Configuring and Managing AVB on EXOS Switches

Version 1.2 – 08/19/2022

EXOS Switch Basics

Management IP Address

Each EXOS switch has data ports (used for the network), a serial port (RJ45 or USB), and an out-
of-band management port. The serial and oob management ports can be found on the front, e.g.
5320, 5420, or on the back, e.g. 5520.

Figure 1. Example 5420M-48W-4YE front panel

Depending on the model, the baud rate is either 115200 or 9600. The rest of the serial settings
are 8/None/1, XON/XOFF flow control.

Once the serial port is accessed, the default username is admin, and password is left blank (i.e.
hit return).

If for some reason there is some older configuration on the switch, it can be factory defaulted
with the following command:

unconfigure switch all

By default, the switch boots up running a DHCP client on both the Default VLAN (VID = 1) and the
MGMT VLAN associated with the oob mgmt port. Further, all the data ports are members of the
Default VLAN (untagged).

If DHCP assignment of IP addresses is not desired, the following commands disables the DHCP
clients on the Mgmt and Default VLANs:

disable dhcp vlan default

disable dhcp vlan mgmt

With DHCP client disabled, an IP address can be assigned to a VLAN manually, e.g.:

configure vlan mgmt ipaddress 192.168.62.100/24

If a DHCP server is present to offer an IPv4 address and serial console access is not available, the
VLAN mgmt and Default interfaces will eventually be self-configured with an IPv4 link-local
address and can be accessed via that address.
The IPv4 link-local address will be in the form of 169.254.x.y/24 where the last 2 numbers in the
IP address will be the lower two bytes of the switch’s MAC address (which can be found on the
sticker on the switch with the serial number and model number).

For example, if the switch MAC address is 00:04:96:A1:F3:BA, then the address will be
169.254.243.186.

Further more, Chalet, the switch’s web interface, can be accessed where the URL is either
http://169.254.x.y or http://0xa9fexxyy where, in the latter case, the highlighted are the lower
two bytes of the switch’s MAC.

Chalet can be used to easily license and configure AVB on an EXOS switch. Please see pages 45-
47 of the Chalet User Guide. To enable Chalet to use TLS/SSL instead of HTTP, configure the
certificate (typically self-signed) and enable https, e.g.:

config ssl certificate privkeylen 4096 country US organization avblab.net common-name switch7
enable web https
disable web http

Upgrading the Switch

The Default or Mgmt VLAN IP address can be used to upgrade the switch. The version of EXOS
running on the switch can be determined by the ‘show version’ command.

Upgrading the image can be accomplished either via TFTP or by SFTP. Please find the instructions
for upgrading via TFTP here. SFTP requires that SSH be enabled on the switch using the following
command:

enable ssh

Then, once the SFTP session is established (e.g. sftp [email protected]), then change the
mode to binary in the SFTP session. Upload the EXOS image to the switch with the ‘put’
command. Then, after a time, use the ‘install image’ command from the switch CLI to install the
new image and then reboot the switch with the ‘reboot’ command.

AVB Support & Licensing

AVB is supported on the following switches running EXOS without the need for an AVB license:

X870
X695
X690
X590
5720
5520
5420 - U1 & U2 ports require the ‘disable stacking-support’ command
5320

AVB is supported on the following switches running EXOS with the addition of an AVB license:

X465-24XE - Front-panel ports only as well as only on the following VIMs VIM5-4X/2Y/4Y/2Q
X465-24S - Front-panel ports only as well as only on the following VIMs VIM5-4X/2Y/4Y/2Q
X465i-48W - Front-panel ports only as well as only on the following VIMs VIM5-4X/2Y/4Y/2Q
X460-G2
X450-G2
X440-G2 - On 48-port models only on the front-panel ports 1–24 and 51–52
X435

Use the ‘show license’ command to ensure that the AVB Feature License is installed. If not, it
must be installed with the ‘enable license <AVB license key>’ command.

Other Limits

AVB is not supported when MACsec is enabled, when the Network Timing Feature License is
installed, or on switch stacks.

