Baystack 5520/5510 issue

[merrittr]

I have 40 5520 each with 2 port based vlans with a default route to a central 5520 with static routes back to each of the 40 routers, that all works fine. The problem arises at the central router :
from a PC/device behind router1 and router2 I can ping any interface on any of the 5520s bu I CAN'T ping the 172.16.0.1 addr even when I ping from the central 5520
all I see while packet sniffing in the 172.16.0.0/24 subnet is 172.16.0.254 arps for 172.16.0.1 address
172.16.0.1 sendes back ist hardware adresss then 172.16.0.254 ignores that and resends the arp requset?

this has me baffled setting up the 5520 -> 5520 routing was easy the routing from the 5520 cloud to the firewall is not (I replace the central 5520 with a linux router and the pings from the PC worked so the 172.16.0.1 machine isn't the problem and yes the central 5520 is forwarding)


any ideas ?

se diagram below


firewall
172.16.0.1/24

vlan1 vlan2 vlan3
172.16.0.254/24|172.16.1.254/24|172.16.2.254/24
port 2 port 3,4,5 port 5->24
central(5520)
10.196.128.1

10.196.128.47 10.196.128.55
router1(5520) router2(5520)
192.16.2.0/24 192.168.4.0/24
192.16.3.0/24 192.268.5.0/24