Lanner Devices - NCA-5510

Tue Dec 5 14:20:47 UTC 2017

Hello,

A number of people have been suggesting Lanner boxes for routing.  I have
used FW-7543A and FW-7573A boxes with Debian with no issues.

I am currently trying the NCA-5510 model with NCS2-IGM806B (XL710) and
NCS2-IXM407A (I350) cards with a standard Debian Stretch installation.

I was hoping that it would be as easy as installing the operating system,
turning ports up, and getting a working network.  It was like that with the
other models.  Not with this model.  There seems to be a bunch of different
BIOS combinations which give different (bad) results.  And for the
combinations I've tried, I can't seem to get the XL710 card to work
properly.  Maybe I should have gone with the 82599 card instead.  

In addition, the I210 based management port also isn't coming up properly,
always some sort 'interface reset' error.  Which, with some bios settings, I
get on the I350 cards as well.

If someone has a similar model and/or configuration, what sort of
BIOS/Kernel settings have you used to get something operationally stable?
Any particular Kernel versions work best?  I tried 4.9.51, and 4.14.3.

It seems to take about 48 hours to get turn arounds from Taiwan engineering,
which I am currently trying to escalate from a sales office, but was hoping,
in the meantime, someone else might have some experiences to share?

I can provide console / kernel messages to show what I am encountering for
those interested.

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