Preparing the Switch for AVB

Flow control on the switch needs to be disabled as it can be disruptive to AVB traffic. The
following commands should be issued:

disable flow-control tx-pause ports all

disable flow-control rx-pause ports all

By default, spanning-tree is enabled (multiple rapid spanning-tree) as stp s0 and it is configured

to auto-bind to the ports within the Default VLAN. Ensure this is the case by issuing the ‘show.
stp s0’ and observing that the s0 instance is enabled, its operational mode is MSTP, and the
Default VLAN is participating and auto-bound to it. For example:

# show stp s0
Stpd: s0 Stp: ENABLED Number of Ports: 15
Rapid Root Failover: Disabled
Operational Mode: MSTP Default Binding Mode: 802.1D
MSTI Instance: CIST
802.1Q Tag: (none)
Ports: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,
11,12,13,14,16
Participating Vlans: Default
Auto-bind Vlans: Default
…

Neighbor Discovery Protocols

Another consideration are neighbor discovery protocols like EDP and LLDP which are on by
default now in EXOS. They can be left on if desired but may add unwanted network traffic in large
installations. The CPU overhead should not be too great and it can be optionally left running
without affecting AVB traffic. However, it is recommended in larger networks to turn off the two
neighbor discovery protocols (they are on by default), by issuing the following commands:

disable lldp port all

disable edp port all

At this point, LLDP should be re-enabled on inter-switch ports and ports connecting to devices
where LLDP is required for proper PoE+ negotiation. (For example, ports connected to Biamp’s
Tesira AMP-450P and Tesira TCM-1 family of products.)

To enable LLDP on inter-switch ports, simply issue the command:

enable lldp port <inter-switch-port-list>

To enable LLDP on ports where PoE negotiation is required, issue these commands:

configure lldp port <port-list> advertise vendor-specific dot3

power-via-mdi with-classification

enable lldp port <port-list>

Concurrent AVB with Dante

If Dante will be used on the AVB enabled switch you will need to either disable IGMP snooping
(IGMP snooping is enabled by default in EXOS) or add a querier IP address to one (and only one)
switch in the Dante VLAN. If no querier is present, then IGMP snooping will cause Dante clock
discovery to fail. You will see multiple Master Clock devices shown in Dante Controller, the Dante
devices will lose clock sync, and latency will increase until audio stops.

A router in the network, if on the Dante VLAN, can serve, if supported, as an IGMP querier.
However, if that is not present, which is often the case, a switch will have to serve as an IGMP
querier in the Dante VLAN. To configure that, an IP address must be configured on the Dante
VLAN on at least one switch in the network. For example:

config vlan dante_vlan ipadd 10.10.10.1/24

With this configuration on one switch in the network, IGMP snooping can be left on (which it is
by default). The querier will solicit multicast reports from receivers and the switches will snoop
and prune multicast from ports on which that multicast is not subscribed to by receivers.

If this is determined to be unnecessary, due to the low level of multicast, then IGMP snooping
can simply be disabled on the Dante VLAN, e.g.:

disable igmp snooping vlan dante_vlan

However, it is recommended that IGMP snooping be enabled, particularly in larger networks. If

IGMP snooping is ineffectual due to there being no multicast reporting solicited by a querier to
be snooped, multicast becomes, essentially, broadcast and the network can be degraded
considerably.

Saving the EXOS switch configuration

Lastly, remember to save the configuration of the switch with the ‘save config’ command after
switch preparation for AVB, and after enabling AVB in the next section.

Quick Start to Enabling AVB

To enable AVB and activate it on all the ports on the switch, issue the following commands:

enable avb
enable avb port all

A message may be issued: “Dot1p 7 was mapped from QP8 to QP6 to support AVB”. This is
expected.

Confirm the AVB configuration with the ‘show avb’ command. For example:

# show avb
gPTP status : Enabled
gPTP enabled ports : *1s 2d 3d 4d 5d
6d 7d 8d 9d 10d
*11m 12d 13d 14d 15d
16d

MSRP status : Enabled

MSRP enabled ports : *1ab 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
*11ab 12 13 14 15
16

MVRP status : Enabled

MVRP enabled ports : *1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
 *11 12 13 14 15
16

Flags: (*) Active, (!) Administratively disabled,

(a) SR Class A allowed, (b) SR Class B allowed,
(d) Disabled gPTP port role, (g) Load sharing port,
(G) Multi-switch LAG Group port,
(m) Master gPTP port role, (p) Passive gPTP port role,
(s) Slave gPTP port role

The output of the ‘show avb’ command, in this example, indicates that gPTP, MSRP, and MVRP
(the three main protocols involved in AVB are enabled on all the ports of the switch, an X440G2-
12p-10G4.

The ‘*’ indicates the active ports. The ‘s’ on port 1 in the gPTP section indicates that port 1 is a
slave port (i.e. the Grand Master Clock is reachable through port 1). The ‘m’ on port 11 indicates
that it is a master port. The ‘d’ associated with the other ports along with the lack of an ‘*’
indicates that those ports are disabled and thus, not participating in gPTP.

The ‘ab’ flags on the ports in the MSRP status section indicates that those parts are members of
both the class A and class B domains.

In the MVRP status section, the enabled and active ports are identified by the ‘*’ flag.

