Connecting HP Procurve Point to Point

[jerodg]

We have two sister companies that just got a 10Mb Point to Point line for doing mostly file sharing. We have an HP Procuve 5406zl switch at each company which is the default gateway for all PCs on each LAN. IP routing is enabled and we're already using these to route traffic for internal VLANs. We're hoping to use these to route traffic between the two companies.

Our first attempt was to setup a VLAN and add static routes for each company's subnet as follows:

1. Setup VLAN on each switch (VLAN7)
2. Set VLAN7 IP on each switch (192.168.11.1 CompanyA and 192.168.11.2 CompanyB)
3. Set VLAN7 to untagged on Point to Point connected port
4. Set Point to Point connected port to 10FDx
5. On CompanyA switch, add route - ip route CompanyBNetworkAddress 255.255.252.0 192.168.11.1
6. On CompanyB switch, add route - ip route CompanyANetworkAddress 255.255.252.0 192.168.11.2

This attempt did not work, however. There is either something missing in the routing table or we need to use a protocol instead such as OSPF or do multinetting, neither of which I have experience with.

On the CompanyB switch, I can ping 192.168.1.2 but not 192.168.1.1. I can setup a laptop, give the IP of 192.168.1.2 and have CompanyA setup a laptop, give the IP of 192.168.1.1 and can ping both ways, so the Point to Point connection is working.

Can someone point me in the right direction, por flavour?

Many thanks,

Jerod

 

[jerodg]

Sorry, the 192.168.1.X IPs in the original post are actually 192.168.11.X.

 

[cajuntank]

You need to point to your next hop not your local gateway IP. So for CompanyA switch, the route would be to CompanyB network via 192.168.11.2 and CompanyB switch, the route would be to CompanyA network via 192.168.11.1

You just had them swapped. You can use a routing protocol like RIP or OSPF (although you won't have OSPF unless you purchased the Advanced License for that switch). With just the two sites, static or RIP would be fine.

Hope that helps and Merry Christmas.

 

[jerodg]

Thanks, cajuntank. Your recommendation got me going in the right direction.

Once I corrected this mistake, the communication still was not working.

I punted and hired a network engineer. Turns out our ISP setup our Aktino boxes incorrectly. The Aktino on each side was supposedly setup to tag traffic with VLAN 901 and then strip the tag on the receiving Aktino before passing it on to the internal switch. The Aktino at CompanyA was setup this way. The Aktino at CompanyB was not stripping the tag, so the HP switch was receiving the traffic and dropping it because it was coming from an unknown VLAN. Lesson learned...when signing a contract with a huge ISP, make sure to have access to an engineer until communication is working properly. We wasted a lot of time and money trying to navigate through proper channels at the conglomerate ISP.