Just for information, some important features brought up with the last versions:

  • Ironware 3.4 :

Support for new POS interfaces: my I remind you that this is a huge step in Foundry's development as their initial business was Ethernet Switches, then came the Ethernet Routers, and now POS routers.

  • Ironware 3.7 :

new Ethernet trunk configuration philosophy: it is now possible to configure a trunk with a neo interface : this simply means that trunks now have their own logical interface, such as Port Channel Interface Pox/y on Cisco's IOS.
Yet, I've not yet had the chance to test whether this one interface comes with SNMP counters of its own - in the past, one of Foundry's main drawbacks was that it didn't provide SNMP counters for VLAN interaces, nor Trunk interfaces, so you had to manipulate sums of RRAs for graphing, something really annoying if you're, say a cacti user (a decent workaround would be to use DRRAW, which makes it rather straightforward to sum rrds). I would also need to check whether or not access-lists can be applied to those neo interfaces.

  • Ironware 3.8 :

This ones brings up features such as:
- bpdu guard
- root guard
needless to say those are quite some lifesavers if you're into Layer 2... Seems to me that Foundry are getting themselves a more and more mature OS these days, with a release frequences that keeps accelerating, which cannot be seen as a bad thing. I'll certainly tell you more once I get a chance ge a little hands on those new releases.