The Detailed Configuration of AVB on EXOS Switches

Time synchronization and QoS requirements for AVB are defined in the following IEEE Standards:

• IEEE 802.1AS – Timing and Synchronization for Time-Sensitive Applications in Bridged

Local Area Networks. This is commonly known as generic Precision Time Protocol (gPTP)
• IEEE 802.1Q –
o Clause 10: Multiple Registration Protocol (MRP) and Multiple MAC Registration
Protocol (MMRP)
o Clause 11: VLAN Topology Management (MVRP)
o Clause 34: Forwarding and Queuing for Time-Sensitive Streams (FQTSS)
o Clause 35: Stream Reservation Protocol (SRP) which includes Multiple Stream
Registration Protocol (MSRP)
• IEEE 802.1BA: Audio Video Bridging (AVB) Systems

The EXOS CLI does expose commands pertaining to the following portions of the AVB standards:

• gPTP
• MRP
• MVRP
• MSRP
Typically, the commands presented in the Quick Start section above are sufficient. The “avb”
commands in that section effect the following:

[ enable | disable | unconfigure ] network-clock gptp { ports [ all | port_list ] }

[ enable | disable | unconfigure ] mvrp { ports [ all | port_list ] }
[ enable | disable | unconfigure ] msrp { ports [ all | port_list ] }

However, there are times when adjustments need to be made to the configuration of some of
the protocols underlying AVB.

gPTP

The Priority1 value (the key factor in determining which device in the network is elected the
Grand Master Clock) may need to be adjusted. The lower value is a higher priority in the election.
The default Priority1 value for an EXOS switch is 246 vs. that of the endpoints which is 248. By
default it is probable that one EXOS switch will be elected the GMC.

The following command can be used to adjust the priority1 value:

config network-clock gptp default-segt priority1 { 0 – 255 }

where 0 is highest priority and setting it to 255 disables GMC capability.

If it is desired for a switch in the network to be elected the GMC, it is best practice to lower the
priority1 value on a switch centrally positioned in the network to evenly reduce the number of
hops to the GMC from any one endpoint or other switch. That, and it is useful to manually
determine where the GMC is in steady state.

In the case where the AV software is on a virtual machine or a media converter is used, it may be
necessary to change the peer delay threshold from the default settings using the following
command:

configure network-clock gptp ports {port-list} peer-delay

neighbor-thresh {time value} {time metric}

MRP

MRP can only be configured from the CLI, and the only values that may be configured are timer-
values. Typically, the defaults should be sufficient, but where there are many streams, it may be
necessary to increase the leave-all, leave timer, and join timer values. For example, the following:

configure mrp ports all timers leave all 25000

configure mrp ports all timers leave 5000
configure mrp ports all timers join 200

MVRP

By default all VLANs, including non-AVB VLANs are advertised via MVRP. In some cases, endpoints
can be confused by seeing non-AVB VLAN advertisements. Non-AVB VLAN advertisement can be
disabled using the following command:

configure mvrp tag { VID } ports all transmit off

Other non-default configuration of MVRP is not required.

MSRP & FQTSS

There is typically no configuration required for MSRP, however, FQTSS settings are generally
managed by MSRP, so there are settings for FQTSS that may be adjusted via MSRP configuration
commands.

By default, AVB traffic is allowed to use 75% of the bandwidth of each link. This setting can be
adjusted separately for class A and class B traffic. These settings are “delta bandwidth” values
because class A traffic can use the class A percentage, but class B traffic can use the class A
percentage plus the class B percentage.

Traffic Class Delta BW Effective BW

A 75% 75%
B 0% 75%
Table 2. Default settings for Delta Bandwidth and Effective Bandwidth

To change these defaults, use the following commands:

configure msrp ports all traffic-class A delta-bandwidth { dBW% }

configure msrp ports all traffic-class B delta-bandwidth { dBW% }

Another configuration consideration regarding MSRP regards the Default VLAN. It is required that
a port connecting to an endpoint be in an untagged VLAN for the transmission of IEEE 1722 and
1722.1 control packets. The Default VLAN is the obvious choice for this. Inter-switch links may be
tagged into the Default VLAN, but it is best to have those inter-switch links members of the
Default VLAN as untagged as that will allow the Default VLAN serve as the carrier VLAN for
spanning-tree instance S0. This is the default configuration.

in large networks with many streams, scaling challenges may arise. There are two configuration
options for MSRP that can help AVB scale. These are Talker VLAN Pruning (TVP) and Extended
Refresh.
When TVP is enabled, talker attributes are only advertised over ports that belong to the VLAN
identified in the Talker attribute DataFrameParameters. Any talker attributes that contain a VLAN
ID of which a port is not a member are not sent out that port, thus “pruning” the communication
of talker attributes. Talker VLAN Pruning can be enabled with the following command:

configure msrp talker-vlan-pruning on

Extended Refresh is used when MSRP is advertising many streams, and those streams are not
being refreshed quickly enough. Enabling Extended Refresh uses different refresh timers and
Registrar State to extend available refresh time while preserving the faster reaction time when a
stream is intentionally removed. Extended Refresh can be enabled with the following command:

configure mrp ports all timers refresh auto-refresh

As mentioned earlier the Leave All and Leave timers and may need to be increased on the
switches in conjunction with these two last commands. This may be necessary on the attached
endpoints as well.

