Bug ID 544463: The BIG-IP system's management port drops egress Ethernet multicast traffic

Last Modified: Sep 13, 2023

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP All(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
11.6.0, 11.6.1, 11.6.2, 11.6.3, 11.6.3.1, 11.6.3.2, 11.6.3.3, 11.6.3.4, 11.6.4, 11.6.5, 11.6.5.1, 11.6.5.2, 11.6.5.3, 12.0.0, 12.0.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.0.0 HF2, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.0.0 HF3, 12.0.0 HF4, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2

Opened: Sep 08, 2015

Severity: 3-Major

Related Article: K31269311

Symptoms

The BIG-IP system's management port drops egress Ethernet multicast traffic. You may experience this issue if you employ certain routing techniques in the network segment the management port connects to. For example, you may experience this issue if the BIG-IP system's default gateway on the management network is a pair of Check Point Secure Gateways configured in Load Sharing Multicast Mode. In this case, the IP address of the default gateway resolves to a L2 multicast address and, because of this issue, the BIG-IP system's management port ends up dropping traffic destined the default gateway.

Impact

As a result of this issue, certain destinations or certain services will not be reachable via the BIG-IP system's management port.

Conditions

No special conditions are required to trigger this issue. However, only customers with unusual routing configurations are likely to actually notice this issue.

Workaround

The Linux host configures a single-interface bridge over the management port to make certain tasks simpler. This issue has been shown to go away when multicast snooping is disabled for said bridge. You can disable multicast snooping for the management bridge by running the following command: # echo 0 > /sys/class/net/mgmt/bridge/multicast_snooping On a VIPRION chassis, the aforementioned command would have to be run on each blade. The command is not permanent and the change is lost after a reboot of the system. To make the change permanent, you can add the command to the /config/startup file.

Fix Information

None

Behavior Change

Guides & references

K10134038: F5 Bug Tracker Filter Names and Tips