I can accept idle VMs might drop their entries in a table, such as arp cache, but if a ping is continually running, then the entry should still be there (in theory).

This isnt what i am seeing.

Even so, it's not that the entry is there for, 8 hours then drops and reconnects, the time varies, but it's usually short, less than a half hour.

In addition some of the VMs are static IPs others are DHCP - much like they would be in a business - i plan to do soem further testing over the weekend, i have a few spare NIC ports i can light up and use for this should i need to.

I might even enable promiscuous mode on the virtual switch to see if that has any impact.

Just as an example - notice this can be up to about an hour but is usually quite a low value, the traffic of 0 bytes is also something i am debating given this device specificlaly is a DNS server as well as doing DHCP

Do please remember that i am by no means complaining, just hoping someone says something or notices something i can use to aid me - after all i am keen to learn and if we never figure this out, at least we tried

@Fae 

The more i play around with settings and the more i use the Omada SDN product, the more i think there is something miscalulating.

Just so i am clear, my install is on Debian (Kali), clean install with nothing imported, so it can't be a corruption in an upgrade.

I am seeing devices, both physically connected and virtual machines, connected via 2 ports (23/24) showing me traffic of 0bytes, which i know is not true, even the most idle system will use something.

My backup system - runs as a VM, but shows 0 traffic too, this on a nightly basis will be trasnferring ~200GB of data to an external NAS which must pass the physical switch to work, yet the VM shows me no traffic at all.

As additional information to my original post - sporadically some of my VMs show an IP, but it's rare and doesn't stay visible, i also have 2 maybe 3 VMs which are showing conencted for 10+ days, so i know they can be seen and the switch IS registering the correct mac address.

I am not complaining, but hoping that providing further information is helpful in someway to figuring out what's going on. Is it simply my misunderstanding of networking or is there something amiss 

I hope that as more people adopt the SDN and compatible switches, someone more knowledgable on network kit can voice their views too.

@Rod-IT Hello Rod, I was trying to figure out the same since I joined this system, than I renounced to understand because this is not affecting anything but it is happening the same to me. My ISP router is connected to one wire to the switch TL-SG2428P and just that. In the event log I see exactly what you describe, an interface (which I named TIM HUB Interface) that belongs to the modem/router where I see a MAC address without any IP address that is connecting and disconnecting in variable time frame but multiple times per day. Not an issue but I wanted to understand why.

@Xstreem 

Could you also test something for me?

If you do to the device page - does your switch or switches show 0 bytes until you refresh it?

I am running my Omada SDN on Debian and as yet i am not seeing the 4.2.2 release to try it, but there are a lot of little quirks - some the Android app deals with better than the web-browser version. The data is clearly there and is being put in to the DB, but i have a feeling tables are being mixed when something tries to read it - the other day my NAS, according to the software passed 65TB of data - more than i have actual storage, but a refresh changed it back to 6.5TB, I still don't think this is right, but more plausible than 65TB.

The disconnections are not in-fact disconnections and this is not for all devices, but it's a pain seeing it as it messes with the whole concept of visualizing the devices and their stability. Something perhaps we could troubleshoot better if the options the switch has available to it, were usable via the SDN controller instead of being stripped back for simplicity. If linked the switch to SDN reduces it's feature set, then don't include the features in the switch at all - the SDN is the switches USP. 

Both SDN and the switches we have are new, so i am willing to give TP time to resolve these issues, however, as you've noted in previous posts, this is somewhat basic functionalities - these things should be ironed out and ready to roll long before they are available for customers to use. Heck, I'd even be a beta tester for new products or software (not so much on my live setups, but generically).

@Fae 

Not completely.

The switch is able to get the devices MAC addresses of all systems that are virtual or using uplinks or NICs with multiple mac addresses/VMs and *sometimes* it does show the IP, but not always, when it does show an IP it doesn't match the VLAN name, for example if i seen IP 192.168.10.10 this would be a client network but it might show in Omada as Servers. Though seeing an IP is hit and miss - I'm not overly concerned about this, but it would be nice.