Limits on the total number of active streams supported on platforms can be found in the Release
Notes for each version of EXOS. As of this writing, EXOS 31.7 shows the following limits for active
AVB streams for AVB supported EXOS switches:

Showing More Detailed AVB Information

The complete set of show commands are documented in the ExtremeEXOS User Guide and
Command Reference found here. However, below are some commonly used commands:

gPTP
show network-clock gptp ports This command can be used to view the gPTP properties of a given port which
is useful for debugging when the summary avb command shows that the port
is not operational for gPTP

MSRP
show msrp This command shows the summary information output by the show avb
command, but also displays the total number of streams and reservations on
the switch.
show msrp streams This command displays all of the streams of which the switch is aware.
 show msrp listeners This command displays all of the listeners of which the switch is aware. If the
declaration type is “Ready” or “RdyFail”, a reservation exists and the Stream
Age will show the length of time that reservation has been active.
show msrp streams propagation This command is useful for troubleshooting regarding the propagation of
talkers and listeners for each stream.

MVRP
show vlan VLANs created via MVRP are named “SYS_VLAN_XXXX”, where the “XXXX” is
the VLAN ID. The “d” flag indicates a dynamically created VLAN.
show vlan SYS_VLAN_XXXX Specifying the VLAN name with the show VLAN command displays details about
the VLAN.

Other EXOS Switch Configuration Considerations

Link Aggregation Groups (Port Sharing) and AVB

LAGs can be used on EXOS switches in AVB networks. The following command is an example of
how to configure a LAG (port sharing group) on an EXOS switch:

enable sharing 1 group 1-4 algorithm address-based L3_L4 lacp

It is recommended that the L3_L4 be used as the “hashing” algorithm which the switch uses to
determine over which port in the LAG a given packet is forwarded because it tends to provide
more traffic load-balancing over the LAG.

Regarding MRP/MSRP, there are two modes supported for calculation of the effective
bandwidth: single-port mode (the default) or cumulative mode. In single-port mode, the
bandwidth of the master port (port 1 in the above example) is used in the effective bandwidth
calculation. The formulas for single-port mode are as follows:

effective bw = the bandwidth of master port

MSRP reservable bw = deltaBandwidth * effective bw

In single-port mode, the LAG member ports (ports 2-4 in the example above) are neither used in
the effective bw calculation or for traffic reservations. Therefore, they are simply used for
redundancy in terms of bandwidth reservations. Single-port mode is the default mode.

In cumulative mode, all ports in a LAG are used for the effective bw calculation and used for
traffic reservations. Cumulative mode must be configured with a “beta” percentage value that is
used in the effective bw calculation. The beta % can be set from 0 to 100%.

The formulation is as follows:

effective bw = the bandwidth of master port + beta * sum (bw of all other active member ports)
MSRP reservable bw = deltaBandwidth * effective bw
So given the example configuration above with 1 Gb ports 1-4 in a LAG, if the beta % is set at 50,
the effective bw for that LAG = 1 + (.5 * 3) = 2.5 Gbs.

The command for configuring cumulative mode is as follows:

configure msrp sharing port { mstr-port | all } bandwidth { beta%}

The reservable bw would then be calculated using the deltaBandwidth * the effective bw as
shown above.

Configuration Mistakes to Avoid

• Do not modify QoS Profiles in anyway. This can interfere with AVB.

• Do not configure rate limiting or traffic metering on ports, traffic queues, or VLANs.

• Do not modify the configuration of the dot1p or dscp mapping tables.

• Do not remove ports as members from VLAN 1. Interswitch links where AVB is enabled
can be tagged members of VLAN 1 but are preferably untagged (due to STP considerations
mentioned above). Ports connected to AVB endpoints should be untagged members of
VLAN 1.

• Do not enable or configure VLAN translation of AVB VLANs. This is not supported.

Useful Show Port Commands

show port {port_number} {no-refresh}

show port {port_number} rxerrors {no-refresh}
show port {port_number} txerrors {no-refresh}
show port {port_number} collisions {no-refresh}
show port {port_number} statistics {no-refresh}