ZebOS® Server Routing Suite Product FAQ

General Information

Q. What is the ZebOS® Server Routing Suite (SRS)?

A. The ZebOS Server Routing Suite is an advanced routing

solution for servers and appliances. Targeted at enterprises,

telecommunication companies and service providers, the

ZebOS Server Routing Suite provides dynamic route

updates, high availability, route monitoring, and flexible

integration with other server applications. ZebOS SRS

supports a broad range of IPv4 and IPv6 routing, switching,

and multicast protocols and features an industry-standard

command line interface. IP Infusion’s intelligent networking

software is one of the most reliable, widely used, and full-

featured enhanced IP service solutions available today.

Q. What operating systems does ZebOS SRS support?

A. ZebOS SRS currently supports Linux 2.4.x, Solaris 2.8

and FreeBSD 4.4 - 4.6. IP Infusion plans to support add-

itional operating systems in the future.

Q. What is the pricing and availability for ZebOS SRS?

A. IP Infusion offers the following ZebOS SRS suites for

Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD systems:

• IPv4 suite - RIPv1, RIPv2, OSPFv2 and BGP-4 protocols

• IPv6 suite - RIPng, OSPFv3 and BGP-4+ protocols

IP Infusion offers the following suites for Linux 2.4.18

systems:

• MPLS-VPN suite - RIP, OSPF, BGP, BGP-VPN extensions,

LDP switching, and an MPLS Ethernet forwarder patch.

• PIM-SM suite - PIM and PIM-SM multicast kernel sub-

stitution files. The IPv4 suite is a prerequisite for PIM-SM.

Q. What documentation is provided with ZebOS SRS?

A. IP Infusion provides an extensive set of documentation,

including a ZebOS SRS Installation and Management

Guide, a ZebOS SRS Configuration Guide, and

comprehensive command reference guides.

IP InfusionProduct FAQ

Q. What support services are available for ZebOS SRS?

A. IP Infusion offers a portfolio of technical support

services for the ZebOS Server Routing Suite. IP Infusion

provides annual site support and per incident support

programs. IP Infusion’s technical support team is

comprised of highly skilled network and routing engineers

with expert knowledge of IP infusion’s IPv4 and IPv6

routing, switching and multicast protocols. ZebOS SRS

support services include:

• Registered access to IP Infusion’s web-based technical

assistance site.

• Access to IP Infusion’s PVCS call tracking system. Using

PVCS, you may request technical support and check the

status of your cases.

• Product documentation and troubleshooting information

• Software maintenance releases.

Please see the Support section of the IP Infusion web site

for more details on our support services.

Q. If I am a ZebOS SRS customer, how do I get the latest

software release?

A. IP Infusion is committed to providing software

enhancements and maintenance releases to meet our

customers’ current and future requirements. If you

purchase an annual site or per incident support contract,

you will receive software maintenance releases. If you

purchase a site support contract, you will also receive any

major software upgrades in addition to maintenance

releases. If you are not covered under a site support

contract, you may purchase ZebOS SRS upgrade licenses

to upgrade your current ZebOS SRS software to the

newest software release.

Q. How is the ZebOS Server Routing Suite architected?

A. IP Infusion's routing protocols are built on top of the

ZebOS Network Services Module (NSM) which provides

route table management, route conversion, and route

suite also includes BGP-VPN extensions and an MPLS

Ethernet Forwarder module. The MPLS-VPN suite is

available for Red Hat Linux 2.4.18 systems.

Service providers have adopted MPLS, or Multiprotocol

Label Switching, technology because it offers many

benefits for core networks. MPLS combines the

simplified forwarding of Layer 2 switching with the

scalability and intelligence of Layer 3 routing. It

provides greater reliability under all network conditions

and offers faster forwarding performance than typical

Layer 3 routing. But the greatest advantage of MPLS is

the additional services that it enables, such as Traffic

Engineering and Virtual Private Networking (VPN).

MPLS-VPN allows service providers to build and

provision affordable VPNs across their IP backbones.

Managed VPN services provide high-margin

incremental revenue for service providers. And MPLS-

VPNs offer greater scalability than frame relay or ATM

by allowing new VPN networks to be easily meshed

together. MPLS-VPNs can support multiple QoS classes

to ensure greater reliability for sensitive streaming

data, VoIP, and video traffic.

