub until the Agent was removed and
    re-inserted.  Once the 6th community is added and the DECagent power
    cycled it goes brain-dead.
    
    The configuration which we were trying to setup in the DECagent was 6
    single DEChubs with a DECbridge (WGBV29) installed in each HUB with
    a minimal number of DECrepeater 90C and 90T installed.  The number of
    repeaters installed in the 6 hubs was (4, 1, 2, 1, 1, 0)
    
    It would be nice for the DECagent to tell you that you have exceeded
    some limit and even better if the documentation also told you what the
    limit you should expect.
    
    Let me know if I've done something incorrectly or have unrealistic
    expectations.
    
    	Dennis

    I have had something similar at a customer of mine. We set the agent up
    with 4 communities and initially all was fine. Then we added two more
    (the manual says you can do 8- even though the marketing presentations
    (spd?) say four) and again all seemed fine.
    
    Next day they found not only had the DECagent gone into a similar state
    as described in note .0, but it had taken two of their bridges out too
    so a large chunk of the network was down.
    
    Needless to say they were none too impressed with what they described
    as the agent going into "proactive mode". 
    
    If this is due to some (performance?) limit on the number of
    communities it can handle then the manual needs changing so they don't
    expect to be able to manage 8 hubs.
    
    Giles