RE: iSeries connectivity and GRE tunnels

This is an interesting read.

I know nothing about GRE, but it looks like there are tunnel keepalive settings you can set to avoid connection issues if I read this right.

I'm guessing those are router type of settings.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/generic-routing-encapsulation-gre/118361-technote-gre-00.html

Regards,
Richard Schoen
Web: http://www.richardschoen.net
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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message: 4
date: Wed, 2 Dec 2020 16:36:52 +0000
from: "Howie, Bill" <BHowie@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: iSeries connectivity and GRE tunnels

Hello all,

Question for the group - we've been working through an issue with our network service provider, and in the process we had some connectivity issues with our iSeries partitions. Our backup circuit is a GRE circuit, and when our connection rolled over to it, we started to have problems with iSeries sessions staying connected. I asked a question to the group yesterday about possible ways to configure our ACS sessions to maximize our ability to stay connected, and we have employed these suggestions:


* ACS parameter for "Keep-Alive"
* ACS parameter for "Bypass signon"
* TCP "keep alive" parameter via CHGTCPA

I also did an experiment with turning on the automated refresh setting on WRKACTJOB to simulate an interactive job running a command and the session didn't seem to drop when constantly being fed data in this manner. I'm wondering if anyone out there has any GRE-specific-related suggestions for maintaining connectivity beyond these changes that we've already made. I did a Google search on "GRE and iSeries' and "GRE and AS/400" and that didn't really yield much.

Any info any of you might have would be most appreciated. Thanks!