The data transferred of these devices is not always 0bytes, but mostly 0bytes. I do see actual data for the VMs depending on how long they remain connected (according to the switch).

As an example; both of these below are virtual machines and both behind a NIC that has multiple mac addresses/VMs.

My email server shows uptime of 2 hours and no bytes - this is untrue, but it shows what i mean, yet my backup server also virtual shows uptime of less than an hour and 9mb transferred.

Both of these servers are connected to the same switch ports and reside on the same virtual host.

The disconnections also happen with physically devices, though not as often - an example, my NAS, it's a physical box connected to the switch via 2 non-bonded or LACP/LAG ports, just 2 direct connections - this also shows disconnections.

On the other side of this, i have 1 VM that shows connected 31 days and zero disconnections, but it is on the same virtual host and using the same NICs/Ports as all my other VMs, so i'm confused why this one is available and stable, yet the rest are showing disconnects - even though physically they never go offline.

Because this is not causing any actual problems i am not too concerned, but the SDN software is the reason i bought this switch and to see it lose half it's functionalities when managed by Omada or to see issues like this, but for unknown reasons and to suggest it's everything else and not the switch just doesn't make sense.

If i'd have known any of this at the start, prior to purchase, in all honesty i would have likely stayed with my existing switch as this gives me little to no benefits at this point.

The switch does record the device history based on MAC, so it clearly knows of the devices.

I hope this helps and if there is any information i can get from the switch or the software, please let me know and how.

@Rod-IT 

Could you also test something for me?

 

If you do to the device page - does your switch or switches show 0 bytes until you refresh it?

No Rod, I see several GB in the UP and DOWN columns, I have no idea if those numbers are true, but definitely I don't see zero. Just for your info I'm using OC200 with version 4.2.4, but I don't remind with software controller or previous 4.1.5 version to have seen zero here.

Regarding the limited functionality of the Omada, it's something already raised up, and I agree with you that we must have the possibilities to use all the functionalities of all devices plus the benefits of the Omada otherwise it loses of sense. But from my understanding this is quite new and with time the things will come, or well I hope so. For example AP are supported since longer time and you have access to almost all functionalities while switches or router are more new into this system and that's why they are in earlier stage I think.

Aswell for the several bugs or things implemented in a questionable way I think it's because the system is pretty new and they will need time to fix and improve.

From our side we can help them to find and highlight things.

@Fae No other devices do not have this behaviour, only the ISP router and I guess because multiple interfaces are in, but I don't understand why I see those MAC interfaces if these are disconnected.

@Fae 

I just want to inform everyone of something, specifically you and the team.

I today updated to 4.2.4 using the deb package linked in the sticky topics, i imported my configuration and since then i can now see 4 IPs of devices coming from my VMware host, which are using ports 23 and 24 - which was not working prior, so this is additional proof that this is in fact possible and the issue is either software or FW on the switch.

The devices still show as connected and disconnected, but they dont actually disconnect, but given  i can now see the IPs of a handful of devices, it must be the way in which the software is talking to the switch. I don't see all IPs, but i see 4 which is 4 more than before.

If the switch was purely L2 i would understand why it doesn't see IPs, but it has some L3 and L4 features which seem to be disabled or redcuced when Omada SDN takes ownership - which should not be the case, but at present it does.

I'd like to regain full control over the switch and the features it has in Omada SDN, but if this was not possible, maybe the switches local administration access could be retained as well - just a though.

I want to add additional information.

I am sporadically seeing more devices on the up-links and their IPs, but they don't always stay, sometimes the IP appear all the time, others come and go.

I am leaning more towards this being an SDN configuration issue (backend), due to other odd results i am seeing.

For example - my NAS is showing transferred data in the 800TB range which is impossible, I don't think it will have read this amount of data in it's lifetime, this however will fix itself, if i go back and look later this figure will be a more realistic number.

Again, i want to be clear i am not complaining, simply trying to help find and squash these issues