IP Device Tracking for Silent Devices

Version 33.6.1 adds IP Device Tracking to maintain network connectivity for silent devices that generate minimal traffic, preventing disconnection due to NetLogin idle timeout.

Issue: NetLogin authenticated clients with minimal traffic were regularly disconnected when idle timeout thresholds were reached. The only workaround was to globally disable idle timeout, which reduced network security.

Resolution: When IP Device Tracking is enabled on a port, the switch sends periodic ARP probes to devices in the nodealias table with NetLogin authentication. If a device responds to the ARP probe, its session remains active and the inactivity timer is not triggered. Devices that fail to respond after a configurable number of probe attempts are marked as "Inactive."

Key Capabilities:

• Configurable ARP probe parameters: interval (30-3600 seconds, default 60), maximum consecutive failures (1-10, default 3), initial delay (0-3600 seconds, default 10), and source IP address (default 0.0.0.0)
• Per-port configuration for enabling IP device tracking
• Device status monitoring (Active, Inactive, or Not Tracked)
• Integration with NetLogin authentication to maintain sessions

New CLI Commands

Configuration commands:

configure nodealias ports [<port_list> | all] ip-device-tracking [on | off]

configure nodealias ports [<port_list> | all] ip-device-tracking arp-probe
    [{max-failures <max_failures>}
     {ipaddress <ipaddress>}
     {interval <interval>}
     {initial-delay <initial_delay>}]

Show commands:

show nodealias ip-device-tracking {ports <port_list>}

show nodealias ip-device-tracking configuration {ports <port_list>}