Q. Does ZebOS SRS support multicast?

A. Yes, IP Infusion’s Protocol Independent Multicast-

Sparse Mode (PIM-SM) routing suite allows

organizations to provision scalable multicast routing on

standard servers and appliances. The PIM-SM suite

supports Static Rendezvous Point configuration,

Reverse Path Forwarding algorithm, rooted multicast

delivery trees, IGMPv2, neighbor discovery, Bootstrap

Router election, Candidate-RP advertisements, and

SNMP management support through PIM-SM MIBs. It

also provides a flexible, inexpensive way for

organizations to deploy a PIM-SM multicast network or

to support PIM-SM pass-through on firewalls or other

network devices.

PIM-SM routes multicast packets to selected groups

and distributes content efficiently across wide area

networks.

ZebOS SRS Product FAQ

redistribution. Its scalable, modular architecture allows all

of the routing protocols to operate independently, enabling

new routing protocols to be added or upgraded without

affecting other routing processes.

IP Infusion’s management interface centralizes the config-

uration of all of the routing protocols through an integrated

command line interface. In addition, all configuration

settings are saved to a single configuration file.

ZebOS Server Routing Suite Technology

Q. What RFCs does the ZebOS SRS support?

A. IP Infusion is committed to supporting the latest Internet

Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards to ensure interoper-

ability with other routing vendors. Please see the following

list of IETF RFCs and RFC drafts supported by ZebOS SRS.

Q. Does ZebOS SRS support IPv6? Why is IPv6 important?

A. Yes. IP Infusion provides robust implementations of

OSPFv3, BGP-4+, and RIPng and supports native IPv6 and

IPv4/IPv6 dual routing stack solutions. IP Infusion's routing

products were designed from the ground up to support

both IPv4 and IPv6, so the IPv6 routing protocols utilize

memory and processing resources efficiently and they can

seamlessly communicate with IPv4 routing protocols and

with other IPv6 routing protocols. IP Infusion's robust IPv6

routing solution allows organizations to evaluate and

deploy IPv6 routing without purchasing dedicated

equipment or disrupting their production networks.

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the new IP address

standard recommended by the Internet Engineering Task

Force (IETF) to replace the current IPv4 standard. IPv6

resolves several limitations present in today’s IPv4 address

standard: IPv6 increases the number of available IP

addresses, improves mobile IP support, and adds new

authentication, encryption, and QoS capabilities.

Q. Does ZebOS SRS support MPLS-VPN? Why is MPLS-

VPN important?

A. Yes, IP Infusion provides MPLS-VPN switching

capabilities to ZebOS SRS customers. The MPLS-VPN suite

includes LDP switching and RIP, OSPF, and BGP routing. The

To start all routing protocols, log into the ZebOS SRS

system as a root user and type: “./start-sh all”. This

will start all routing daemons and the SNMP agent.

To start an individual routing daemon, type “./start-sh

<protocol daemon>” where <protocol daemon> is nsm or

bgpd or any other routing daemon. Be sure that nsm has

been started before starting individual routing daemons.

To start a routing suite, type “./start-sh <server suite>”

where <server suite> is ipv4, ipv6, mpls-vpn or pim-sm.

The stop script commands are similar to the start scripts.

For example, the “./stop-sh all” command will stop

all routing daemons and the SNMP agent. Please refer to

Chapter 6 of the ZebOS SRS Installation and Management

Guide for more information.

Q. Why aren’t my configuration settings being saved

when I restart ZebOS SRS?

A. There are two typical reasons why you may lose your

settings when you shutdown and restart the ZebOS SRS

application. If you do not save your running configuration

to the startup configuration, then any changes will be lost

when the application is stopped. To save your running

configuration, type "write file”, “write memory” or

“copy running-config startup-config” from the

privileged executive mode in the CLI.

If you have saved your configuration to the ZebOS.conf

file in the /usr/local/etc directory, but the

configuration is not loaded when you launch the routing

daemons, then you may be launching the daemons

incorrectly. The start-sh script, the recommended

method to launch ZebOS SRS, will automatically load the

configuration settings. If you wish to start the routing

daemons manually, then you must enter the command

“./vtysh -b” after starting the daemons. This command

will load the configuration settings from the ZebOS.conf

file into the routing daemons.

ZebOS SRS Product FAQ

Q. How does IP Infusion test the functionality and

interoperability of the ZebOS Server Routing Suite?

A. IP Infusion extensively tests ZebOS SRS on Solaris,

Linux, and FreeBSD servers and appliances. IP Infusion

performs thorough interoperability testing using IXIA’s

ANVL conformance testing equipment and performance

testing using IXIA’s performance testing tools. IP Infusion

also tests interoperability between ZebOS SRS and routing

equipment from leading routing equipment vendors. IP

Infusion submits its full suite of routing protocols to the

University of New Hampshire InterOperability Labs and

participates in MPLS and IPv6 testing and interoperability

conferences. IP Infusion’s sales managers can provide

detailed performance analysis reports upon request.

Q. Does ZebOS SRS include SNMP MIBs and SNMP traps?

A. Yes, ZebOS SRS supports SNMP management through

IETF compliant SNMP MIBs. SNMP set, get, and get_next

have been implemented for RIP, OSPF, BGP, and PIM-SM

routing protocols. SNMP get and get_next has been

implemented for the LDP switching protocol. In addition,

BGP and PIM-SM support SNMP traps.

Troubleshooting and Technical Information

Q. I just installed ZebOS SRS. Why don’t I have a ZebOS

configuration file?

A. The ZebOS Server Routing Suite does not include a

default configuration file. To create an initial configuration

file, log into the ZebOS command line interface. Then type

“write file” or “copy running-config startup-

config”. Either of these commands will save the running

configuration to a ZebOS.conf file in the /usr/local/etc

directory.

Q. How do I start and stop the ZebOS SRS software?

A. ZebOS SRS includes start-sh and stop-sh scripts that

launch and kill the ZebOS SRS routing daemons. These

scripts are saved to the /usr/local/sbin directory

during installation.

Note: Do not move the routing daemons from their default

location /usr/local/sbin.

Q. Why do I see a license manager error when I try to start

ZebOS SRS?

A. The ZebOS SRS software includes a license manager.

When the ZebOS SRS software is installed, an “ipilc”

license key file is copied to the /usr/local/sbin folder.

For evaluation customers, the trial will expire after 30 days.

When you try to start ZebOS SRS, if you see the following

error message, then your 30-day trial has expired.

2004/01/28 15:15:16 RIP: Unable to obtain

license manager library

If you have just installed the software, you may see an

error message similar to the following:

/usr/local/sbin/ipilc:License file cannot be

found or opened

2003/01/28 15:04:34 RIP : Unable to initialize

license manager library.

If you see this message, then the routing daemon could

not find the “ipilc” file. The install script copies the

license key file to the /usr/local/sbin directory. If you

deleted the license key file or did not use the install-sh

script to install ZebOS SRS, then be sure to copy the

“ipilc” file from the unzipped ZebOS SRS tar file to the

/usr/local/sbin directory.

ZebOS SRS Product FAQ

Copyright 2003 IP Infusion Inc. All Rights Re served.

Part N o. 0200007 - 4/ 2003

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Q. How do I access the ZebOS SRS command line interface?

A. You can access the ZebOS SRS CLI through a standard

Telnet or SSH session. For Telnet access, type "telnet

<ZebOS server IP address>”. Be sure that the Telnet

service is installed and enabled on the ZebOS SRS server.

Also verify that the Telnet service, TCP port 23, is not

blocked by a firewall application on the ZebOS SRS server.

Before you log into the command line interface, you must

define a VTYSH username and password. The VTYSH user

account is created when you first install the ZebOS SRS

software.

You can also manage ZebOS SRS through the VTYSH

daemon. To start VTYSH locally, type “./vtysh” from the

/usr/local/sbin directory. The VTYSH daemon will

launch the ZebOS SRS command line interface.

Q. When I change my system’s IP settings through the

kernel, the changes are not recognized by ZebOS SRS.

What should I do?

A. ZebOS SRS has the ability to periodically check the IP

settings of the system. To enable periodic system checking,

type “if-arbiter” from the configure mode in the CLI. If

a network interface is modified through the kernel, then

the if-arbiter facility will detect the change and update the

ZebOS SRS configuration.

ZebOS is a registered trademark , IP Infusion and the ipinfusion logo are trademarks of IP Infusion Inc. All other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. All specifications within this document are subject to change without notice.